satele shan official art and face model (click for full view)
it's very clear that the artist for the Theron book covers probably didn't have a lot of guidance in regards to Theron's features and that's why he got joe-schmoefied on Annihilation but I don't even think the in-game model is... the most accurate in terms of his features/skintone/hair textures. like it's almost a nothingburger gripe on it's face bc it's a character model but it's also not ridiculous to go "whose baby is that" upon seeing him in-game
his official art concepts from the cosplay kit (click for full view) compared to the actual ingame model below
a generous take would be that he definitely takes after satele more but damn it's like jace's genes didn't even try . the point is i do not want to see white theron art on my dash ever again lmao. like yeah sorry i do think u gotta get a bit speculative with it. he's difficult to draw because clearly nobody knew what they were doing and i'd much rather see fans go off-model to stay true to depicting him as a person of color than choose the coward's way out :/ sue me
So in star wars canon sith have red lightsabers because they bleed the kyber crystals or whatever, and while thats all super cool and edgy and shit, I have my own headcanon thats far simpler and makes way more sense to me.
Simply put, pure kyber crystals are red, so when they grow the crystal in a lab it comes out red. Natural kyber however is filled with impurities that change its color to blue or green or whatnot.
I feel like this makes more sense because of a few reasons. First of all I feel like the sith would much prefer to grow their own kyber crystal rather than go out to a jedi controlled planet and steal one, if only for self sufficiency purposes, but also because lab grown crystals are absolutely perfect and pure in ways that naturally grown ones can never match and the sith would be all over that.
Meanwhile the jedi would value where the crystal came from and the journey to get the crystal more than the perfection of the crystal itself because of spiritual reasons, so they get the fancy colors.
Hell it would even explain why the jedi almost only get green and blue lightsabers, its because the kyber mines they use are filled with lots of whatever mineral makes kyber change to those colors.
Yeah the edgy "bleeding" thing has always irked me when I first learned of that canon change. Growing your own crystal always felt more Sith-y because it would give them complete control over the entire process and development of their crystal. Imposing order on the chaos of the galaxy kind of thing.
re-watching the original trilogy is great because you really get a sense for how weird luke skywalker is, just how quickly he becomes that weird AND how quickly he commits to it. Like he's honestly pretty chill in a new hope, but the absolute INSTANT he figures out he can move shit with his mind he goes full send on the cryptic off-putting bullshit. Walking around in full black robes, speaking in riddles, aura farming and backflipping whenever physically possible. He's clearly annoyed when he first meets yoda in empire, but he dismisses that pretty quickly in favour of ALSO becoming an over-dramatic space wizard. The combination of his two teachers being yoda and obi-wan kenobi and him being the son of anakin and padme creates the single most intense and fundamentally kind force sensitive perfectly embodying the heart of the jedi order whilst also serving egregious amounts of cunt and being bizarre to be around. He would have THRIVED as a jedi master during the high republic. he would have been every padawan's favourite and every other master's worst nightmare
guys wait i might have cracked it i might have cracked a better explanation than whatever flimsy bs 'canon' offers about miraluka masks. what if i structure the belief more like the chiss and the force, wherein what is uncommon/an anomaly among the population becomes a huge part of the culture.
so something like. i let canon keep its 'radiation wounded the eyes so much they evolved them away and left vestigal sockets.' okay, fine, i won't fight the battle on that hill. but let's make that part of the cultural mythos. if force-based sight is how they get along instead, and eyes are still otherwise common in other lifeforms and humanoid sentient species, and are considered 'windows to the soul' or what have you... miraluka masks instead as wards against unwanted influence via the force, since they are constantly open to the force in some way via use of it for sight. different materials being believed to be stronger at wards against mind trick influence, possession, force ghosts or what have you. perhaps having even gotten to the point where certain materials and textures have become somewhat linked to societal roles or ranks.
but anyway. please for the love of all the stars, something that actually describes miraluka culture instead of 'its because others get uncomfortable lmao.' no. bs. should be acknowledge as in-canon racism against miralukas from other species because it completely breezes over anything it might mean to the miralukas wearing the masks. this as part of the lore, mythos, what have you of the entire species... makes it a more feasible background to why the vast majority of them would choose to wear some kind of covering rather than individuals (like one might choose cybernetics, etc).
further elaboration bc this came from me running around with my miraluka bh who i put in helmeted looks and was still back and forth if that was just going to be a later mandalorian influence thing or what: say, for example, my hunter miraluka still using helmets that incorporate eye-like designs or accommodations and that instead being meant as part of the intimidation tactic. sprouted loosely from me remembering from an art class that we (broad sighted human group) tend to be drawn to eyes first if they are depicted as a focus point, the 'windows to the soul' bit, etc.
leaning back in my pondering chair and tapping my fingers thoughtfully.
(data extracted via Jedipedia's file reader with beta files; conversation data is from Parsely)
Sith Warrior:
Cyborg Veteran
Unable to resist the call to arms, you lied about your age to join the military and were nearly killed in battle as a teenager. Under the knife your Force powers manifested. The Empire rebuilt you and trained you to be Sith.
Child of the Emperor
Strong in the Force from birth, you were taken from your family at infancy and raised by the Empire. You have always been marked for greatness.
Sith Pureblood
You were born with the blood of the ancient Sith flowing through your veins. Your red skin marks you as superior to the ordinary humans around you.
The only Sith backstory that seems to be specifically referenced in conversations is Sith Pureblood, which is referenced in 3 class-specific quests. There doesn't seem to be a Zabrak-specific option here.
Sith Inquisitor:
Upstart Slave
Your parents were slaves and so were you-until you shocked everyone by demonstrating a talent for the Force. Now you enter a dangerous new life as a Sith.
Zabrak Criminal
Arrested for killing a noble, you claimed it was justified. The Empire put off your execution when you displayed Force sensitivity.
Twi'lek Renegade
Enslaved by the Empire, you murdered a guard and tried to escape. Imperials were about to execute you when a Sith realized you could use the Force.
Rattataki Acolyte
An open-minded Sith Lord came to your home planet and trained your people in the Force. When the Sith Lord was killed, you and the other acolytes were thrown in the slave pens.
Twi'lek and Zabrak Inquisitors are specifically referenced in two conversations, the first of which is definitely backstory-related:
There's no Sith Pureblood-specific option, even though IIRC there's a loading screen text specific to a Sith Pureblood Inquisitor.
Bounty Hunter:
Outlaw
You never knew your parents. Raised in the streets, you learned your skills through gang warfare. It's all about survival.
Cyborg Merc
You fought in wars across the Outer Rim, but the rules and regulations of a soldier's life never agreed with you. You've spent years upgrading your gear and yourself.
Rattataki Gladiator
Taken as a prisoner when your colony was conquered by Hutts, you survived the arena to escape and become your own boss.
Zabrak Tracker
You come from a long line of manhunters and you were eager to do your family proud and join the family business.
There's one reference to the Rattataki Gladiator background on Belsavis. This is the only place where it's referenced by background (qst.location.belsavis.world.imperial.gearingup.temp_background_rattataki) instead of species (qst.utility.misc.is_bg_bh_rattataki).
Imperial Agent:
Cybernetic Experiment
Eager to serve the Empire, you volunteered for a series of dangerous experiments that gave you skills equal to any trained spy in the galaxy.
Military Officer
You were a battle strategist and legendary shot for the Imperial Navy until you discovered your true calling as an agent of Imperial Intelligence.
Chiss Secret Police
On your conquered homeworld, you quashed rebellions, fought terrorists and maintained order for the Empire. Now, Imperial Intelligence wants you.
Zabrak Assassin
As a young alien child on an Imperial colony, you already showed great promise when it came to violence. Imperial Intelligence took you in and taught you to think, talk and shoot like a professional.
Chiss is obviously referenced a lot; it looks like it's in about twenty class-specific conversations. This line from Ardun Kothe seems to reference the Zabrak Assassin background, but triggers for Rattataki instead?
There's no Rattataki-specific background listed.
Jedi Knight:
Force Sensitive Orphan
Left on the Jedi Temple's doorstep as a newborn, you were raised entirely by Jedi and know little of the greater galaxy. Your true heritage is unknown.
Zabrak Swordsman
Brought to the Jedi Temple as a child, you have always found your calm and connection to the Force through the intricate saber routines taught by your masters.
Miralukan Survivor
The Sith devastated your world, forcing you to flee. Thanks to your powerful Force sensitivity, you found quick refuge among the Jedi.
The only dialogue reference I could find is when fighting Lord Nefarid, a Miraluka Knight will say they don't need to see him to fight him. There aren't Twi'lek or Mirialan-specific options despite both being available by default. There are lines from Kira that were probably supposed to reference these backgrounds, but for some reason it's assigned to trigger for Chiss and... also Chiss?
Jedi Consular:
Jedi Scholar
Fascinated with the history and traditions of the Jedi, it was your research of the Force that unlocked your amazing potential.
Twi'lek Visionary
You were born in space and grew up in a small colony of ex-slaves. When you started seeing visions of things to come, one of the wise elders took you to find the Jedi.
Mirialan Wanderer
Raised in a relatively primitive tribal society on Mirial, unexplainable visions drove you to roam the galaxy until you found the Jedi and your true calling.
Miralukan Prodigy
When the Jedi found you abandoned as a child, you were already performing feats one would expect from a Jedi who had been training for years.
The only dialogue reference I could find was that a human Consular tells Nadia's father that they were a prodigy as well. There's also three lines from Syo and from Yuon that can play, but it looks like only the first ever will as they have the same conditions. I assume 1 was originally the Miralukan Prodigy, 2 was the Jedi Scholar, and 3 was the Twi'lek Visionary and the Mirialan Wanderer.
Smuggler:
Corellian Nomad
Descended from people of fierce independence and pride, you're always on the lookout for adventure and any job that'll turn a quick credit.
Outer Rim Pirate
You're utterly ruthless and only in it for the money. If that means becoming more machine than human to gain an advantage, that's what you're going to do.
Twi'lek Rogue
You were smuggling your own people out of slavery, but the Empire's aggressive expansion forced you to take other jobs to survive.
Mirialan Trader
You've tried your best to keep your business legitimate, defend your cargo and protect your honor. Not always easy stuck between the Imperials, the Republic and the Hutts…
Twi'lek Smugglers are mentioned in one line, but it's not backstory-related.
There's no Zabrak-specific backstory, once again.
Trooper:
Republic Elite
You were groomed from youth to lead soldiers into battle. You've had the best teachers and trainers in the entire Republic, and it shows.
Outer Rim Veteran
Blooded in the terrible conflicts of the Outer Rim territories, you gave the Republic permission to put you back together and you went back out for more.
Zabrak Guerilla Fighter
The Empire invaded your world, and you fought back valiantly until Republic reinforcements arrived. Now you continue the fight on other worlds.
Mirialan Youth Leader
You were active and well loved in your community from a young age but secretly disappointed in your pacifist society. When the Republic recruiter came calling, you shocked everyone by signing up.
The first three do appear in dialogue with Jorgan, and the Zabrak Guerilla Fighter is referenced again on I think this is Corellia? Mirialan Youth Leader isn't referenced anywhere.
I Feel Like This Section Also Needs A Header
Interestingly, there are no Mirialan-specific lines in the entire game. Miraluka has one, Rattataki has a couple, and Zabrak has two each for Inquisitor and Trooper. Sith Pureblood has a few in the Sith Warrior storyline. Chiss definitely has the most.
This obviously isn't a comprehensive list of dialogue options. The Consular lines, for example, I stumbled upon completely by accident, so it's safe to assume there are more scattered around-- there's just not a good way to find them without manually trawling every conversation in the game. (Which I'm not doing.)
I have also seen this list of backstories spread around, but I haven't seen a source. The beta files I have are from 2011/07/22, so these options might be from an older beta. If anyone has older beta files I'd love to poke around in them.
Do u guys ever think abt how SWTOR holds the world record for the largest voiceover project EVER with over 200,000 LINES??WHAT?? and a cast of 314 PEOPLE??? Like wtf thats so cool
Rambles in Star Wars History: The extreme shenanigans that changed an Empire
Bioware games can absolutely fascinate me, in part because of their worldbuilding, and in part because of where the worldbuilding ends. I mean, I did a whole long series of posts on the grammar of Qunlat and I have at least a dozen essays worth of material of exegetical analysis of religion in Dragon Age kicking around in my brain, which I keep threatening to actually manifest.
But since I'm here with my worldbuilding hat on, I'm going to ramble about Star Wars: The Old Republic, focusing on some of the sometimes-hilarious drama that's implied by the plot, and the implications for how these shenanigans remade a major galactic society in the process. Involved will be a man who faked his death to get out of going to meetings, a wine uncle who might become emperor, a living scowl with dangerous shoulders, and other assorted animals.
Expect a lot of bonus rambles in the image alt-texts, which is where I store commentary and jokes that I can't fit into the flow of the main post.
———
Before I dig into the topic at hand, I have to set the scene for those who don't know the game, or have forgotten in the fourteen years since the game launched.
Spoilers in the post below for Act 1-3 of the Imperial Agent, Sith Warrior, and Inquisitor storylines, Act 1 of the Jedi Knight storyline, the post-Act 3 Battle of Ilum flashpoint, and for various expansions including Rise of the Emperor, Knights of the Fallen Empire, Onslaught, and Legacy of the Sith. Assume that all reference links to Wookieepedia contain major spoilers.
SWTOR is an MMO set 3600 years before the Skywalkers crashed through the ceiling tiles of the galaxy, though it's not to say anything was less chaotic back then, just different chaos.
(Pictured: Anakin Skywalker, circa 32 BBY-4 ABY)
In this time, the titular Old Republic is opposed by a Sith Empire, which is precisely as functional as one might expect. After a decades-long conflict that ended with a Sith victory but left both sides exhausted, a state of cold war began. The Jedi, their Grand Temple destroyed, left Republic space to settle on an ancestral world. The Republic, battered and reeling, tried to recover its stride through use of its superior size and resources, and producing a truly unhinged number of superweapons.
The Sith Empire, in some ways, tried to pretend everything was fine for quite a while. They had successfully forced the Republic into a favorable treaty to end the war. They'd gained territory, they had a lot of work to do there.
…But as things started to look more and more like war again, they were left with the uncomfortable realization that they had sorta kinda killed most of the Sith in the last war, and Imperial citizens in good standing weren't producing enough Force-sensitive kids fast enough to rebuild the losses. Might've had something to do with most of them being dead.
The Empire, of course, is an absolute clusterfuck of a society. Slaves toil to maintain its power. Children of a slave and a citizen will be citizens themselves—unless they're "aliens", a category that includes everyone that isn't a human or a Sith pureblood, the original Sith species.
Being a citizen isn't great either: The Force-blind face mandatory conscription into the military, and can never rise to the highest echelons of society. Above them, the Sith act as a semi-hereditary aristocracy of evil space-wizards that serve an immortal, eldritch Emperor, their living god who has also kiiiind of gone AWOL for reasons only a few of them understand. He's torn between doing his job or staring at a living paperweight, and the paperweight has been winning. He also recently got trapped by an evil hole in the ground, it's complicated.
With the Emperor incommunicado, the duties of the state fall to the Dark Council, a ruling body of up to twelve Dark Lords of the Sith. Each have their own sphere of governmental influence, which are, one can only assume, very dark as well.
Presumably, the Dark Council had something to do with the inevitable yet still surprising solution to their space wizard deficit: over a thousand years of laws were suddenly overturned. Slaves, aliens, and prisoners were not only permitted to become Sith, it was now mandatory that they report for induction into training programs if they possessed any hint of Force-sensitivity.
This is how one of the eight protagonists of the MMO gets their start: if you play the Sith Inquisitor plotline, you begin as a former slave who has survived basic training and made it to the Sith Academy, where your teacher dearly wants to kill you. Your first mission: survive school.
I'm sure this is very relatable to quite a lot of you.
Now that I've got my PhD with only a few gray hairs, I'm looking back at this premise and thinking: This would completely upend the social framework of the Empire. You'd have every established Sith Lord in the Empire scrambling to kill these threats to their power, or harness them against their enemies, or both.
This is actually canon, but canon never touches on the broader, systemic implications of what the new Sith would do, and who they were before—Sure, the overseers of the training programs seem to be doing their damnedest to kill and undermine the newbies while maintaining plausible deniability, but enough of them survive to reshape the Empire. We know that. You play as one of them.
How in the fuck did the Dark Council ever manage to get this policy implemented in the first place? Obviously they did somehow, but the specifics are never mentioned.
But the specifics have the possibility to be hilarious.
The Dark Council itself is composed of Sith who either killed their way to the top, or inherited their seat from their Sith master—who they probably murdered. Turnover on most Council seats is incredibly high. The Spheres of Ancient Knowledge, Technology, and Military Offense each have three different Councilors within a single year, for example.
This also means that whoever ends up in charge of a Sphere might be entirely unsuited for it. Who heads up the Sphere of Expansion and Diplomacy? The least diplomatic guy on the Council, naturally. He goes by Darth Ravage, which fits in well enough with the three different Darths whose names mean 'death' (Thanaton, Mortis, and Rictus). The player can even end up as Darth Nox--'Darth Night'. You get the title by killing one of the Darth Deaths.
So, which of these barely-domesticated evil goths probably voted to allow 'inferior' beings to become Sith, overturning a fundamental tenet of imperial sith philosophy? Probably not the guy in charge of Sith Philosophy! We never see him, but he seems to have been a traditionalist. On the other hand, Darth "Murder has no rules" Ravage might not be huge on tradition, so we can mark him down as a "maybe". But he doesn't seem to be an instigator for something like this.
But on the subject of instigators: Darth Jadus.
Darth Jadus is an experience. While many of the other Council members make it quite clear they're angry enough to chew on the furniture, Jadus unnerves all of them by being utterly calm and composed, as long as you don't count how intensely fervent and irrational he sounds when he starts talking about the Dark Side. He's unhinged in a distressingly hinged-seeming way.
Heading up the Sphere of Intelligence, Jadus is a noted iconoclast on the Dark Council, using his authority to open Imperial Intelligence positions to aliens. He chooses slaves and Force-blind citizens to be his advisors and agents, ignoring the traditional power structures of the Sith. He prefers his literal cult following of fanatical adherents instead, who see him as a visionary savior, a terrifying inevitability, or both.
This means he seems to have basically no interest in elevating other Sith. In fact, he hates the way the rest of them run the Empire. Making more of them might potentially be against his interests.
Or at least it would be, if he didn't have some long-running secret plans that he wants to keep the other Dark Council members from catching wind of. Advocating for slaves, aliens and convicts to become Sith would superficially fall in line with his philosophy, and just raising the idea in public could cause such social chaos that his true plans would benefit from it. Jadus is also the most genre-savvy sith in the entire game: he seems to almost be aware at points that he's neither the protagonist nor main antagonist, and thus his evil plans involve not messing with either of them. When he jostles up against the main plot and realizes he has no plausible means to derail it, he responds by leaving the plot entirely.
Given the tactical chaos and uncomfortably fourth wall-touching strategies Jadus makes use of, let's mark him down as a "yes".
But Jadus is an unpopular one on the Council. He's creepy. Sith HATE feeling creeped out. That's supposed to happen to other people, dammit, not them! And with his disinterest in politics and his deep interest in foisting his manifesto on everyone, he's not the most effective Dark Councilor.
He might be able to pull in a few—Darth Decimus, head of Military Strategy, seems to have been quite willing to exploit any advantage he might be able to squeeze out of a situation. Fun side note, his voice actor also played the First Order officer who was just so done with Hux at the beginning of The Last Jedi.
[Video Description: A compilation of Mark Lewis Jones as Captain Moden Canady from The Last Jedi, with the video quality partially encrunchified by YouTube. This includes all of his shots from the film, from arrival of the Seige Dreadnought Fulminatrix, to the extremely annoyed look he gives the fireball that kills him. Sound supervisor Matt Wood was apparently pretty sure "FIRE ON THE BASE!" was going to be used as an EDM drop, and I can confirm, I've heard it out in the wild.]
Who else have we got rattling around in this Council, who might have extremely ridiculous reasons to vote yes? Well, we have Darth Vengean, head of Military Offense, was all about the Offense. Who needs defense? That nerd Darth Marr? HA! No, Vengean wanted to restart the war with the Republic. More bodies for the war machine would probably be fine with him.
Speaking of that nerd Darth Marr, Darth Marr.
Apparently he designed this armor himself. Solid effort, my man.
Marr is in his sixties by the time the game happens. He's one of the longest-surviving Dark Councilors, and he sounds so tired of his coworkers in every scene he's in. Heading up the Defense of the Empire, Marr also is the de facto leader of the Dark Council, by dint of being the only adult in the room.
Much like Jadus, he distances himself from the backstabbery and rivalries among the Council members. Unlike Jadus, he 100% means it, and has been focused on not making the Empire explode. He eventually ends up as the unofficial leader of the Empire until he gets one-shotted so hard it makes his ghost chill out a bit. He keeps the spikes, though.
So, if there's anyone on the Council who might vote for this on purely practical grounds, and has the power to push others into agreeing with him, because so help him if they don't stop holding duels in the conference room he's going to turn this Empire around—
Nobody listens to him on that, by the way. Both the Sith main plots involve duels in the conference room.
In fact, one of those duels is egged on by our last suspect. Marr might be a contender for longest-running Dark Councilor, but there is another candidate: Darth Vowrawn, who seems to be having a much better time being on the Council than Marr. I suspect the only reason why he doesn't have a bucket of popcorn with him in the Council chambers is because somebody made a rule that he had to stop doing that.
Vowrawn is a surprisingly cheerful old bastard who seems to have turned his hobby into his job. He shows up 'fashionably late' to someone else's attempted coup, after lamenting he can't sell tickets to the clusterfuck that's about to commence. In the expansions to the game, he can outmaneuver and outlive all of the competition and end up becoming the Emperor, at the age of 87.
Vowrawn is also indifferent to against the Empire's policies--he supports the ascension of a Zabrak to the Dark Council, and takes one as an apprentice as well. Beyond that, Vowrawn would have to support this move, because he's instrumental in any large project like this, both politically and practically. While the others I've mentioned all have roles explicitly to do with the aggressive expansion or protection of the Empire, Vowrawn heads the Sphere of Production and Logistics. In essence, he's the one who can decide whether all these other bozos get to eat or not.
If Vowrawn didn't accept this change, then it would have failed. So, he's a definite "yes" by default.
Speaking of bastards who are still active well into their eighties, we have one last major figure who isn't on the Council that likely advocated for this: Darth Malgus.
[Video Description: The "Deceived" trailer, set ten years before the game. God, I love this thing. This was the first trailer I saw for the game, and it got me, it really did. The Sith are just as ridiculous as they should be, combined with choreography that feels a lot more crunchy than lightsaber combat had been before, with distinct combat styles for the two main fighters. It's quick, it's impactful, and it's got a memorable conclusion. Love it.]
Malgus is as anti-racist and anti-classist as Jadus is, but without the insane transcendental Dark Side philosophy. Instead, he has an insane philosophy of bettering the Empire through eternal war, which he believes everyone should have an equal ability to participate in. He is what would happen if a Warhammer 40k character had an inside voice.
[Video Description: The "Disorder" cinematic trailer, set before the Legacy of the Sith expansion. Malgus is 75 here. Man's held together by spite and screws and whatever nutrients you can absorb by being thrown through walls. He's fully given up on the Sith Order at this point and is trying to do his own thing, and he makes it look rad. The choreography has only gotten better, goddamn. Why did it take me three goddamn years to watch this. IT'S REALLY GOOD.]
Malgus is a big deal in the military, with a lot of support from both the Force-blind soldiers and earning the loyalty of a surprising cross-section of Sith. We know this, because he nearly hijacks the Empire at one point in the early expansions. He'd be into this idea, and he probably advocated for it. While he'd have the most direct interaction with the military-related Councilors we already have in the "yes" column, he also has a history of annoying the bejeezus out of other Sith on "his" turf, so who knows! He may have been more persuasive to the others we haven't dug into.
And we can't really dig into all of them at the depth we have with some. Despite how bogglingly huge SWTOR is and the two thousand four hundred and ninety-five named characters and "Additional Voices" credits in IMDb, we never meet some of the Dark Councilors. If you don't play all the eight main storylines, you won't see all of them in the game. I'll admit, I've never seen Darth Hadra, because I've never gotten that far in a Republic-aligned storyline! The Sith you encounter in their stories can often be more one-note, because they're purely there as antagonists rather than people you are legally required to hang out with, and thus have more opportunity to pester mercilessly.
[Video Description: A clip from my own Warrior run-through, featuring my big lad Rejalgar, his coolest friend Vette, and his boss, Darth Baras, who is presently having a screaming tantrum, which Rejalgar makes worse with the most delightfully straight-faced "Is there a problem here?". The Warrior plotline lets you play things sincerely evil, sincerely noble, or sincerely hilarious. Do you want to see Jedi bluescreen when a Sith just straight-up refuses to be violent? Do you want to sidestep a boss fight by offering a family a government pension, something your boss commends as being very devious and evil? Do you want to break up a fight between gangs by threatening to eat them? Come play the Sith Warrior storyline, and be the chaos you want to see in the galaxy!]
[Video Description, from a clip I uploaded to YT specifically for this post after I found out you can only upload one video per tumblr post wtf: A clip from my Inquisitor run-through, featuring my extremely shirtless lad, Sericus, playing coy and a little airheaded when called up by his Sith master, Darth Zash. Back in the day, Purebloods weren't supposed to be played as canon for this storyline, but there were tweaks later made to dialog that provided a canon explanation for how someone with visible Sith ancestry could end up in this situation. The storyline, however, unfortunately does not fully account for a character whose ideal job description is 'villain's beautiful and deceptively intelligent consort, the true power behind the throne'. It assumes you're playing a character who wants to go conquer and/or do mad wizard-science. Bonus points for eventually letting you marry your eight foot tall razor-faced cannibal thrall though, that's very fun.]
Why don't we see all of the Dark Council? Well, because they're ultimately not important to the story as a group. Events keep you locked tightly under the purview of just one or two of them on the Sith side of things, before the post-game and expansion plots launch you into the experience of being a major player in Imperial affairs, and Imperial affairs launch themselves at you in return.
Everyone realizes the Emperor wants to eat them. Then he dies, except he doesn't. Malgus takes over the Empire for a few weeks. Marr takes over, but half the Council is dead and the rest are still in orientation and are probably also dead, because their would-be successors assassinated them. The Emperor, only mildly inconvenienced by also being dead, eats a planet. Then things go completely off the deep end, and the Dark Council is no longer your concern at all.
It's economical storytelling to not belabor the rest of the Councilors, and playing through as an ex-slave Inquisitor, you continue to face enough challenges directly linked to your background that the resistance feels systemic, even if you don't actually see all that many others who are facing the same issues.
But I think there's a lot of potential for some really wild storytelling in there. Your character receives some level of basic training before they reach the Sith Academy, along with a whole batch of ex-slaves. What did that entail? How was it organized? What happens when folks from abolitionist movements start being trained as sith, gaining all the attendant legal authority over the life and death of others?
And what about the prisoners who were released for training? While one canon option is to play a character who was facing immediate execution for participation in violent anti-Imperial resistance, at least a fair chunk of Force-sensitive prisoners were probably serving longer sentences. What happens when prison gangs start gaining a foothold in the Sith Academy, where they're too dysfunctional to even form Mean Girl cliques? What happens when some of their members become full Sith? How many of them might have Hutt backing, or even funding from the Republic Secret Intelligence Service?
These are the sorts of things the Sith themselves are terrified of. This earns a very sarcastic thoughts and prayers to them, of course. Yet it truly is wild to think about the decision-making process that went into this massive societal shift that the game treats as simply a piece of inciting incident for two plotlines out of eight: Twelve unhinged people sat down in some extremely high-backed chairs one day and voted to give everyone equal access to lightning.
I love Star Wars, it's just the funniest shit imaginable sometimes.
Being neck deep in the Old Republic era of Star Wars really puts things into odd perspective when the occasional OG meta crosses my dash. Here I am thinking about the nature of the Jedi Order and its tendency to hegemony and severely mistrusting anything and everything that they can't fit into their neat little world view, alongside the desperate and sometimes unethical strides the Order made during the twenty eight year long galactic war against the Sith Empire, where both factions where hundreds of thousands if not millions of force users strong, where sometimes the sheer need of bodies leads to a disconnect between teachings and actual practice... Not to mention the era is haunted by the actions of the events three hundred years prior of the actions of Darth Revan and the Jedi Exile, by the wars that shaped them, and thus gave rise to this unstable and constantly breaking galactic conflict!
And then I read a very thoughtful meta about how the Jedi are a small and marginalized religious group that are both lauded and exploited by the very Senate that they serve. And like. It's not wrong. The Prequels are very much about that!! But god it just reads so at odds to me because that's not the situation I'm familiar with and know.
It's just that the Clone Wars as a concept are just so small in comparison to the scale of this civilization on civilization war of the Old Republic. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if the developers of SWTOR had that very concept in mind when they were creating the game: Take the Clone Wars and just make it bigger. Instead of a few million clone troopers versus droids you now have tens of millions of soldiers and conscripts on both sides, instead of a couple thousand Jedi versus a dozen of dark-siders and Sith, you now have hundreds of thousands of Jedi and Sith. Not only that, but the Republic itself is smaller, only really encompassing the Core Worlds and a good chunk of the mid rim, plagued by the Sith Empire seizing worlds from them and other worlds seceding in protest. It isn't just the Separatist Conflict, it's that on top of the war against an entirely separate sovereign entity that desires all of the Republics resources and planets.
It's also like. The Sith. No longer is it just Palpatine with his myriad groomed and broken boys and the occasional Fallen Jedi or dark sider, it's now a full blown concept and institution. Power schemes and backstabbing but also a full multilayered society of Sith, military, civilian, slaves all working in concert to be the aggressors of a very big and very costly galactic war. Sure they're kinda uh. Evil. Sometimes. Especially with Emperor Vitiate's stated goal of devouring planets but like. You get to see how sympathetic and morally nuanced people just living in this society can be, from the top all the way down to the bottom. It's not just spooky evil boogeymen cackling away in the dark, it's just mostly that.
It's a fascinating era to dig into and play around in, because you have things like Alderaan's civil war and succession crisis, the discovery of the Voss as a society of Force users who refuse to fall into a binary of dark/light and the Republic and Empire's desperate bids for favor, the politics of the Hutt Cartel and how they brush up against these giant nations, how places like even the outer rim are affected by this galaxy spanning conflict.
Don't get me wrong, I like the original movies and the prequels/rebels era of the timeline! It's just so small compared to what I'm dealing with, with the room for many stories about so many different conflicts just in the Jedi Order alone. The Old Republic era just hits different, and has a lot of flexibility in most every concept it brings forth for every institution to be both a hero and a villain depending on where you look. (Star Cabal you're on thin fucking ice)
to celebrate may the 4th, reblog with your top three favorite star wars projects in the tags (books, shows, movies, games, legends or canon - anything is fair game!)
One of the quiet background realities of the Star Wars galaxy is that it is spectacularly bad at labor. Not just “late-stage capitalism” bad, but structurally, culturally, and institutionally allergic to the idea that workers should have enforceable protections. You’ve got child soldiers, child labor, debt slavery, corporate fiefdoms, and a Republic that can field a galaxy-spanning bureaucracy but somehow never gets around to standardizing “maybe don’t enslave people.” The Empire of course doesn’t fix this; it industrializes it.
So in that environment, formal labor law is either nonexistent, unenforced, or actively hostile. Which means if you’re operating in a sector where the state either can’t or won’t protect you, you get a classic historical pattern: workers build their own rules.
Enter the gray economies.
Groups like the Smugglers' Alliance (Legends) and the Bounty Hunters' Guild (new canon) look, at first glance, like professional associations for criminals. But if you squint at them through a labor history lens, they start to look a lot like early, proto-union structures — especially the kinds you see in maritime or extralegal industries on Earth.
Think pirate codes (yes actual ones, Pirates of the Caribbean didn't make that up). Think matelotage agreements. Think dockworker brotherhoods that predate formal unions.
Because what do these groups actually do?
They:
set norms for compensation and contracts
regulate competition to prevent destructive undercutting
provide a framework for dispute resolution
establish reputational systems (“you don’t honor contracts, you don’t get work”)
That’s industry self-governance in the absence of law.
Take bounty hunting. Without something like the Bounty Hunters' Guild, the field collapses into chaos: clients don’t pay; hunters underbid each other into oblivion; jobs get duplicated, interfered with, or sabotaged. And nobody trusts anybody!
The Guild steps in and says: here are the rules of engagement. Here’s how claims work. Here’s how you get paid. Here’s what happens if you break contract.
That’s basically a union crossed with a licensing board and a regulatory agency, just without any moral pretense.
Same with the Smugglers' Alliance. Smuggling is inherently risky, decentralized, and dependent on trust networks. If everyone is constantly betraying everyone else, the whole system stops functioning. So instead, you hash out agreed-upon routes and territories, informal protections against betrayal, mechanisms for information sharing, and consequences for breaking the code
Again: not altruism. Stability.
And the reason this emerges specifically in gray/illegal sectors is because they have to. The Core Worlds might pretend they have laws, but those laws don’t meaningfully protect the people actually doing dangerous, itinerant, high-risk work. So the margins of the galaxy — where enforcement is weakest and risk is highest — become the places where labor organization evolves first.
Which is very historically grounded.
On Earth, some of the earliest labor protections didn’t come from governments; they came from workers in dangerous, decentralized industries—sailors, pirates, miners—who literally wrote their own rules because no one else was going to save them.
Pirate codes, for example, often included:
compensation for injury
shared distribution of loot
limits on captain authority
Which is … shockingly progressive compared to a lot of contemporary working conditions (cough Amazon cough).
So in the galaxy far, far away, you end up with this ironic inversion:
The “legitimate” systems — Republic, Empire, megacorporations — are exploitative, inconsistent, or indifferent.
The “illegitimate” systems — smugglers, bounty hunters — are the ones building functional labor frameworks, because they need to survive.
And that feeds back into why the galaxy feels so unstable overall. There’s no universal baseline of rights. Everything is hyper-local, network-dependent, and contingent on whether you’re inside a system that has rules you can rely on.
If you’re a clone trooper? You are literally property.
If you’re a factory worker on a corporate world? Your protections are whatever your employer feels like offering.
But if you’re a smuggler or a bounty hunter?
You might actually have clearer expectations about your pay, your risks, and your recourse — because your “union” is the only thing standing between you and total chaos.
So yeah: the Smugglers’ Alliance and the Bounty Hunters’ Guild aren’t just flavor. They’re a glimpse of what labor organization looks like in a galaxy where the state has fundamentally failed to provide it.
this is old news im sure but i did just discover literally today that there are still reedemable swtor codes out there for free stuff so if you guys want to use them here they are:
that the consular is the most powerful force user of their era in terms of raw force. that they canonically possess so much force affinity only seen when revan was still around. that when they're gone, after time untold, their resting place will remain a force nexus. that they've been delegated as the peacekeeper of their order; that if they choose to keep the alliance separate from the republic, they get excommunicated from the jedi. that they have the means to start tearing people apart left and right but are wont to swallow their anger down. whatever. whatever. i don't care! whatever
Got really stoned by accident and been thinking really hard about Coruscant and I have to fucking say something. The concept of a city planet is fucking terrifying on any planet even approaching Earth sized. Imagine if we all right now tried to build a ceiling far above us, higher than the tallest mountains, a ceiling so high it could cover the world? Imagine the little pieces coming up aeons at a time to block out the sun and kill the sky forever for all those people. imagine if every single foot and meter of the new level covering the earth’s space was just endless city. IMAGINE A CITY THE SIZE OF THE WORLD!!! AND THEN YOU FILL IT UP AGAIN AND HAVE TO BUILD ANOTHER ENTIRE PLANET’S SURFACE AREA. IMAGINE IF THERE WAS AN ENTIRE PLANET’S WORTH OF PEOPLE LIVING OVER OUR HEADS HERE ON EARTH RIGHT NOW. WHAT TH FUCK IM FUCKING BOGGLED! THOUSANDS OF LEVELS? THOSE NUMBERS ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE!!!! WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF MANIFESTATION OF A SEETHING COSMIC ELDRITCH BEAST IS AN ECUMENOPOLIS
I have said this before and stand by it; Survivor's Coruscant level is as much a work of existential dread as are any of the long-derelict Zeffo ruins from Fallen Order
There's a Youtuber, Canon Chaos, who did a video about how insane Coruscant is on a logistical level. Whole nations and cultures can exist in the lower levels of Coruscant. There are three trillion people on Coruscant. The Empire has a total of 10 Billion-ish soldiers for the galaxy. They cannot control Coruscant. Some people down there probably haven't heard of the Empire. It's mind-boggling.
I basically assume that as far as anyone's concerned, Republic/Empire control is non-existent by level 2500-ish. Levels like floor 1313 are already considered hives of scum and villainy where the law is more of a technicality than a reality. There are 5127 levels. The presence of the Republic in a full capacity is probably strained by level 1000-ish.
The Coruscant Security Force might as well be an independent organization from the Republic/Empire, because look at me in the eyes and say that anyone in the upper levels are actually reviewing what the CSF actually is doing in the lower levels? They probably just act as the shield to prevent the chaos below level 2000 from spreading upwards.
Effectively planets worth of people are independent. Levels might just collapse because two nation-states in the 4000's levels went to war. People in the lower levels could worship the Republic like a deity, because people heard about it five-thousand years ago but have never seen any Republic presence. There could be levels sealed off since the Old Republic Era because the Rahgul Virus was exposed and people just sealed those floors off to stop the contagion. There could be Aboloth-like Cosmic Horrors in the lower areas of the 5000's levels. No one knows, because its essentially three-hundred Earths stacked on top of eachother.
the fact you can play wrath as a deeply loyal imperial who wants to change the empire from within for the better but you have to tiptoe and hide your motives under layers of pretend hatred. how you're the most powerful person of the empire after the absence of the emperor's voice, allowed and capable of culling the dark council if they overstep, and yet you need to constantly play a role. to love your nation but hate its ways, to be the emperor's weapon, to have even maybe be led to believe his actual motives align with yours, only to then be faced with the monster he is. to have to reject, fight, kill the very being you worship. to know you have never mattered
Hey remember when SW rebels really said “yeah the empire kept the rotting corpse of one of the most respected Jedi masters around in order to lure unsuspecting Jedi just trying to save one of their own to their deaths like an even more fucked up passenger pigeon hunting technique”? Cuz I just learned about that. And uh. WHAT.
