Your fics have RUINED my ability to hate on the Star Cabal and now I'm getting IDEAS for fanart and it is ALL YOUR FAULT
I now have the mental image of one of them sitting with their Legate and lecturing about not being so reckless as they stick bandages all over a bunch of small injuries...
Ideally, this is about the tenth time they've given this lecture. Threats have been made previously that are now being carried out: the bandages are all various "fun" aesthetics. Neon, glitter, rainbow, fractal... Hello Loth-kitty... porgs...
Why. Why must you write such awesome content. Whyyyyyyyyyyy
Learning what the word Cabal means makes the name Star Cabal the funniest thing. They were like, yes, we are the secret organization and we are in space. The space spies and our name tells you everything if you have a vocabulary above the third grade level.
OK, so, first of all, an end-of-the-world party for the rich and disgusting on an airship while their planet burns? Very Southland Tales of you, Hunter, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.
More importantly.
I wonder if they don’t offer you the choice to join the Star Cabal - I think Hunter says something about how they ‘don’t take converts’ - because so many players would be tempted to take it?
After everything the Sith have done to you, the IA, at this point, and how insanely bloodthirsty and myopic they’re being on Corellia, it’s easy to see why you’d be tempted to say, yes, wipe the slate clean, get rid of all of them.
(Let’s ignore for the moment that the Star Cabal’s plan is conspicuously free of detail - what are you going to do, exterminate all the Force users? Create your own government? What? - and assume it’s some sort of workable plan.)
Just as a moral choice, is there anything at this point that the Star Cabal have done that the Empire hasn’t done? Or anything that Hunter, as your counterpart, has done that you wouldn’t do?
The only thing I can think of? is the massacring of civilians on that space station/colony which they wanted to frame the Empire for. That’s something which the Empire hasn’t done/asked you to do as far as I can recall ... although Darth Jadus certainly wants you to help him use the Eradicators on civilian populations? And there’s a mission on Balmorra where an Imperial officer wants you to plant explosive devices where civilians can pick them up, and if you choose not to, he specifically says that civilian casualties were the object of the exercise?
Anyway, just another point in the IA storyline at which you are AWASH in moral ambivalences and murky equivalences.
I had a writeup about Hunter telling you he slipped Ardun Kothe your information, but it was very boring.
Instead I give you the sole on-screen evidence of an Imperial Star Cabalist. If you announce your peaceful intentions to the Cabal conference, three conspirators immediately vanish and Mr. Imp facepalms.
What’s the current status of the Star Cabal from the Agent storyline? Could they be involved with the Traitor arc?
I honestly do not know! I haven’t finished the Agent storyline (I’ve only run four out of the eight vanilla storylines right now), so I’ve actually kind of not looked into the Star Cabal too closely – as I have general spoilers for the storyline, but not in-depth ones. So I might direct an inquiry to someone who’s a bit more familiar with the Agent storyline and Star Cabal, such as @inyri, @andveryginger, @keldae, or @mjaydziarand.
They were name-checked briefly during the Uprisings prior to Iokath, but as far as I’ve seen, that’s the most concrete we’ve heard of them/from them in… uh, again, I would have to volley that over to the Imp Agent experts. Were they even referenced on the class storyline wrap ups on Rishi?
But from the very general general spoilers I know of the agent storyline, I would say…
…maybe? I don’t know – I can only be honest in that I’m really not sure.
Again, I haven’t looked into anything too in-depth because I’d like to have a few surprises when I eventually run my Agent through, but I know the Star Cabal had a connection to SCORPIO. According to the Codex entries, SCORPIO was likely created by the last master creator on Iokath, Vel Jyc Boer (who seemed to get bored and pressed the apocalypse button about a thousand years ago, I’m assuming that at least from the last lines of that entry) – and I know from general Tumblr spoilers that the Star Cabal themselves is old, as well as that SCORPIO has a Belsavis connection.
(Side note: I do find that piece at least very interesting considering the connection to the Makeb uprising – which is a fascinating mystery from a lore perspective in and of itself. Is Gethul a creation of the Mother Machine on Belsavis? Some other Rakatan experiment gone awry? Definitely a dark side creature in origin – again, a really fascinating Uprising! Super creeptastic and has some potential for further exploration if the devs decided to go that route.)
At this point, it seems likely we can be reasonably certain that the Order of Zildrog is responsible for most of the events leading up to and within the Fractured Alliances arc, and there are hints within the Alliance Intelligence reports they have a lot of money, as well as a lot of influence. The real question is – are the Order of Zildrog a shiny new cult created during the events of KotFE after SCORPIO kills the original leader of the Heralds of Zildrog – or is the Order of Zildrog a different branch… possibly a much older, more widespread branch? (And the Heralds were just fanatical thugs…?) That’s where I would ask about a possible Star Cabal connection (at least to those a bit more familiar with them). It seems a stretch to me that a shiny new, twelve-month-old death cult from a relative backwater planet like Zakuul somehow managed to infiltrate everything so thoroughly as has been hinted at, and get as much money and power as they’re indicated to have. It makes me wonder exactly how old the Order of Zildrog really is.
It’s also worth noting that the nature of what/who Zildrog is possibly a much deeper mystery – one that hopefully will either be answered partially or in full on May 1st with 5.9. Why I say that, is that we actually know very little about Zildrog himself, and all we really have is bits and pieces from fanatics we’ve heard on Zakuul (mostly the Heralds).
There’s the possible Gravestone connection, which might finally be confirmed or refuted for good on May 1st. So, it’s still very possible that Zildrog is a giant Iokath death machine that will burn up the entire galaxy because why do anything halfway? But we really only have hearsay, Force visions, and ancient prophecies at this point – as well as guys in snake masks plotting mysterious things and stealing our spyboys away from us.
(However, I’m going to refrain from going to deep into all of the possible things Zildrog could be, because I’ve already climbed out of that rabbit hole once, and there’s really not enough information to know for sure.)
What we do know about Zildrog is that who/whatever he is, he’s very old – at least older than a thousand years– because his presence/the worship of him as a god predates the Izax pantheon, which we know were around a thousand years ago (probably longer) when they wiped out all life on Iokath. Probably/possibly older than Valkorian/Vitiate’s 1300ish year blight on the galaxy.
The History of Iokath codex entries hint that the people of Iokath were experimenting on the worlds around them (and possibly just beyond Zakuul and Wild Space if memory serves me correctly) for countless generations. More than a thousand years – I’m not sure if the Iokathan culture is as old as the Rakatan one – but they were around a very long time before they wiped themselves out with their own hubris.
So is it possible that the Order of Zildrog is a thousand plus years old? And the Heralds were some strong men driven crazy by some mysterious swamp creature *coughcoughAncientWhisperyMonolithcoughcoughGravestone* before Arcann was like “Hey guys, I like your style! Why don’t you terrorize the citizenry of the Old World for a while? I got shit to do.”
I mean… maybe? But it could also just be that the little punk who SCORPIO cut a deal with in Chapter 7 of KotFE is just really good at numbers, robbed a bank or five million, and is awesome at recruiting, and grabbed a few buddies from Arcann/Vaylin’s inner circle and started trying to wake up his Apocalypse Cobra the moment his father’s corpse hit the ground.
Either way… we’ll hopefully know soon! T-minus NINE DAYS guys! We’re getting so close!
Let me be clear : Hunter’s actions are some of the most monstrous in the game. Regardless of whether the Star Cabal’s final resolution was understandable, their tactics - and specifically Hunter’s - are evil and petty.
Having said that...
That’s our boy, Vector. He knows this stuff.
So Gahraath - and frankly most Imperial Agents at this point - is probably fed up with most Force users by now. Maybe Hunter knows this? Maybe Hunter is hoping Cipher Nine will restart the whole thing?
Taking a moment of reflection is good, I think.
We can do this once we’ve defeated our enemies. Or our demons.
I will say... she is kinda cute.
Like, i don’t necessarily care for all the C9 / Hunter fics on AO3. The “canon” relationship - such as it is - is inherently abusive.
But she is cute.
Well, they had a Rakata at the table. An actual mother-f*cking Rakata. These Cabal guys were “morally flexible”.
Its implied she had no control whatsoever of her life’s path.
I know everyone bitches about the Jedi, but they can usually leave if it isn’t working out.
I am totally fine with banter between enemies. That’s my jam.
.... there are implications here i will touch on later.
I like mutual respect and pleasantries between enemies.
For the record....
This is a salute to a defeated enemy. Gahraath is, at this point, in a committed relationship with Raina. But maybe he relates to Hunter a bit more than he used to. So he gives her what she wants.
