#oc: tuanor evo

[sky-scribbles]

‘A question, Jaesa.’

She looks at him – her master, her ally, maybe her friend – sitting cross-legged on the floor of her quarters with a portable kettle in his hands. This is not a position she ever expected to be in. Sith, she was always told, will manipulate you, play games with your mind, drive a lightsaber into your back the instant you show it to them. They don’t take you away from the master who was using you and give you another way to live. They don’t request your aid, befriend you, and pour you tea.

But that’s what Tuanor has done. And is still doing.

‘On Hutta,’ he says, handing her a mug, ‘you looked into my... presence. Aura. My true nature, whatever that means.’  

Jaesa nods, hesitant, and accepts the cup. ‘I did.’

‘You saw that I wasn’t what you expected. That I’m not... as most Sith are. What exactly did you see?’

He takes a long sip of tea, his eyes just visible over the rim of his mug, and Jaesa wonders if he’s trying to hide his face. Not that she’d be able to read much if she could see it. Tuanor has made ‘deadpan’ a permanent fashion statement, and she’s still learning to read the subtle twitches of lekku with which Twi’leks display their emotions.

She draws her knees up against her chest and closes her eyes, tries to think herself back to that moment. He’d met her gaze and told her to look inside him. I have nothing to hide, he said, but his shoulders were a little too stiff, his back a little too straight. Like he was afraid of what she’d see, what she’d say.

‘Looking into your presence in the Force was... confusing.’ She curls her fingers tighter around the mug, and there’s something comforting about its warmth against her skin. ‘Imagine... you’re standing somewhere clear and open, and the sky above you is dark blue, but there’s streaks of light on the horizon. And your mind’s hazy. You can’t tell what time of day it is or what direction you’re facing, so you can’t work out if the light means it’s morning or evening.’

Tuanor lowers his cup. His eyes are still fixed on her, but he says nothing.

‘That’s what your aura felt like. Like there was something fierce and burning in you, but it could be light or dark and I couldn’t tell which. I felt like you’d built a one-way mirror around your core. And for a moment, I didn’t want to try and break through it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because...’ Jaesa stops, drums her fingers against her mug, fumbles for words. ‘I... have you ever stood somewhere high, a tall building or a mountain, and you’re fine with looking down, but you... you can’t bear to look up? The ground beneath your feet feels certain but the weight of the sky is just –  it’s too close. If you look up, you’ll feel how easily it could crush you. That’s what looking inside you was like. Overwhelming. Like if I looked too deep, a ceiling would shatter and the whole sky would just come crashing down on me.’

His lips purse. ‘You saw all that, and you didn’t look away?’

‘No. I almost did, but then I realised. That’s exactly what you intend, isn’t it? You need people to feel dizzy and confused. You need them to look away. That mirror, it’s a mask you’ve worn for years. The Sith look at you and they only see the power of the Wrath, they feel how fierce it burns and how easily it could destroy them, so they don’t look closer.’

She looks at him, this strange Sith, her impossible friend who’s hanging on her every word, and understands. It must hurt, doing good and always disguising it. Covering it up with a cold voice and a scarlet blade. No wonder he was so scared to hear what she’d say, back on Hutta. No wonder he needs to hear it again now.

‘So they don’t notice what I saw. That light on the horzon... it’s dawn. Underneath all the cold, and under that dark sky, there’s... there’s someone taking slow steps towards the sun.’

Tuanor looks at her for a long moment. Then – for perhaps the first time since she met him – he smiles.

‘Well, that’s a relief,’ he says, and drains his cup.

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🖊️🖊️🖊️

Does this mean I get to pick three characters? Because I’m gonna :D

Let’s see… my Sith Warrior, Tuanor, ended up Light Side as a result of his beloved Sith stepfather being murdered by his own apprentice. Tuanor, about sixteen at the time, was very indignant when people told him ‘that’s just how the Sith work,’ and formed an iron-clad determination to reform them from within. At first, being LS was mostly driven by Tuanor’s conscious choices not to become like the Sith he hated. But as it turned out, doing nice things… felt quite good, actually. 

He doesn’t start using traditionally Light techniques to fight until Chapter 3, when Draahg tries to drop an entire cave on his head, and Tuanor goes into a deep meditative trance to levitate the rocks and stop himself and his companions from being crushed. (I demand in-universe reasons for how they survived that, dammit!) His ability to switch back and forth between sides of the Force is part of what makes him so effective in combat - not many people are prepared to fight both Dark and Light techniques at once.

And some gushing for Neyna: they bought their pet kell drake from a shady spacers’ outpost almost as soon as they left Chiss space. Keeping an animal wasn’t seen as appropriate behaviour for a Chiss operative, but now they were exiled? Try to stop them from buying that adorable little murder machine, they’ve wanted a pet for years. His name is Indigo, because they’d only had him a few days before he nosed into their paints and got purple smeared all over his nose.

Finally, one for Zeth: He collects pebbles from every planet he visits. The first one he picked up, back when he was a baby Jedi, he carries around with him for luck. He often dips a hand into his pocket and runs his fingers over it when he’s nervous… and because he’s incredibly sappy, he eventually gives it to Theron. (Who keeps it with him throughout the Zildrog fiasco, and offers it back to Zeth after Nathema, only for Zeth to gently close his fingers back over it and tell him, ‘If you’re going to keep pulling stunts that end up with you in kolto tanks, you need the luck much more than I do.’)

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This game... did not expect me to create a Twi’lek Sith.

(Quinn you’re cool and all but if you want to get Force-choked you’re going about it the right way,)

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I finally finished all eight class storylines in SWTOR, and I’m pretty emotional. I made my first character almost five years ago, so the game’s been part of my life for a long time. So here’s a bunch of screenshots of my mains who shared the journey with me. It’s been a great ride.

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Pen-drawn chibis of all my SWTOR OCs. I spent about four hours shading each one of them, but it was fun!

(My blog theme doesn’t let you enlarge ‘em for some reason, so a clearer view can be found on the DeviantArt version.)

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Turns out my new laptop can run SWTOR on the highest graphic settings. So I took some quick shots of my mains just so I could gaze in awe at them.

(I barely ever talk about these guys, and I know there are some SWTOR fans following me, so feel free to just randomly ask me about them. Really, I would love to talk about these kids.)

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2, 6, 9, 12, and 13! c:

Thanks so much for these! :D 

2. What OC has/is a mentor?

A lot of my OCs are mentors – especially theSWTOR bunch, since whenever I roll a new character rather than replaying one ofmy main 8 class characters, I often slot them into my main’s story somewhere asan apprentice or teammate.

I think special mention goes to Marokhai, who’s mentor to both Raina and my second agent, Mynix. I haven’t talked abouther much, but she’s the product of mentalconditioning even more intense than Watcher Two/Keeper’s, and when she’sassigned to Marokhai as a trainee agent, his immediate response is, ‘I am notletting them take away her freedom and her sense of self, like they did to me.’ Training Mynix to resist her programming is one of the few things that keeps him grounded throughout Chapter 2. Watching her individuality blossom under his guidance as she resists the control others have placed on her… it gives him hope for himself.

6. What OC is the Mom Friend?

Quite a few, but first place goes to Runa Aeducan. She’s nobility, and she took that task seriously: she knows how to organise people, how to read them, how to keep them rallied together. And after the lack of genuine, uncomplicated love she had in Orzammar, she enjoys little better than giving that kind of love out to her friends. Her blight-fighting team never leaves camp without her packing them all a lunch, inspecting their gear to make sure it’s in working order, and asking if there’s anything bothering them (which there usually is. I mean, it’s Origins.)

9. What is your favorite platonic relationship between  your OCs?

Oh god, how to pick just one… I’ve barely talked about it, but Zeth’s friendship with my Warrior, Tuanor, is very dear to myheart. They first met on Ilum, forging an uneasy alliance to bring down Malgus…where Zeth learned that Vitiate should really see about appointing Wraths who, you know, don’t want him dead. They left with a great deal of respect for each other, and since Tuanor joined the Alliance, they’ve found common ground in how they’ve both been manipulated and controlled by Vitiate while far too young to cope with it. It’s acommon sight to see them sharing tea and a dejarik game together on Odessen, talkingabout the best and worst of their respective orders and how they might be fixed.

12. Which two OCs are the most different from each other?

Hmm, good question… I think it’s possibly my first two Shepards, Helen and Lionel, since they were made to deliberately contrast each other. She keeps her emotions close to her chest, while he’s exuberantly free with them; she’s a cautious planner while he’s a Vanguard with all the reckless charging that entails; her character arc is one of learning that it’s all right to trust her own instincts even if all the rules tell her otherwise, while he learns that being the saviour of the galaxy doesn’t mean that his own impulses are always right. I’m very fond of them both, even if they’d drive each other crazy if they met.

13. Which OCs complement each other the best?

Now I’ve fleshed out their relationship a bit, I think it’s Kessany and Sarai - specifically post Kotor 2; they were a lot less healthy for each other back in the Mandalorian Wars. Despite all she’s been through, Kess has an energy, enthusiasm and sense of wonder that Sarai’s sorely needed to give her hope over the last few years, while Sarai brings a healing presence that can calm and soothe Kess in her darkest and most painful moments. They’re ideal for making up for the other’s shortcomings and encouraging their strengths, and they’re both incredibly warm-hearted people, so they rarely clash when it comes to morality. It took them a while to get there, but they make a perfect team.