#swtor things

[ghostace]

thinking a little about 7.9 stuff but also doing my own things, this isn't actually anything as per usual

I'm not too fussed about "what it means" for my mains because I've had a shared canon for a Long time - I started developing it in the early kotfe days and I don't think I'll ever stop going "ok but what if this character did this" and retroactively changing my own canon 10 years down the line. If I don't want my tech mains to be force sensitive I'm sure just gonna have them Not be. I don't really care about what the game makes me do as a player character given I share it around anyway.

That said I've been kind of taking all my characters for a spin one at a time and trying to decide what it'll mean for them, specifically - even the Force class characters, because we don't yet know what the fallout from all this will be.

There's certain characters that are just never going to be Force sensitive - like Kaliir, who, I guess ironically ran 7.9 first. There's certain ones that I don't particularly care either way or who wouldn't react in any particularly interesting ways if they did. There's some I already headcanoned as at least mildly. force sensitive already and who'll have a range of reactions - but it's not a new concept for me to add for most of them, who are mostly already aware of it to some mild degree.

Then there's the "well, maybe, but in a more interesting way" and the "this is going to fuck them up for sure" categories.

Komairu is the obvious one. I did this whole mental song and dance in the kotfe ch12 era when that datamine divided the fandom because it implied everyone was getting Force powers - and then it didn't happen like that. He's always supposed to have been painfully Force blind - to the point that it's an advantage he holds over Force users, making him hard to sense or feel and therefore much harder to fight. However, since he's also one of the ones possessed by Valkorion it leaves room for him to hear it, to have been more forcibly awakened - but he sure as hell isn't going to tell anyone so he's definitely going to cause problems on purpose by denying it, if he ends up following that route. I love a new lying era for him.

Tirrine is also a possibility, I've toyed with the idea of her having Force sensitivity since it canonically runs in the family, but with little opportunity for it to reveal itself so no one ever finds out. I have no idea what year we're on in game and she's one of the few with a canonical (rough) birth date but she's probably somewhere around 12 by now, which is a prime age to ruin her parents' lives with this revelation. maybe not ruin. she's more normal than they are.

She's not an OC but I've definitely been thinking about Raina and very few people think about her anyway so she's mine now. I'll have to revisit her Copero era return because my memory isn't good enough to recall if anyone else/how many/who specifically knows about her secret Force sensitivity but I can imagine she's not having a good time. She wasn't unaware, but how easily she can continue to hide it is certainly a question - and whether maybe now is the opportunity to pretend to "find out" about it, to free her from that long-held secret. But Komairu certainly knows, and they are going to...... discuss it. At length. They've been broken up since some time between the end of class story and beginning of Makeb (Komairu did not do Ilum) so they've been slowly spending time together again since Raina's return. She should absolutely not get back together with him, however...

Sohlaire is a big one, which is funny given he's a. not a main character and b. was already a fully trained force user. But this is happening somewhere in his messy recovery era, and it's about to set him back in a big way. He's forcibly walled himself off from the force for ~reasons~ and broke that wall down himself, also for ~reasons~, but has been on a journey to either come to terms with the force again with Jedi assistance (going extremely poorly) or get that wall put back up again (also going poorly) and wherever he is in that process, having that connection forcibly ripped back open again like a half healed wound is Not going to be good for him. I haven't decided how bad it's going to be yet, but given he's already not doing well he's probably going to self-destruct (again).

Fénire is already a Jedi but I figure his sensitivity means that the message going out is going to Hurt. I doubt it'll extend his ability to use the Force at all, given his whole thing is being utterly mediocre and very happy that way. Probably funnier if his soldier boyfriend got it instead...

My smugglers (canon and side characters both) are actually all force sensitive already, in my mind. Sohlaire is already mentioned, of course, but Riyk has a sith daughter and a very mild "I have a bad feeling about this" level of sensitivity himself, Chiira's sibling is a fully fledged Jedi and she has a faint grasp on it, Farrai's older sister is literally on the Jedi Council, and their group's adopted kid Malkah also has a bit of a "knack" so it's definitely going to be a spiderman meme as they all realise Everyone on this ship heard that. The consequences for them will likely be more in the sense of what galactic consequences will be more than personal consequences. For Rethza, my more canon smuggler, she's got a Sith for a mom but is Force blind herself so left the Empire to go on her own adventures... but it would be funny for her to trip over it as an adult and get mom to teach her some tricks. She'll never be a sith herself, but a little bit more connection might not hurt.

I don't have any ascendancy chiss who might be affected by this - Casini is loyal to the ascendancy but I can't picture her gaining those powers, and the rest of my chiss are not connected to their origin worlds at all, but I have certainly been thinking about the consequences for chiss space. Maybe I'll make a new one just for this.

All of this, of course, might be negated by any future storytelling and I certainly have a lot of questions still... but dredging up the old tech characters getting the force has been entertaining if nothing else. And I'm going to keep zapping characters with the force beam because it's funny.

[ghostace]

[ghostace]

[ghostace]

since that last was a reblog and it won't show in the tag bc it's from 3 years ago, just a note here for the tags and likes I've seen, I use reshade for swtor, it is safe it will not get you banned, do not under any circumstances use gshade, I have deleted my old gshade guide specifically because you shouldn't use it

I haven't had to reinstall reshade to swtor in a while but it's relatively painless other than the couple notes I made in my last rb

this all may change when the dx12 update eventually rolls out so when that happens it may work better/worse/not at all and I ask if anyone is coming across this later to please check the date, I will most likely figure out how to get reshade working after the dx12 update (it will likely be as painless as it is now but you never know!) because I love adding DoF to swtor so feel free to search reshade on my blog for the newest info ok bye

[ghostace]

[ghostace]

[ghostace]

blah blah blah sohlaire commander au musings whatever

the thing to understand about sohlaire is there is negative chance that he'd be a canon smuggler and slightly higher but still negligible chance that he'd end up as the alliance commander, but while often my side character kotfe runs are just kind of whatever ("this person would never be in this position to make this decision so i guess i'll do whatever matches their alignment") sohlaire i have been thinking more along the lines of "he would not say that be in this position but what would it take to get him there"

the key with sohlaire is yes he was a jedi, and yes he was a sith, and yes he was powerful, a fair prodigy with the force, and yes he cut himself off rather than fall to the lurking shadows in the dark side that threatened him, but after all that he's just constantly tripping over himself and ruining his own chances of success. not to have kotor 2 colouring everything all the time but it's like the way kreia describes the exile in the beginning— while sohlaire isn't cut off quite as intensely or forcefully as the exile, he doesn't know how to exist without the force and he's literally tripping over his own feet for a while, doesn't know how to hold a blaster let alone use it well, doesn't know how to interact with people without that thrum of connection in his mind. and he's angry. angry at his circumstances, angry about what happened to him, angry at everyone around him, and more than willing to take it out on anyone he sees.

and yet he decides to go the route of fake it til you make it— which canonically goes very very poorly: kicked out of at least a couple pirate crews and a whole lot of people want him dead, until he stumbles on riyk's ship and trips his way into being less of a dark side V asshole. he isn't good by any means, but being in an environment that doesn't punish him quite as harshly for his missteps helps him shift away from making decisions based on whether it will hurt the most people possible. until he fucks it up entirely but that's a problem for later.

to be alliance commander, to have ended up in that position of power, those missteps can't have happened. faked it til he made it— except it actually worked. the gained notoriety, a famed pirate with just enough usefulness for someone to call in to help with whatever situations. bloodthirsty but dangerously effective, and willing to make a bad call for personal gain— or even just personal satisfaction. even then it's a stretch to say any of that would have led him to that role, but the key part is that his missteps, the hits to his ego, the support and friendship he slowly gained— he has none of that. which leaves him in a very, very dangerous position.

the jedi and sith both know of his past— it's not unreasonable to think valkorion would have as well. and to take over a body with the potential he had, even if it's been buried and blocked out and denied for years? it's a prize, and sohlaire's own ego and overconfidence has made his mind weak. the dark side seeping through the cracks of the wall he put up, and he can taste it— and so can valkorion.

he's definitely going to get a bad end— valkorion would win, take over his body and destroy his mind, and he'd deserve it, too. since the game doesn't allow for that ending, he's simply going to continue terrorising people with even more of an ego— he beat the emperor, after all, and he did it entirely without help and even without the force— or so he's convinced. the myth of the self-made man, and he believes in it fully.

also commander au sohlaire never would have sniffed the gender identity issues because he's too busy being performative toxic masculinity, and while being a her sometimes wouldn't fix him it sure helps him be a little more balanced

[ghostace]