Welcome to the pinned post for my SWTOR blog, where I post about my many characters. You can call me Acie, and my pronouns are They/Them. I Like/Follow from @birdystrider
You can find my AO3 here and my other writing here.
Malarkey Legacy - Nav + Pics
Lady (Maladise) - Sith Inquisitor
Hex (Hexik) - Sith Warrior
Mal (Mala'kir) - Smuggler
Sesyl - Jedi Consular
Nines - Imperial Agent
The Zhame Siblings - Nav + Pics
Kazi (Kazimar) - Bounty Hunter
Viveca - Jedi Knight Acts 2 & 3
Signy - Jedi Knight Act 1
Emperor Arcann's Wrath
My current pride and joy project is Emperor Arcann's Wrath. The premise is that Wrath is summoned to Zakuul after Ilum and many years later serves Emperor Arcann.
You can find the first entry here (AO3 account required to read).
because i am a completely insane person that has to be organized to hell and back. i have added extra tags to all of my "no legacy" commanders so that you can search them through their character tag, their commander tag, or their legacy tag. (specific tags listed in nav posts)
I read your Dira/Scourge swimming fic again and it's soooo sweet! It made me realize that I don't know Dira that well, do you want to info dump about her? 😌 (also love your Nautolan headcanons)
Aww thank you!! I'm flattered that you've read it twice already. 😊 i would love to infodump about Dira the reason I don't talk about her much is that,,,, well,,, she doesn't exactly,,,, have a backstory??? oops???
She was the first Jedi Knight that I made, and it was right off the high of playing Imperial Agent, and man. man. It took so long for me to get invested in Jedi Knight after that. I wasn't hooked until Act 2 and by that point, her character revolved more around the story for me than any of my creative efforts.
She is your very typical Jedi Knight. She was raised in the Jedi Temple. She is kind and patient and believes in helping others. She was nicknamed "Didi" or "Dede" by a childhood friend and it's a nickname she lets her close friends & padawans use. She is very much a jock 😂 she loves learning new fighting styles and doing physical activities.
She is almost entirely light side!* I was planning on having Scourge slowly corrupt her. She very much had other ideas. I cannot stress how much of a calm and put together Jedi Master she is until the second Lord Scourge steps into the room. The second this man opens his mouth she has to ruin his entire career. He makes her so mad just by existing in her vicinity. She cannot for the life of her keep her cool around him. No one else has ever gotten that reaction out of her, which is really funny to me.
During the Origin story, she has to do the opposite of everything Scourge tells her, not because it's the right thing to do but out of spite. There were a few points where I thought, actually in this case she kind of agrees with him, but because he suggested it she refused to do it. Most of my screenshots from her playthrough are a collection of "Lord Scourge Disapproves" lmao.
On reflection, she realizes she probably reacted like that because she was attracted to him and completely oblivious to it. I think she's some kind of demisexual, as she hasn't really been attracted to anyone like that before. It could also be because of their (then sleeping) dyad bond. Scourge's immortality has kept the bond repressed so they only discover the bond when they are reunited. There are a few instances of sharing dreams that they're oblivious to before then, but said dreams also used to make her more against his existence. (i've tried to write said dreams and haven't quite gotten it right yet.)
*You'll notice I mentioned almost entirely light side. She has only ever taken one (1) dark side choice, and that choice was to kill the Emperor at the end of her class story. This is because despite having to make Scourge's life difficult, she trusted his judgement when he said the Emperor cannot be redeemed. It's the only time she has ever believed that about a person, and it's because she saw what he did to Lord Scourge and the way Lord Scourge acted and knew Scourge was right.
She believes in second chances, which is why she takes Arcann on as a padawan after KOTXX. She feels like she learns just as much from him as he learns from her. He's not planning to become a Jedi, he just wants to learn to better manage his emotions. She still calls him padawan and is incredibly protective of him. If anyone questions her choice in student, she reminds them that Master Braga's padawan was once a member of the Dark Council.
I'm currently in the midst of trying to adapt her to add her to my legacy, so maybe I will have more to say about her then. 🤔
if there is one thing you need to know about me, it is that i will avoid naming a character for as long as humanly possible
the second thing you need to know is that this post is not about nines. nines has had a name since i made him. he simply refuses to let anyone know it because he is a little bastard.
Horrible Brilliant new idea for the zabrak gladiator siblings,,,
When Afan's force sensitivity is discovered, the Sith who found him makes a proposal to the hutt that owns them to smooth over taking away one half of the pit's best fighters: one final show-stopping death match.
If Afanir wins, he gets his freedom, and is sent to Korriban. If he loses, he'll either be dead or executed shortly thereafter.
Okay okay. This is still a banger of an idea but I really need to work out the details lmao. I know how Seddhun lives but I'm still working out the Why.
Afan and Seddhun do not hold back on each other in the ring. Afan wants his freedom. Seddhun won't let him take it easily. (They're both aware that if it's clear one of them threw the match then it'd be both their necks on the line. But also, Seddhun is angry. They don't want to be left behind. If Afan wants a better life (without Seddhun) he's going to need to fight for it.)
There's also some lingering resentment here, they've had differing ideas for what lives they want for themselves for a while. It's complicated and I need to figure that out more for myself haha.
But back to the point, all attention is on Afanir as the match draws to a close. Seddhun has been knocked down, their face a bloody mess, one leg bent at an unnatural angle, a growing red stain soaking into the dirt around their head. Dead, or as good as.
The Sith's attention is on their newfound acolyte, the Hutt's is on the hefty profit made from the match. When Seddhun is dragged out of the pit, no one pays much attention. (The last Afanir sees of his sibling is them being dragged into the shadows, a trail of blood in their wake. Seddhun did not go down easily, Afan has injuries of his own. A likely broken arm and dislocated shoulder, broken ribs, countless scrapes and bruises from being bodily thrown into the ground multiple times.
Afan's control on the force is still precarious without proper training, but it likely saved his life in the match. Seddhun had been about to land a devastating blow when suddenly they froze, face contorting and eyes wide as Afanir grabbed them by the neck with the force and threw them back, hard, against the side of the pit. The crowd went wild, Seddhun did not get up.
As for Seddhun's survival, the core of it is that someone took them and patched them up (some new cybernetics and a prosthetic leg). Seddhun ends up joining the great hunt to pay off their debts to (medical bills/benefactor/whoever bought out their freedom from the hutt, etc).
Who would do that and why they would go to such lengths to salvage a pit fighter is currently beyond me 😅 (if anyone has ideas, come play in this space with me <3)
Whether there had been a deal for the 'other' zabrak sibling before the death match was proposed, someone wanting to take Seddhun on as a guard or a bounty hunter perhaps. Or whether Seddhun had been making plans of their own to get out, making their own deals on the side to buy their own freedom? Perhaps Braden saw something in them, wanted to give them a chance. Promised more money than he had to the hutt and now Seddhun's left paying off the man's debts.
sometimes you THINK you're going to sit down for a really easy study to look at what the twins' parents look like after you did their age progressions and then. then you lose track of time and control of the drawing so.
here are ekta and lioran at their "young and stupid" ages where they were on and off again lovers for about three years before ekta disappeared off the face of the galaxy. admittedly they do look a lot different compared to how i first drew them a few months ago, but i had a lot of time on my hands to improve on facial features and the like. they look a lot closer to how i think of them now.
i love queerplatonic relationships where one of them is aroace and the other isn't. i love when the allo character has a crush that fades over time. i love when they don't care what they are to each other as long as they're together. i love when romance is an option that they don't choose. i love when both aros and allos feel fulfilled without romance or sex.
i have a personality flaw that always positions me on the side of characters who are hiding everything and refuse to accept help. like do NOT confide in people. confiding in people is the enemy. REAL winners lie and lie and continue lying until they ruin every single thing theyve got going for them & didnt fix a single goddamn thing. keep digging grandpa youre almost there
Lady, freshly dumped in the Korriban Academy, running around with her escort dress still covered in blood, head held high silently stewing in rage as she is constantly belittled and dismissed, pretending all the while that it's not a bother to her at all.
and our beloved jedi that i decided to also do an age progression of. id given a lot of thought as to what zanya looked like as a child (because his childhood coincided with osiris, kivo and kadasha's) but not so much his sister. given i think she's adorable until she starts experiencing the horrors, so this is still a win-win for everyone.
a few errant details below :)
ekta actually wasn't the one to bring cele to coruscant, another master was. in fact, she'd been off world at the time, and came back a few years later to a child that looked ... eerily like her. she was pretty content to think that this surely wasn't the child that she'd given up for adoption.
cele however is LOUD in the force as a child. and ekta recognizes her as much as cele is aware of her presence. like any daughter, she's drawn to her mother, even if she doesn't understand why. the jedi allowed her to keep the medallion she gave to the twins, and her suspicions are confirmed once she sees it. her daughter had made her way back to her.
this was also how ekta found out the ariideks were dead. she'd been keeping tabs on the them because she (selfishly) kept tabs on them at the orphanage and was told a few years prior that zanya had been adopted out. she was devastated for months to find out her other daughter was dead -- and that she hadn't known.
that colors her relationship with cele a great deal. she wants to be protective over her, wants to build that relationship, but every time she even considers it, that genuine fear of responsibility to someone else rears its ugly head and she banishes the thought from her mind. considering zanya was already gone, she felt guilty for failing at being a mother (twice), and buried that guilt in work.
the sacking left major scars on cele as the eldest of the creche children at the time. her being able to misdirect soldiers and sith alike at her age meant that she could get the other children away from the fighting and hide them from the worst of their captors. she was looked up to afterwards by rhys, sylas and yoshiko as their elder psuedo-sister.
however, and what haunts her the most, is losing adamori. one of the youngest at the time, and because she had been trying too hard to calm one of the other children, she'd never noticed that he was gone. had never seen him taken, at least. for decades afterwards, she was convinced he was dead -- and that she let it happen.
(well. thats a strong word. a sith lord lured him away, which wasn't on her but she considers it to be her fault.)
cele is never quite the same afterwards, even if she acts like she is. her acts of heroism put her on the radar of the jedi at the temple, and when they resettled the majority of them to tython, cele was fast tracked into proper combat training. because of this, she molded to the expectations of someone far older than fourteen quite quickly ... and struggled in the aftermath because she refused to ask for help.
she knows the younger kids needed her at the time, and thats how she excuses not taking care of herself or her mental state. what's more true is that she was just afraid to face whatever lurked inside of her. she didn't want to slip backwards into those hours and days of terror. she didn't want to relive it all. so instead she separates her understanding of herself from the child she'd been and pretends to be older and more mature than she is. she doesn't want to let anyone else down.
little bit of parentification going on, since a lot of the creche children were split up to be on different worlds. these four stuck together, and cele became a mentor to them -- someone they could go to when they were scared and the like. it helps ... and is very detrimental because it just acts as a stopgap to keep her from facing her own problems.
cele really just wants to be enough for ekta to eventually take her on as a padawan, but by then ekta hadn't taken one in years. but she was a prolific jedi knight, and cele wanted to measure up to her more than anything. ekta kept pushing her away and this just made her even more determined.
she and ekta just don't see eye to eye a lot. ekta is far more straightforward, while cele will do anything to save someone else or prevent a mission from garnering too many casualties. she's a bleeding heart in a galaxy that wants her dead, and ekta has been trying to curb this behavior for years indirectly.
shes VERY strongwilled by the time she becomes an adult, and this does make her difficult with the masters who want her to remember her place. thing is, she has the ability to back up a lot of her plans. she also is very capable at a very young age -- and struggles to connect with her peers. she presumes this is just the price of being a jedi.
(she knows exactly what's wrong with her. has been to jedi therapy. keeps not looking at the real issues and assumes more training will fix her)
(doubly, she will do ANYTHING to control herself. even if it means encountering blackouts and ignoring her body and mind until it shuts down. control will make her a better jedi. control will make her more perfect. control will fix her. everything. surely.)
sacrificial lamb alert. she was like this even before the class story started, and while it wasn't malicious, the jedi knew she could be leaned on. depended upon. they kept pushing her, she kept meeting the challenges, and they never let up on her because she just never broke.
so. repression central. cele never acknowledges the trauma of being there on coruscant during the sacking, never acknowledges the feeling of emptiness she keeps trying to fill with new achievements and experiences, and never acknowledges how many times she cracks down the middle and keeps repairing herself. she's scared and terrified, but puts on a brave face and takes charge so that shes never the one that falters.
wait i had no idea that the shadow sentry headpiece goes on over your normal twi'lek headbands.
that is horrific. actually. i was thinking i could remake her with the headband so that i have it during kiss scenes and she won't be Bald and Nakey but. well.
In which Indesa reflects on who she has been, what she has done, and who she wants to be going forward.
It's done!! I redrew every aspect of this so many damn times 😌 I like how it came out though <3
I'm still working out what she gets up to once she winds up with the Alliance. Humanitarian missions, helping to rebuild and support a community would be good for her. However she'd balk at combat, even in the name of defence. Her lightsaber is kept locked in a box and out of sight most of the time; the cold heft of it makes dread coil in her gut.
Stealing @crqstalite's tags on my post talking about Hex's Backstory because I haven't actually talked about my headcanons for the Emperor's Wrath here. Or more specifically, why Hex's family doesn't give a single fuck about them being Emperor's Wrath (aside from the fact that Hex has more power than them now, making Hex a threat.)
We all know the Emperor's Wrath is viewed as the Emperor's personal assassin. They're supposed to embody the Emperor's Will. That means they're above the politics of the Dark Council, separate from them, and acting on the Emperor's behalf.
Which leads me to ask the question: how does one stay politically neutral in a culture and society built off of personal gain and status climbing?
You might say, the Emperor's Wrath is already at the top of the food chain, they no longer benefit from this. But what does that mean for their family? It can't be a matter of saying "you have insulted me/my family, and I am related to the Emperor's Wrath so you have insulted them and they will get you" because the Emperor's Wrath is above the petty power squabbles now. They are supposed to act on what is best for the Empire, not what is best for themself or their family.
(Hell even when the SW does act on the Empire's behalf - taking out Malgus during The False Emperor - they are scolded by the Emperor's hand for daring to act on behalf of the Emperor when they were not told to. Some of that is because the Emperor is currently in the midst of Evil Plans and being you know, completely absent, but it's still interesting to see.)
We don't really know much about Lord Scourge, the (afaik) first Emperor's Wrath, but we know that he is immortal - a gift granted to him by the Emperor. In game, we aren't told about his family or his bloodline but he is a sith pureblood. Considering how important bloodline is to the Sith Empire, I find it hard to believe that he doesn't have ancestors. Now maybe family is too difficult to discuss for him, considering he probably outlived most of them + felt nothing but I have my own personal headcanon which is...
The Emperor's Wrath exists outside of the Empire's political & social structure - having to eschew family ties.
Becoming a Sith Lord or Darth raises their family's status, but becoming Emperor's Wrath means they must prioritize their Emperor above all else. Becoming Emperor's Wrath will not raise their family's status, it will not serve them. The best way an Emperor's Wrath can serve their family is by carrying on their bloodline. Even if they can't contribute to their family, their children still can. With their duties as Emperor's Wrath, I imagine that it makes more sense to give any children to their family to raise.
Now, as there have only been two Emperor's Wraths, I also think there aren't really any set rules in place for this. When the same guy has been the Wrath for 300 years, you stop thinking about the process of getting a new Emperor's Wrath and what is necessary to be the Emperor's Wrath. The Empire has changed since Scourge became Wrath so there are bound to be some changes. But that's how I imagine the Emperor's Wrath to function in sith society.
the thing about character design is that i am constantly changing how i think my characters look. if u asked me what color lady's eyes are i could not tell you. they were once green. when i redesigned her i changed them to purple (like mal's) and now i'm looking at remaking her and im like oooo,,,, brown??? big brown eyes for my beautiful lady???
