So… about that character not realizing or hiding that they’ve been hurt… prompt for vestra or lana?
(if you still feel like it otherwise completely fine, have a good timezone, mwah byeee)
combining this with @scrollstrash's. thenk for prompts <3
Vestra woke with a choked sputter, triggering a chain of uncontrollable coughs that turned wet in her throat. Wracked with bone-deep pain, her chest spasmed relentlessly, lacing her dust-coated tongue with thick copper.
The torture ended with blood, mucus, and spittle pooling on the floor under her mouth, finally expelling the last speck of dust she had inhaled from this…enclosed pocket of space?
Resting her head in the crook of an arm, she scanned the small space where she lay amid duracrete rubble. Thick grey slabs overhead threatened her death, held back only by a half-broken chrome desk. So that’s what saved her when Zakuulan gunships destroyed this tower around her. Not that it mattered much, if she remained trapped under rubble that held her lower body down.
Vestra wiggled her toes, relieved they could still move. The movement set off some discomfort, but it was hardly noticeable under the constant thrum of pain in her body. She tried to prop herself on both elbows, intending to test the weight atop her, but the effort only made her swoon, and she relaxed before darkness conquered her vision and senses again.
This was not good. She was half numb and half in agony, and she couldn’t pinpoint the source of it. Her best guess was that damned rubble piled on top of her, so she focused on that first. If she had to die, better it be in view of the sky than trapped in this makeshift tomb.
The Force was slow to respond, but she gripped tight every sliver that gathered to her, using pain-stoked anger to crush as much Force as possible into a tiny nexus within her hands. When she’d gathered enough, roiling energy raring to break free, she let it loose.
The explosion rocked the floor she lay on, and she nearly lost consciousness when the debris atop her was ripped away, torso wracked with acute agony. Hands curling into tight fists, with faint ringing in her ears, she heaved to hands and knees, whole body screaming as she staggered to her feet. The world threatened to spin around her, but she forced calm onto her senses and gazed up at the sky.
Judging by the mellow sunlight spilling over her, it should be late afternoon, turning soon into sunset. She closed her eyes for a moment, drawing in a full, clean breath of air, before looking around her.
She stood on the third floor of the tower, in a hollow niche she’d blasted out of a slope of debris. Her crew was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t matter. Opening herself to the bond, she felt Lana’s heart leap on its other end, pulling her towards it. She broke into a wry smirk at her love’s dizzying rush of relief. Trust Lana to worry overmuch.
Pain still clouded her head and slowed the dexterity of her limbs, but Vestra picked her way carefully down the rubble, half-climbing in Lana’s direction. Her attention was wholly consumed by the physical exertion, until a shout in the distance tilted her head up.
There they were, jogging up a street ruined by missiles and blasterfire – her crew. Their pace slowed as they stared at her, as if in disbelief, and she took the chance to look them over. Lana, Khem Val, Ashara, Talos, Andronikos, Xalek. All here. Save for the few kolto patches and bruises, they seemed to have survived Zakuul’s bombing run intact.
She called out to them, a jibe for taking so long to find her – before realising their relief had turned to slow, mounting horror. Their pace quickened, trailing after Lana who led the group at a run. Her gloved hand flew up to the side of her grey robes, clutching it subconsciously.
Curious, Vestra mimicked the motion and–, oh. Blood. A hole. Not a small one.
She looked down and saw that ragged hole torn through her side, giving her a glimpse of bloody innards – but they didn’t yield to gravity and spill out, as if they shared her defiant incredulity at the situation. What in the world did that? Was it part of the rubble? That acute pain she’d felt when the slab flew from her…perhaps there was some extrusion that–
The strain hit her then, cutting short her runaway musing. Her insides hadn’t spilled out because she had been using the Force to hold herself together on instinct, keeping herself up and moving. Darth Avriss snubbing her nose at the mortal limits of her own body, playing at invulnerability through sheer obstinacy.
Oh…they’re going to be insufferable.
Lana reached her first, sprinting forward to catch her when her legs finally gave out. Vestra let herself go limp, surrendering to the inevitable fussing and nagging and–
She cried out when Lana lifted her in sturdy arms, setting off a hundred aches in her bones and flesh. Lana carried her to the street and laid her down on the sidewalk with much more care, and Vestra bit on her tongue to keep from lashing out at her rescuers.
Despite the pain, she released her desperate hold on the Force, relaxing as she handed control to the worried faces hovering over her.
“How do you feel?” Lana asked, the rhetorical question spilling out like a bad habit as she touched Vestra’s stomach, beside that blasted wound.
“I’m fine.”
“Your guts are showing, idiot,” Ashara bit at her, kneeling opposite Lana. “You’re not fine.”
“Says you.” Vestra pulled her lips into a smile when Lana cupped her face. Her love’s heart raced beside her own calm counterpart. Funny, that.
Despite Vestra’s stubbornly casual mien, Lana’s expression didn’t lighten as Ashara called on the Force, weaving it around Vestra in preparation for healing.
“I’m fine,” Vestra repeated in reassurance – because she was.
How could she not be fine with these overbearing fools around her?
Hi! Oh boy, I had been going a bit insane about swtorween back then and now I feel terribly predictable for choosing this but oh well. gotta keep on brand. A lil crumb on the swtorween notes?
@squirrelno2
A double entendre!
I talked about a good portion of the note's plot here already because I just couldn't not yap by myself, but I will gladly continue!
Besides lore regarding the planet and its strange rituals and other esoteric goodies/worldbuilding, I really wanted this to be a tragic tale of love. Many gothic stories cover these themes, and I thought it would be fun; one of my additional ideas beyond the search action and puzzle elements was having a scene where once you collected certain key elements the player's chosen Love Interest would appear in the Shrine of the Boundary--a sacred ground where weddings were normally officiated and where the planet's heart lies.
The player would need to finish the wedding ritual and dance with their LI to appease the curse the planet has laid over the population. The LI would disappear after, given that they can't follow you on your adventure and only briefly appeared in a metaphysical sense, but at the end of it, they would remember their time with your PC as a very nice and strange dream that they didn't want to wake from.
Obviously this was a very ambitious idea given how *many* romances are in SWTOR, with risk of getting many OOC, but I really wanted to try :P
So, Vesper and his skeletal tattoos fuck severely. Who did them? Who decided on the motif, was it him or someone else? did it hurt like a bitch? (or any other tidbit about them)
The tattoos themselves were done by a professional that his father had brought in so that they weren't done incorrectly. His father was the one who designed and implemented them; Vesper "let" him as much as a child can "let" his father do anything, but understood them to be an outward expression of his devotion to the dark side. He got a new addition every few years of his training and the last of them after he was apprenticed on Korriban.
And they did hurt like a bitch. Especially the ones down his spine and along his jaw.
Possible bug or just a question: I’m encountering error messages when I try to choose the options for body changes (top surgery, bottom surgery, hormones). I can only continue when I choose the ‘no changes’ option. But I didn’t start a new game but continued playing from an existing save from last November. Is that the reason? Is it safe to say that one should always start a new game after an update even when not specifically stated? If so, then I’m going to do that, I just not sure…
yea so currently the way around that bug is to start a fresh save - I'll patch the game this weekend so you should just be able to load an old save and go back to the start of the chapter and hopefully that'll fix any problems with that!
You don’t have to ask me twice! If you’re still feeling the oc asks: Nr 5 and 22 for Eirn, Nr 6 and 2 for Arlanya and pff Nr 1 for everyone you want.
i am always up for oc asks (even if i can take a while to answer them orz)
Eirnhaya
5. Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech! Will they give one, and what about?
all of the speeches eirn gives (deliberately or accidentally) are trying to persuade someone she’s in the right, and half of those speeches, the person she’s trying to convince is herself. given the nature of her entire life, most of them seem to end up being in battlefields, too (corellia, ilum, oricon, iokath, etc) and with the recurring theme of ‘would you please stop fighting amongst yourselves and focus on the actual enemy, thanks’
22. Do they like being called pet names? Do they call other people pet names? What’s their go-to?
oh shit, that was from the petname question? oops
eirn doesn’t tend to use pet names herself, other than normal diminutives (ie, shortened versions of one’s actual name). it’s just not something that comes naturally to her. she doesn’t mind being called them, though especially with partners, she prefers that they remain private.
Arlanya
2. Can they take care of a plant? What about a pet? What about a child?
Probably, so long as it isn’t super high maintenance. Anya’s not much of a greenery person - her ‘volunteering’ at the gardens on Tython was mostly a bid to get Outside time - but she can keep plants alive well enough.
Her first response to that would be ‘does T4 count’ and the complain when it zaps her. if she committed to looking after a pet, she’d do her best. the main problem with anya looking after any kind of dependent lifeform is her lifestyle (or lack thereof) - as long as she’s existing in a state of transience, it’s going to be difficult for both her and her charge to form any kind of meaningful routine, which for anything more complicated than a tamagotchi is going to be problematic.
if she settled down for long enough, with the right person, learned to actually deal with her problems instead of running away from them all the time, etc. unlike eirn, anya is actually pretty organised and self reliant, if for no other reason than she sort of had to be. the biggest problem she’d have is her aversion to/fear of commitment - having a kid is a Big Deal, and not something that anya would want to mess up
already answered six (would they take advice from/not take advice from?)
1. Do they sleep with a stuffed animal? If they have multiple, who’s the favorite?
as adults, i don’t think any of my ocs do - they either have a partner for ‘cuddling up in bed with’ purposes (and other purposes, obviously, but that is the niche a stuffed toy fulfills), or have lifestyles that at incompatible with stuffed animals (military, etc)
Eirn slept with a stuffed sithbunny when she was a child. it was a gift from her father, which supposedly could ward off nightmares. she no longer sleeps with it (and hasn’t since she was a teenager) but it’s one of the very few things she still owns from her childhood.
Bonus: she eventually gives said sithbunny to Zura, who also suffers from bad dreams, and tells Zura about how Darth Bunn (Bunn’Ari) protected Eirn when she was a little girl, and now he’s going to protect Zura, too.
Anya had a stuffed terentatek. she couldn’t pronounce the name, though, and kept calling it a tentek.
Bestian had a stuffed ruping that went Literally Everywhere with him until he was about seven. (reason n he passed on the Jedi - some attachments are just too important...)
1. what’s your character’s dream team? could be companions or npcs, could be from another class or from their own.
ls!jaesa (is there any other kind?), vette, and (assuming he behave himself) quinn from the sw crew. outside of that… she and ashara could learn a lot from each other, i think, and ashara’s far more headstrong in ‘let’s make the empire a less shitty place’ than jaesa and the sw put together. captain lorant, if only to spite pierce.
7. did they name their ship, or is it just referred to as “the ship”?
okay let’s go down the list. for major ocs who have ships-
Aemilia named hers Nenie - ‘nowhere’, not a very Jedi name, but she’s not a very Jedi Jedi. Her brother is mostly annoyed she got there first.
Awenyth’s ship is the Vol’Doaba, an Old Corellian phrase that translates roughly as ‘to seek peace’. Kira calls it the Vole. Awenyth disapproves (-10).
Bestian has any number of names for his ship/s, depending on what documentation he’s carrying at the time.
Eirnhaya called her ship the Pathcarver, mostly because she looked at the registration number, realised she’d never be able to memorise it, and spent a long night brainstorming with Vette trying to come up with something suitably Sithy.
Bonus 1: Bryn called her ship the same thing, though for different reasons - she wanted her ship to stand out among the ranks of interceptors whose owners never bothered to rename, and never realised that every other Sith in the Empire probably renamed their ship for the same reason.
Bonus 2: Outlander!Eirn keeps thinking about renaming it the Broken Chain, because she’s a giant drama queen, and is stopped mostly by not wanting to be outed as a giant drama queen.
Bonus 3: in the Sith!Quinn AU, his ship is unnamed, and he did memorise the reg number, because of course he did. Officer!Eirn is in about ten minds as to whether she should suggest giving it a name or just resign herself to having to memorise the registration number, and in the mean time has taped some flimsi with it on against the wall by the pilot’s console for when she’s got to negotiate with docking authorities.
Nisha’s ship is the Intercessor, named accidentally for another ship in the Republic fleet; by the time she realised, it was too late to redo the paperwork, and renaming it is more hassle than she feels like dealing with.
Romance asks, yaaay! Pick whatever you feel like doing from those: 14 and 9 for eirn/quinn; 2 for nisha/felix; 20 and 22 for xi/rhan (and might as well toss in nr 4 for eirn/cina :P)
i pick… all :P
eirn & quinn
9. How open are they with their feelings?
regarding affection particularly: eirn tries her best to be professional in ‘work’ situations, but is otherwise quite open with her feelings. the on duty/off duty divide frustrates her, though, especially if it’s just the two of them around - it’s something she understands on an intellectual level, but on a gut-level it’s something she finds impossible to internalise the way that quinn does.
quinn is generally speaking more reserved - he is affectionate, sure, but he generally expresses it through smaller, attentive things rather than grand gestures (never mind flopping on his best beloved unannounced)
14. Is their anything they associate with each other?
quinn associates particular pieces of music with eirn - usually loud, percussive pieces that she uses to exercise (or simply burn off excess energy) to, but also favourite sung pieces that he’d catch her not infrequently singing along with.
eirn associates smells with quinn - particularly the smell of imperial army kolto packs, given as he is/was her medic for a long while, but also the soap he uses - not imperial army standard issue, but a particular brand of dry soap manufactured on kaas that he prefers. he swears it’s not supposed to smell, but she swears it does and that it smells like him.
nisha & felix
2. What was the first moment that they knew they were in love with their LI?
for felix, it was a quiet moment on voss - no big revelation, no aftermath of horrific drama, just a quiet evening in a tea-house spent between not-so-quiet days and the realisation that this (not just peace, but the kind of unity that creates islands of it, even in the midst of chaos) was what he was fighting for - what made it worth fighting for, republic military politics be damned
for nisha, it was a quiet moment, too, if not so undramatic - when, in the midst of finding out all that had been done to him by the sith, felix was still more concerned with the state of his friend - and of her, as though she was the one who’d been done any kind of wrong here - when all that sha could think about was, in turn, the fact that if something happened to trigger off the holocron’s contents somehow then he could be lost entirely, and far more irreversibly than even those touched by vivicar or vitiate, and the thought of that- it hurt
(she understood, too, more fully in that moment than before, why it is that the council warns against loving too easily, too carelessly; not because they are heartless, but because they have hearts, and know how easily they break - and how easy, at that, it can be to fall into darkness in the attempt to preserve one’s light)
xi & rhan
20. Did either person change at all, to be with their partner?
more aetrexis than rhan. she had a lot of unexamined privilege from her youth that setting out in a relationship with him made her have to face up to, both consciously and otherwise. she also lost a lot of social status - she comes from a part of sith society obsessed with ‘good breeding’ and its supposed attendant strength in the Force, and not just having a fling with but actually wanting to /marry/ not just a Force-blind but a Force-blind Sith ended with her being bounced both out of her family circles and former social circles as a disgrace. it wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences, not least because aetrexis is someone for whom family is incredibly important, but it also brought home a lot of the realities about how unpleasant sith high society is in a way nothing else quite had.
22. From the outside looking in, what is their dynamic like?
disgustingly sweet. aetrexis is incredibly melodramatic, and rhan is somewhat drier and more deadpan, but they’re very openly dedicated to each other.
eirn & acina
4. Their favorite physical feature on each other?
eirn really likes acina’s hands. a slightly odd thing to fixate on, but they’re slender and, unlike eirn’s, soft. even on the rare occasion acina fights, she uses the Force more than her lightsaber - unlike eirn, whose greatest strength is stabbing people.
