Trunk Diary: Nar Shaddaa

Nar Shaddaa is an entire moon converted into a hive of scum and villainy like no one has ever seen before.  It’s a place that Doreau would have only gone near undercover and that even Hamr wouldn’t have gone to.  In my past life, I’d never have come here, but as a Sith, I have to come here to find an artifact by infiltrating and taking over a cult.  If I had had to come here in the past, I would have snuck in gotten out as quickly as possible before anyone figured out who I was.  As a Sith, I’m being blatant about who and what I am.

Things have really changed now that I’m a Sith.

While setting things up for the cult, I helped the Empire out which is trying to make deals with the criminals here to at least annoy the Republic and gain some power.  I’d say that they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, but then that’s what the Sith would say I was doing cultivating the loyalty of the ordinary person.  If I can see the power of the ordinary person, I can’t really deny the power of the criminal person, can I?

Anyway, first up was a job for the diplomatic corps.  She wanted me to attack a gang that wasn’t co-operating with them to put the fear of the Empire into them.  I wasn’t sure that was a good idea, since any gang that could be intimidated by what I could do wasn’t one we needed, and it turned out that this group was worse because they decided to attack back.  Against at least part of the advice of the trio of criminal heads she was working with, I defended the people against their attacks instead of attacking them back, because I want to help people and gain their loyalty.  After that, at least two members of that trio — including the Hutt, naturally — wanted me to kill the diplomatic corps rep for being incompetent, promising me a big payoff if I did that.  Yeah, corrupt bounty hunters and agents and even some Sith would appreciate the payoff, but I wasn’t one of those.  And a lot of Sith liked to kill those who they deemed incompetent to, as Doreau put it “pour encourager les autres”.  But I’ve never thought killing someone because they failed was a good way to get more competent underlings.  Better to simply hire better ones than try to get to competence using murder.  Anyway, I wasn’t sure she was actually incompetent, but the big thing is that I’m not opposed to the Empire itself.  I’m opposed to the Sith, and want to build a better Empire without them, at least in their current form.  And they were attacking the representative of the Empire and trying to use the Empire as a foil for their plans.  So I told them “No” and made it clear that messing with her was messing with the Empire, which was messing with me.  Since they couldn’t have done what I did, that made an impression, and hopefully made her feel at least a little bit grateful to me so that I can use her as a contact in the future.

Then, they sent me out after an anti-Imperial agitator called “The Flame”.  He was billed as being unkillable, but I never found out because when I encountered him after he captured an important Admiral I demanded that he surrender and give up his campaign against the Empire — mostly just because that avoids making me look like just another Sith brute — he … did.  He ended up taking his people and moving out on the Rim, since all he wanted was a replacement for his planet.  So nothing much came of that, except that I got that song stuck in my head.  You know the one.

Another area had someone taking down the Holonet.  When I went inside, it was some kind of agent who wanted to stay inside and wanted me to help him fake his death, offering the information he could gather in exchange.  Well, actually, he insisted that I was going to do it because the deal was too good, and that almost made me just kill him instead.  I don’t like being told what I was going to do, especially since I was made a slave and became a Sith.  But the information we could get was too valuable for me to give up out for such silly reasons, so I let him live.

The last thing to do for the Empire on Nar Shaddaa was to go inside one of Revan’s old haunts and figure out what was happening there, which I found a bit ironic given that on Dromund Kaas I joined the Revanites for my own purposes and figured I’d never think about Revan or them ever again.  It turns out that he had left some kind of seed from a “Star Forge” behind and it was keeping his followers alive.  I decided not to take it from them but took a sliver from it instead to give to the Empire.  I also kept a record of the journals he left behind and sent a copy to the Revanites, to see what they would do with it.  Yeah, I’m not sold on their cause, but again this doesn’t cost me anything and could gain me the loyalty of another power group that could be useful in the future.

Back to my main goal.  I had the choice of wiping out another criminal gang or working to cure a disease.  This was a tricky choice.  I wanted to cure the disease because it would help the ordinary people and that’s the power base that the Sith ignore and I wanted to build.  But a Sith can’t dodge fighting too much or else they’ll look weak and get attacked a lot.  Still, I went with the disease, because as my followers said and proved taking out one gang only means having to come back and fight the next one, while something like this lasts a lot longer.  After that, I faked a miracle and finally came face-to-face with the Sith who was leading the cult.  He tried to poison me, and while it weakened me a bit it wasn’t enough to actually stop me from beating him.  He asked me for mercy and to lead my cult, but he wasn’t the sort of person who I wanted leading my cult and, well, was a Sith of the worst kind, so I took some pleasure in killing him.

After that, I took my artifact and my cult and left, but not before my ancestor warned me that Zash was planning something and told me to get his old mask as protection.  I didn’t need the warning.  Zash keeps talking about some great ritual that only I can perform, but she keeps casting this as dreams that suddenly come to her, and I don’t buy that.  I think she knew all about this long ago.  Maybe she didn’t know that it was going to be me beforehand, and maybe she doesn’t know about my ancestor, but she’s known about all of this for a while now, at least in terms of the basic form.  I don’t know what she wants, but that she’s hiding all of this stuff from me makes me think I’m not going to like it if she gets it.

Tags: TOR Diary