#swtor one shot

[geekwithacuriousmind]

Servant Two Begins to Question

Surprise @diazuk-legacy ! I was your Secret Santa! I hope you like this one-shot and don’t think I took too many creative liberties with describing Servant Two.

Servant Two never had much of a choice regarding the course of his life. From the moment he was able to serve, he served. Freedom was a forbidden word, discouraged from all of the Emperor’s Hands. In return, the Emperor gave them power—the privilege to be His voice among all His subjects. Their words, in turn, became the Emperor’s word. And in the Empire, that meant power.

Yet the Servants were not foolish to think that power was enough to intimidate everyone in the Empire.

There were some Sith who believed they could do better than the Servants. They thought, in their naivety, that the Emperor’s inner circle worked similarly to their silly power struggles.

They all learned their lesson when the Servants were done with them.

Yet there was one exception: one person, a Sith whom the Emperor forbade to dispose of.

As Servant Two kept a close eye on the Emperor’s chosen, the Emperor’s Wrath, he failed to see what was so special about this Sith.

Why was it that his Emperor chose this Sith above everyone else?

Servant Two knew that even thinking this went against his vow. Their duty was to follow orders. The word of the Emperor was law. His wisdom was beyond the realm of understanding. As much as Servant Two wanted to understand, he knew he would never be able to grasp fully what his Emperor deemed or didn’t deem worthy.

Yet why did his heart ache every time he met with the Emperor’s Wrath? Why did he feel disheartened each time he tried to speak to the Emperor and was met with silence instead? His gaze, which fell on him so long ago— felt so out of range, as if his God was no longer in this realm.

Yet that couldn’t be, could it? He wouldn’t abandon them.

Right?

Servant Two was terrified of the answer. Because just even questioning his Emperor’s presence meant he doubted His power.

Yet it was too late for him. This existence was the only thing he had ever known. It was the only way he could think of surviving.

But could devotion, adoration, and loyalty be enough to hide the truth?

They were still following the orders of a God that was no longer there.

“We live to serve Him,” Servant One told him as if that was enough to eliminate all his fears and doubts. “We must keep his voice alive.”

What is there left to keep alive? he thought.

But rather than saying this, he kept following orders. He kept whispering in the Servants’ minds empty promises and broken vows.

He watched from the shadows as the Emperor’s Wrath stopped following the Emperor’s voice. They knew his ambition would be unstoppable. That his lust for power was unlike any other Servant Two had ever seen.

Yet they believed they could control him. Use him just like they did in the past to eliminate Darth Baras.

They had been wrong. Servant One returned with bruises and a wounded ego after almost being choked to death. With their spy robots destroyed and the Dark Council’s betrayal imminent— it was only now that they realized how weak the Emperor’s Hand had become due to His silence.

They were hunted down and destroyed by those who first sought them to further their selfish agendas. By those who were now in positions of power thanks to their influence and intervention.

Yet there wasn’t much they could do. Not with the Emperor gone. After all, their power came from Him. And without Him, they were nothing.

And would die like nothing, one by one.

It was their duty, after all.

[dingoat]

The Sun

Upright: joy, success, celebration, positivity

[vespertine-legacy]

turns out there is a secret tunnel beside the entrance to Alchemy of Evil, and from there, you can get into the Ilum skybox real nice

[kemendin]

The edge of the galaxy

[queen-scribbles]

Okay, I was weak, I ran the Jorgan date with Tjera, too, for different dialogue testing and regret nothing

OUR ship

OUR. SHIP.

Not her ship. OUR ship.

ahem. moving on (:D) I did the [take it easy] option with her since Keme's too competitive /cough

SIR. That is UNFAIR.

If you go for kissing him on his turn it's a little kiss on the cheek (in revenge for that Smoulder™), he does indeed miss his shot

and you get a bonus smooch out of it. :D That's properly aligned and everything (rip nose kisses, you shall be missed)

Definitely my new favorite date, 20/10, will be running again and again and agai-

[justiceforc3po]

Vada Z'Elion, former CO of Havoc Squad, Commander of the Eternal Alliance

„People are counting on me - people who can't fight for themselves.

If I fail, they suffer the consequences. So, I can't fail.“

[dirthara-dalen]

At long last, Malgus. He could have cared less why the former sith lord was there just that he needed to be stopped.

It felt too easy to capture the sith. For the first time something felt off about the whole situation. The man was far to confident for his taste. Claiming that his plans have already been set into motion and could not be stopped...that worried him even if he did not show it.

[voidendron]

...It would appear I have more NPC clones than I thought I did.

oops.

the Exarchs are MINE, bioware, mine I say

[bardic-tales]

Alone in the Dark

Novel: Fall of Darth Jadus

Pairing: m!SI (Darth Jadus / Darth Notkis) x f!IA (Cipher Nine / Cynthia Prescost)

Fandom: Star Wars, The Old Republic

Word Count: 606

Warnings: implied child abuse, implied rape, au:canon divergent

Rating: Mature

Premise: Cynthia Prescost, an Imperial Agent who goes by the moniker Cipher Nine, confronts her lover, Darth Jadus. A secret is spilled out.

Source: Angst Prompt Generator

Tag List: @arrthurpendragon @perasperaadastrawriting @starryeyes2000

If you would like to to be on my tag list for notifications on my fan fiction, please let me know. If you wish to be taken off this taglist, feel free to tell me!

ALONE IN THE DARK

1.

“I was alone!” she howled at the Sith before her. “When I truly needed you, you disappeared! So, you don’t know what I have been through! You. Don’t. Know!”

“Cynthia, I know — ”

“You don’t know! How could you know what happened to me?!” She cut Darth Jadus off as she dug her fingernails into her palm. This trick worked to distract her when her parents locked her in her childhood bedroom when she was younger. Presently, it did nothing.

As he bent down, Jadus set a holopad on the table next to them. She was too irate to see that he was carefully examining holo-news or read the breaking headlines about an attack on the distant planet of Bespin. Authorities said none survived.

She trembled, the shaking barely discernible to the naked eye, but Jadus knew all her idiosyncrasies. He immediately knew something was wrong. Her heart hammered in her chest.

“I knew they would hurt me,” she cried out, sobbing as those memories took hold of her as they often did now, “but I never thought that they would do that. How could anyone predict they would do that?”

“No one could,” Jadus murmured, his voice no higher than a melodic purr. He wiped one of her tears away with his hand, the moisture leaving a spot behind on the ebony-colored clawed glove. “You have experienced one of the worst things that a person could endure. You don’t need my permission to mourn.

“And you need not fear a punishment for this outburst either, Cyn. You’re not the reason that happened, but you need to do whatever you can to heal from it. Even if that means you must leave me and be by yourself for a bit. I have no use for someone who’s broken.”

Although his words were harsh, there was a gentleness to them. Cynthia couldn’t fault his reasoning. In her current state, they were no closer to realizing his glorious empire than they were after fate reunited them.

I can’t even look at him without remembering what happened. This was not Jadus’ fault. If she were honest with herself, every man reminded her of those who captured her, those who took torture too far. He was only a stand in for the ones who took part in her abuse.

She breathed in and out. Her breaths fell rapidly on each other, and each stopped with a choked sob. As time passed, her anxiety rose until it reached its tipping point.

I can’t breathe, Cynthia panicked. Again, her air was cut off with a choked sob.

“Be at ease,” he tried to soothe her as he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her. No amount of comfort would make it okay. “All who participated in such a plan will perish by my hand. I give you my word that they will not escape me.”

Although Imperial Intelligence was no more and Sith Intelligence rose to take its place, Jadus would hunt down all who were responsible for what happened over the skies of Corellia.

The Sith always reveled in the hunt. This time would be no different, and all of those she considered her friends were in danger from his never-ending rage.

I can’t allow him to figure out who was responsible. Shara was the one in most danger should he look into the plan that they all agreed to. He would murder the former Watcher Two and Keeper, but most importantly to Cynthia, one of her few friends.

[eorzeashan]

Eight: stars you are extremely fucking selfish. die

Colonel Korrd: I am 32 years old

Korrd was quaking in his boots here which was incredibly satisfying given that it looked like he was seconds from shitting his pants, but to rub it in further, Eight chose to blackmail him. Not in the 'give me all your stuff' way, but the subtle veiled threat that said I will collect. I'm really mad I didn't get any screenshots of that moment because Eight's look was outright murder.

Honestly Eight was so intimidating here that I thought Korrd was about to cry when he said he understood, lol. Like his voice was so trembly and lightheaded, kudos to the VA who got across his sheer terror underneath his Imperial restraint.

It's no secret that Eight hates wastefulness, but my god does he really love putting the screws to people and making them sleep with one eye open.

^ Eight when Korrd asks if he did it out of the goodness of his heart

[scourgeblooms]

happy may 4th! it's star wars day!!!

(a bit of rambling below the cut)

I didn't know how much I'd love the rattataki when I first started playing swtor a year ago today. I started with one, and ended up with four (so far). these are the only two that've been drawn.

my smuggler captain yrixei (aka "risky") who does all his business in space sweatpants and high on spice.

and my imperial agent who just goes by "nine" and has been shot more times in the last month than years she's been alive (which is a lot).

[miraluking-respectfully]

How Tall are the SWTOR Boyfriends?

This was written some months ago, but the Theron Height Poll has inspired me to actually post it.

Basing my metrics around 1) the average male height in the USA where I live (5'9" or 1.75m, according to google) 2) what would be funniest or cutest when matched to their personalities and dynamics with the player character. Bear in mind: I am not operating under the assumption that being a short man is something to be ashamed of (it isn't in the real world and it isn't in Star Wars), but some of the husbands in this video game have personalities that are...enhanced by engaging in a little playful stereotyping. You'll see what I mean.

Jorgan: 5'11-6'/~1.8m, hovering somewhere in the above average range. It makes him more intimidating to the average private who makes the mistake of getting his attention, but by the same token, more charming when he warms up to the Trooper and proves himself just a big fuzzy kitty. With a big fuzzy sniper rifle

Andronikos: 5'6ish, 5'7ish (~1.7m), hard to tell because he slouches. He only really stands up straight when he's trying to be a big tough guy

Quinn: 5'7"/1.7018m. No ambiguity because his posture is perfect. Alternate Interpretation: However tall your SW is, he is exactly 6 centimeters shorter. Come Here Elbow Rest

Doc: 5'4"/1.6m. No, not because I think his womanizing personality is him "overcompensating"; in fact Doc's height is only ever an advantage in his romantic conquests. He comes on so strong that him being particularly tall might be intimidating. But nah, he's just a little birthday boy, so the hot people in his orbit let their guard down, allowing him to get in close and hit 'em with a pickup line related to his medical expertise. Being small also means he's harder to hit when helping retrieve wounded resistance fighters from the battlefield #BalmorraForever

Felix: 5'11"/~1.8m, he gets an ABOVE AVERAGE height bc he is an ABOVE AVERAGE husband can I get an AMEN

Torian: You ever met a high school freshman and been fucking shocked that children are allowed to be so enormous? The kid's like, 14 years old and shot up like two feet over the summer, and it feels illegal? That's Torian. He's 19 and he's been 6'2"/~1.87m for the past five and a half years, but he's still a little gangly and the only reason he knows how to control his extremely long limbs is he's literally a trained fighter. Alternate Interpretation: If your BH is taller than 5'10, he's 5'10 exactly

Corso: 6'/1.82m. I know I just said negative associations around short men don't exist in The Galaxy Far Far Away, but Corso seems like the kind of guy who would somehow independently develop a complex about his height, if he was short. The fact he doesn't means he must be tall

Vector: God, I really wanted to make him on the shorter side of average to pair with his mild-mannered personality and contrast the more unusual elements of his speech and his eyes, but his sleek character design makes him feel tall when I'm looking at him. He's also the only LI I've drawn beside one of my characters, and I just sort of unconsciously made him tall because my agent is kind of short, and it looked appealing. Results inconclusive; some boyfriends can grow as tall as starships while others can be as small as mites

Arcann: 5'8"/1.72m. (Thexan was 5'9")

Theron: No taller than 5'9"/1.75m. Theron seems like a pretty normal guy when you meet him, until he reveals himself to be an insane little freak (affectionate), so giving him the most Average Height Possible feels correct.

Koth: However tall Lana is, Koth is exactly 2 cm shorter.

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk. I encourage spirited debate in the replies. Girl LI Height Opinions still percolating

[three-fulm-thaumaturd]

Dawn? Trailed.

Finished Dawntrail MSQ tonight. Assorted scattershot (and spoiler-heavy) thoughts under the RM.

-I came to DT without much preexisting hype or emotional investment. All I wanted out of this expansion was to have a break from being the main character who has to save the multiverse from extinction, again, and to have some cool scenery to look at and some banger music, and we sure got that!

-There are a lot of things about how this expansion was written that didn't effortlessly or instinctively emotionally appeal to me in specific, but that are, when I think about them, really good, solid workmanlike choices re: how to construct a video game narrative.

-I know J-media tournament arcs are “well worn” in the same sense that the Grand Canyon or the Marianas Trench are, but they provide a plausible pretext for the things that MMOs are set up to do. Better than a host of supposedly highly-realized and virtuous precursor beings insisting that we repeatedly justify our existence by fighting, for sure.

-Being Wuk Lamat's mentor/emotional support Eorzean/800 pound gorilla was an interesting conceit. I think the writers carried off "non-protagonist PC" fairly well, and I've played other games where that was tried and didn't work (lookin at you SWtOR, re: KotFE). Lamat'yi feels like a more competently-written version of Stormblood-era Lyse. She's got both a core personality that remains consistent and a trajectory of increasing competence and maturity. I think she's well constructed as a protag/viewpoint character: she's primed to like things and people, her ethos of addressing conflict by seeking understanding and consensus is a good pretext to deliver exposition, and she feels/empathizes intensely but doesn't get stuck on her own emotional reactions. I wouldn’t say I effortlessly enjoy her as a character, especially early on when the writing leans hard into her immaturity and desperation to be liked and to prove herself, but I understand and respect what that’s for. It’s no different than Naruto or early-OT Luke Skywalker.

-I like the variety of Central/South American cultural inspo (Aztec, Quechua, Yucatec Maya, Pueblo, etc), we got in the setting and culture for this xpac, and the conception of Tural as a very racially/culturally heterogeneous place where power comes from the aggregate of a complicated network of relationships that have to be negotiated on an ongoing basis. It's not zero-sum, and finding solutions that benefit everyone is hard but worthwhile.

-I was excited to be able to bring Krile, my favorite Scion, along this time. I feel like the ShB/EW A-team had enough presence to appeal to people who like them and not so much that they upstaged the new characters or the change of scenery.

-I think there was effort to add cinematographic interest to the many, dense cutscenes other than wide-angle shot/reverse-shot over paragraphs of text. Some of the camera angles (switching between the faces of my minimum-height lalafell and 2m+ Wuk Lamat) and long shots of characters' expressions resulted in...sometimes-intentional uncanniness and unintentional comedy. This probably was not the devs' intention (their intention was probably a performance with emotional subtlety that the graphics overhaul alas still doesn't permit), but my instinctive read was that it felt like unnecessary padding/stalling for time.

-Re: other stuff that felt like it unnecessarily lengthened the playtime and the amount of text to read, sometimes I resent that it feels like I'm being not just spoon-fed, but bottle-fed plot and character beats that are not complicated or hard to understand. Then I see people evincing failure to comprehend what they're reading elsewhere on the internet and understand why it's done that way. :\

-There's basically one trademark Ishikawa conflict: Local man driven to extremes by inability/unwillingness to come to terms with loss, aging, and death. There's also one trademark Ishikawa sin that characterizes all of the ShB-and-after antagonists: a delusional insistence on harming the living to feed the dead. Those come up so consistently that her style is instantly recognizable...and I wonder some about what she's experienced or how she's doing.

-The hairpin turn in the plot about 2/3 of the way in and the by-now very familiar tropes aren't my narrative jam at all, but it was engaging enough to mostly keep my attention until the end. I'm beyond weary of Ascians/Ancients and shard math, so I'm glad those things were referenced (and there's some interesting stuff to chew on re: Lalafell history in particular) but not focal.

-I'm a little mad, because my pre-Heritage-Found speculation that El Dorado was going to turn out to actually be an aetherologic Superfund site (which would explain the security, the giants charging in and coming back dead, sick, or unable to reproduce, the teratogenic effects on eg Blessed Siblings etc and the fight for control of it as a putative military asset) seemed to have a lot of fun possibilities. I guess you could argue that Living Memory might be a very abstracted nod in that direction.

-*Queen Sphene*? Really, you couldn’t have named her anything at all else???

-I'm not at all satisfied that "he felt overshadowed by his father's accomplishments and wanted to prove his worth independent of his unusual heritage" is sufficient justification for how Zoraal Ja was, especially prior to his first contact with Alexandria. I figured based on his behavior and Krile's remarks, that he had to be Tempered, or affected by an equivalent kind of magical compulsion.

-The final trial, and to a lesser extent the last dungeon are an unmitigated (and unmitigatable until mods become available again) accessibility nightmare if you're photosensitive or prone to motion sickness. I hoped the devs would take the feedback they got from the ShB alliance raid series under consideration but they sure didn't give a shit. Guess I'm not doing roulettes for a while.

[vespertine-legacy]

[kemendin]

Kinda late to be posting but I couldn't wait, I love these shots of my new boy

[inyri]

Not sure if the prompt list you reblogged was a request for prompts but if yes, consider "❛ let’s just stay here. grow old. ❜ for someone else but Nine and Theorn and/or ❛ i didn’t ask to get made. ❜ for a character of your choice.

(As requested, this is not Nine and Theron.

SWTOR. Nine and Hunter, at the end of it all. TW: violence and its aftermath.)

“That’s probably going to scar.” Hunter looks up at her, shakes her- her, even half-dead there was always one more way to fuck with her, wasn’t there?- head with a crooked half-smile. “They’ll take it away, though, won’t they? They always do.”

Blood streams down her cheek and pools at the corner of her mouth. It’d been a lucky shot, Hunter’s knife swinging wide when she’d blocked a strike that might otherwise have hit a gap between armor plates; it’d been even luckier that it missed her eye. That would have figured. The others always noticed, before, when the cuts reached her face. “I might keep it. I’m tired of having things taken from me.”

“You and me both, Cipher Nine.” She can hear the wheeze buried in Hunter’s laugh. That last hit got her lung after all, then. Good. “You and me both.”

She licks her lips, then spits onto the floor. Their blood’s all over the room already- what’s a little more? 

(Hunter had dreamed about it, she’d said, dreamed about tearing each other apart.   

She’d dreamed of it too: every shot, every slash, every fistfall a box ticked off a list that went all the way back to Nar Shaddaa, to Taris and Hoth and Quesh, every pull at her leash and every notch her collar tightened and every time, every time, every time-

Let it go, the Minister had said. Let it go, Cipher. You’re free now.

She still dreams of Hunter. Perhaps she always will.)

“We could just stay here, you know. You and me. Patch each other up. Keep the codex.” Hunter’s leaning forward now, braced on her hands, lips blueing with every word. “Grow old. They took everything from us. We deserve to win just once, don’t we?”

There’s a kolto syringe in her belt pouch. She could-

Nine’s hand spasms, fingers splayed wide and disobedient as her nerves misfire, and she thinks of Corellia, of the burns and the breaks and the shocks and her screams and of Hunter’s voice in her ear, and she lets her arm drop to her side and does not answer.

“Tell me one thing, then.” Her eyes are the same as she remembers. “Your name. The name your parents called you, the name they took from you- oh, come on-” another cough, this one bloody, veins cording in her neck. “Who’m I going to tell? I just- I just want to know.” 

She sheathes her blade, rubs at her cheek with the back of her hand. Her arm’s bleeding too, and her lower back and her right thigh, but that will keep until they get back to the ship. “My name is Cipher Nine. What’s taken is gone. That girl no longer exists.”

“Me, too,” Hunter whispers. “Me, too. You and me, Cipher. We played the game right.”

“Don’t ever-” with the pistol barrel pressed against her forehead the shot barely echoes, and Hunter’s last gasping breath goes out of her as Nine whispers back- “compare yourself to me.”