Halcyon Diary: Eenie, Meedee, Miney, Mo

So we headed off to another space station to find another of our team, Leeha.  She’d helped us out before and was a whiz with mechanical things, having built a bunch of droids to help her.  And, of course, when we got there she was under the Emperor’s control, but she had a surprise for us:  she was holding another Jedi “hostage”.  And the Jedi she was holding “hostage”?  The guy who had the vision saying that I shouldn’t go or else I’d fall to the Dark Side … which I guess was true from a certain point of view, but my being there was the only reason we have any chance of stopping the Emperor.  Oh, and how did she take him “hostage”?  He came there himself.  Why did he do that?  Because he was in love with her.  So he was less a hostage and more someone who showed up on his own and was pretty disappointed by what he found.

And. see, this is one of the issues with the whole “Jedi don’t love” thing.  Love is a natural emotion that we can’t suppress.  So when people get together and work together, attachments like love — and especially love — are going to happen.  But the Jedi treat it as forbidden and a huge flaw, and this causes Jedi who do so to not only try to suppress it — which never works — but also to hide it.  So they can’t get advice on how to deal with it, although the advice the Jedi would give probably wouldn’t that helpful.  And in cases like this, they won’t bring it up when it might help, such as him saying “Hey, I think I can find her and get inside.  Bring me some help” which would have made this go a lot easier.

As it was, I showed up to find her, not him, and so the only thing she could have done that would have made him useful as a hostage would be to threaten to kill him if we didn’t surrender, but she pretty much wanted to fight and kill us anyway, so that was no use.  So the “hostage” showed up himself, wasn’t useful as bait to bring me here, and wasn’t going to be used against me.  Add in that I think I regretted damaging her droids more than I would have regretted him getting hurt, and he couldn’t do anything that a hostage was supposed to do.

Oh, and of course beating her in a fight broke the control the Emperor had over her.  I really wish we could figure out an easier way to do that.  At least one that’s easier on them, since no matter how careful I am they end up much more hurt than I do.

Anyway, she told us about a Sith Lord who’s has been sent to fulfill one of the Emperor’s plans on a planet called Voss.  A planet that has a Force tradition that’s not Jedi approved.  It’s probably a good thing that I’m the one going there, since saying that the Jedi can be a little closed-minded about this is like saying that Tatooine can be a little dry.

Halcyon Diary: Going to Prison

So, at this point, does it surprise anyone that the Republic has built an entire, planet wide prison where it can “disappear” anyone that it finds inconvenient?  That this prison is so secret that they won’t even let the children of the inmates leave or be anything other than inmates?  And that it’s built on the ruins of an ancient planet wide prison storing horrors that a much more powerful civilization thought too dangerous to let free?  Oh, and that the Imperials found out about it anyway and are stirring up riots all over the planet, including in those highest security areas where those horrors are incarcerated?

I’d ask why things can never go smoothly except at this point it really looks like this is smoothly.

So in order to complete my own mission I had to clean some of the other stuff up as well, so that the riots would die down enough that I could get where I was going without getting shot at every two minutes.  Sure, it ended up being the case that I got shot at every five minutes, but, hey, every little bit helps.

It’s amazing how sometimes smaller events are more challenging morally than bigger ones.  I guess that makes sense, since when you have big, galaxy-spanning threats what you need to do morally is clear, but when you get down to dealing with small groups of people it’s harder to balance their competing interests.  When the interest is “I win and everyone dies!” it’s clear what you need to do, but when you have to balance whether, say, new owners who bought the property legitimately get to kick out the old ones that were unjustly deprived of their land you really, really want there to be a good compromise that avoids that moral dilemma.

I’ve already hinted at that small issue.  The prison is supposed to be a secret and so they wouldn’t let anyone leave.  Yeah, even the children of the inmates here.  They started rioting to try to get at least some consideration and ended up attacking and killing a number of the guards, including one young woman who had helped me get things back online, and was someone the acting Warden had affection for and was hoping would go far.  This caused a huge confrontation at the end, with the Warden wanting them all to be killed and the rioters arguing that they simply wanted their freedom.

Now, look, I wasn’t thrilled with their use of violence, and I was fond of the kid, too.  But their situation was unjust.  I didn’t want to encourage this sort of thing, but they weren’t asking to leave, just to have part of the planet set aside so that they could have a little colony and some freedom.  That didn’t seem like too much to ask, and given the situation I didn’t want to judge them too harshly for actions that they took out of what they felt was desperation.  So I decided that they should get their colony and managed to talk the Warden into allowing it.  Let’s hope they don’t screw it up by getting involved in the local rioting.

The bigger threat was some kind of World Devastator or something that had been locked away here, and so of course a group of people were trying to wake it up.  Surprisingly, I ran into a Sith who was trying to stop it from getting free as well, so I ended up fighting alongside a Sith for most of it after I rescued him from them early on.  At that point, I had the option to activate the failsafe to keep it locked up again.  It talked to me directly and offered me some power to let it free, claiming that it would only get free after I was long dead.  You’d think that given the state of the galaxy I might be tempted to accept to get more power to defeat my enemies, but what I’ve seen so far is that power isn’t what’s needed, but focus and strength of will, and damning the galaxy for more power doesn’t really foster either.

And that was, of course, the flaw in the plan of the Emperor here.  He sent a guy, Krannus, to kill a lot of people to siphon some power from them or something.  And he couldn’t help taunting me about how I couldn’t possibly stop him.  So, of course, I managed to stop him and kill him with the help of some Republic troops who, obviously, didn’t want to die and didn’t want other people to die.  It’s amazing how much help you can get from people when you can appeal to altruism (lots of people are going to die) and self-interest (and one of those lots of people will be you).  Like with the Sith above.

So now I have a message saying that another of the Jedi team has been found.  Looks like another tough mission ahead.

Halcyon Diary: Council Problems

Well, when I got back to Tython, they didn’t shoot us out of the sky.  That was a good start.  And then while they obviously weren’t all that thrilled with me committing some very high profile evil deeds after someone had a vision saying that I’d fall to the Dark Side, I was able to convince them — with Kira’s help — that all of that was done under the control of the Emperor and that I hadn’t fallen to the Dark Side.  Of course, showing up with a prominent Sith didn’t help matters, but to be honest my doing that and then showing up there with my story of the Emperor’s control would be a pretty stupid move and since I didn’t, you know, start killing them all or anything it didn’t seem like there’d be much profit in it for anyone, and so they were inclined to believe me, and then inclined to believe Scourge.

Scourge outlined that the Emperor was looking to perform a ritual that would ultimately result in his wiping out all life in the galaxy in order to gain more power, which was pretty much what everyone believed he would do, so they took it seriously.  Of course, Scourge wanted to come along, but the Council demurred and some of them even wanted to keep him locked up all the time.  And, sure, it’s not like I really completely trusted him either.  Ultimately, though, it was my neck on the line and I wanted the guy who actually knew what was going on with me, not sitting in a cell trying to figure a way out so that he could make sure that I managed to get the job done.  So I insisted and they eventually agreed.

But this is something that ticked me off about the Council.  I had just come back from a disastrous mission where the goal was to capture and try to convert the Emperor.  We had no idea if that could even work.  He’d expressed no desire to turn to the Light Side.  We pretty much had to expect that he’d try to kill us horribly as soon as we encountered him.  And he actually did worse.  And yet the Council pretty much signed off on that with a smug, self-satisfied smile and went ahead.  And yet when Scourge comes having helped me escape the Emperor, and giving a perfectly good reason for wanting to side against the Emperor — not wanting all life in the galaxy wiped out — and having information that it would be good for me to have stopping the Emperor, and being a powerful Force user who knows the Emperor and the Sith and so pretty much being an incredibly useful ally to have … they decide to openly distrust him, discuss locking him up, and essentially risk ticking him off because of their “principles”.  It really seems to me like the Jedi are getting too caught up in their own rules and ideas and aren’t looking enough at how the world actually works.  I hope I never end up like that.

Anyway, the next stop is a prison that’s an entire planet.  Because of course it is.

Halcyon Diary: Did I Mention That I Have A Bad Feeling About This?

So, we’re off to face the Emperor.  Or, rather, we were except one of the other Jedi came to the Council before we headed out from Tython claiming he had a vision that if I went to face the Emperor I’d fall to the Dark Side.  Personally, I figure that if that’s the worst outcome from this adventure, everyone should consider themselves lucky, and with all the other signs and portents around this mission that got my linked to this no one was too receptive to leaving me at home.  Which turned out to be good thing … for the galaxy, if not so much for me.

Walking into the Emperor’s Fortress pretty much confirmed that this was a trap, because it was way too easy, especially for me.  Yeah, I’d taken Kira along, but it’s not like they were showing her much deference or anything, or running away when we faced them to avoid hurting her.  The others had things a little harder, but for the most part things went well.  But obviously that’s not a good thing in these sorts of situations, because that can make you believe that you caught them by surprise when it could just as easily be that they saw you coming and are waiting for you,  because they want you to get there.  In essence, it could be a trap.

It was a trap.

Yeah, when I go to the throne room the Emperor was there along with that Sith — in both senses of the term — that I met earlier.  I had to fight him while the Emperor simply looked on, and I was able to take him out pretty handily.  And then the rest of the Jedi on the team showed up, and there was a brief moment of hope that we could take the Emperor down.  It didn’t last long, as the Emperor pretty much overwhelmed us and captured us all.

I don’t remember much about what happened next, and from what I do remember I don’t think I want to.  I vaguely remember being under the control of the Emperor and doing some terrible things, and being trained and being subservient to some Sith Overseer.  This went on for a while, a span of time that felt timeless to me, but then Master Orgus came to me as a Force Ghost and broke me out of the Emperor’s control.  I then went in search of Kira, who hadn’t fallen under the Emperor’s control again and was being tortured in the hopes of turning her to the Dark Side.  I played dumb for a while when asked to take over the torture, and managed to get the Overseer out of the way and free Kira.  Sometimes, Sith can be incredibly stupid.

Before heading off, we ran into Lord Scourge again, and he said that he had to come with us because the plans of the Emperor would destroy the galaxy and he wanted to stop it.  Generally, my response would have been to tell him where to go, but Orgus had mentioned a dark ally that I’d make here and that would pretty much describe him.  He said that he had had a vision centuries ago of me stopping the Emperor and wants to make sure I do it, which is why he’s offering to help.  Yeah, I know how that sounds, but when it comes to the Force strange, strange things really happen pretty frequently.  The Force is not normal.

Anyway, we got away in my ship and there’s good news and bad news.  The good news is that Kira’s experience suggests that once you break the Emperor’s control you’re free forever, which is why they had to interrogate her the old fashioned away.  So then I should be clear and won’t be forced to do such terrible things by him ever again.  The bad news is that after publicly doing those things, I have to go back to Tython bring a prominent Sith Lord — the Emperor’s Wrath, no less — and have to convince the Jedi to trust him … and me.

Why can’t things ever go smooth?

Halcyon Diary: You’re as Cold as Ice

Yep, another winner.

So we moved from a toxic swamp where the Empire and Republic were fighting over the means to produce adrenals to a frozen wasteland where the Empire and Republic were fighting over a bunch of crashed starships because two huge battlefleets had happened to stumble into each other here and, as usual, each side kept a large number of secret projects and super weapons on their main battlefleets, probably because there’s no point in making those things if you can’t risk them being destroyed in a complete unrelated incident.  How foolish of me to think otherwise!

Anyway, the mission here was to get readouts of the Emperor’s Fortress which, you guessed it, is in one of the crashed ships.  But before I could get to that ship, I had to make sure that the Republic forces here were secure, which was harder than you’d think.  The reason is that Hoth is just so cold that the easiest way to win a fight here was just to find a way to turn the heat off and let the enemy freeze to death.  So I had to restore the communications so the patrols could report in, and then once that happened had to foil the Empire’s plan to blow up the base by igniting the gas in a mine, and then had to prevent the Empire from taking over a huge power station so that they could have a completely secure source of power which would allow them to drive the Republic out of the area.  It was run by Ortolans, and the Republic didn’t think they could hold it and so told me to destroy it.  But the Ortolans had put a lot of effort into building it, and once I fought off the Imperials attacking it they were inspired by my example and insisted that they’d defend it from the Empire.  Yeah, they were tiny little things, but they were very good with technology and that would count for a lot.  This way, the Republic would be able to use the power plant and I wouldn’t have to take away their dream.

From there, it turns out that there was some strange cultist group attacking both sides, and so the Imperials joined up with us to take down this Hailstrom Brotherhood.  We fought our way to their leader, but the people on our side were afraid that the Imperials would ambush us, and wanted us to ambush them first.  But it didn’t seem right to break an agreement just because they might break an agreement, and while it might seem a bit arrogant I figured that even if they did ambush us I’d be able to handle it and so didn’t really need to strike first.  So when the time came I allowed whatever was going to happen to happen … and nothing happened.  Boy, was the head of the Republic strike force embarrassed.

Oh, and I had to fight the leader of the cultist group.  He challenged me to a fight alone in some kind of cold cave, but I didn’t take him up on it.  It’s not really honour to fight someone where you set everything up so that you have all the advantages, and without them … well, I’ve fought full-on Sith Lords.  He wasn’t a problem.

Finally, I had to track down some kind of null cannon that could wipe out all electronics over a wide area, and had fallen into the hands of pirates, because of course there are pirates trying to gather up all the things that got dropped into this graveyard of starships, especially since both the Empire and Republic had established such a huge presence on this backwater and so made it perfectly clear that there were lots of valuable things here.  Well, I found it, but it turns out that the pirates were smarter than the average pirate and had copied them … so I used the null cannon prototype to wipe them all out, shorting out the prototype itself.  The general wasn’t happy with that, but risking the pirates coming away with even one of these things wasn’t one I was willing to take.  And besides, the Republic hadn’t really shown that they could use these kinds of super weapons responsibly, so maybe them not getting this one was a feature, not a bug.

With all of that out of the way, the way was clear to find the plans.  I teamed up with a Republic team under the command of Sergeant Rusk.  The plans were caught between Imperial forces and some pirate forces, so we split up to find them.  We managed to win through and get the plans.  Afterwards, Rusk was assigned to my team and so will be coming along with us.  He was good in a fight, so he should be a big help.  Although I’ll kinda miss being mostly alone with Kira on the ship, with only a very discrete droid for company.

So, that’s it.  We have everything we need.  Now we head out to beard the Emperor in his den and try to capture him.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Halcyon Diary: Quesh Quest

The worlds that we get sent to are only getting better.  We moved from a relatively nice planet that’s pretty much openly at war to a toxic sludge hole ruined by the mines and factories that are used to make adrenals.  My mission here was to seek out Sajar, a former member of the Sith Dark Council who was here defending something important to the mission to capture the Emperor — I can’t even think about that without thinking that it’s a terrible idea — but then went silent.  So I had to go to where he was and find out what the issue was.  It turns out that in defending the base he surrendered to his anger and killed Imperial prisoners, and now wants to die because he thinks he’s irrevocably fallen to the Dark Side again.  Now, I don’t like slaughtering prisoners, but he was under a lot of pressure and given the things that have been happening in this war pretty much anyone could crack, and I don’t think that anyone is irredeemable.  After convincing him not to give up, I took over defending the base myself, and then met the Emperor’s Wrath called Lord Scourge.  I prepared for a massive showdown, but he took one look at me, seemed to sense or feel something, and turned away noting that we would meet again at another point.  That’s … somewhat disturbing, but at least the base and what we needed from it were safe.

On Quesh, the Republic was trying to defend its mines and factories from the Empire, and had solicited the aid of at least some of the Hutts on planet to do it.  I don’t like dealing with Hutts, but the Empire was poisoning the land — er, more than it already was — and was letting the workers get poisoned, so I got sucked into doing that to help people and as usual when you try to help I kept getting drawn in deeper and deeper and ended up helping to assault a Hutt’s palace and capture a Moff … but it turned out that a Sith Lord was running things and had turned one of the important members of the Republic to his side, so I had to track him down.  He injected his dupe with some kind of super venom so that he’d attack us, and I had to defeat him, and then took the Sith Lord down himself.

You know, I’m spending too much time fighting people on my side and not fighting people on the other side.  I’m done here. The next planet can’t be any worse than this one.

Halcyon Diary: So, You Say You Want a Revolution?

These missions the Jedi Council send me on take me to the most wonderful places.  The first mission in our attempt to take down the Emperor is to find an Imperial cloaking device so that we can sneak up on his fortress.  That’s a good plan, actually.  Of course, the Empire for some strange reason is building it on Balmorra, where the populace is rising up in revolution against their control, and where we have taken a small bridgehead in an attempt to help them kick the Empire out.  Well, I guess it’s better than they aren’t being intelligent about it and putting it somewhere completely secure because then we’d get no help finding it, but it’s a bit odd.  At least if it was a weapon that killed people they could be using the people here to test it, but a cloaking device?

Oh, and the Republic base here is in danger of being overrun by strange, insect-like creatures called Colicoids. So we’ll probably want to do something about that.

And, of course, I eventually found out that the officer in charge here, Commander Madine, was trying to get ahold of another superweapon called “The Barrager”, and that the Empire was trying to take it over.  This is a group that’s completely separate from the group that I’ve been working with to clean up the mess from their superweapons.  Is there some kind of “Superweapons Anonymous” group that we can send these Republic officers to to overcome their addiction to these things?  We should probably send most of the Imperial Military there, too.

Anyway, my own mission required me to talk to the local medic called “Doc” to get an in with the Balmorran resistance and so get a line on where that device is.  Doc, of course, is not one of the normal, staid doctors, but is instead one of the adventurous types who likes, well, adventure and all the perks that go along with that, like wine, women and song … and he can’t sing.  He’s, well, pretty annoying, actually, but he at least does his job.  We saved his facility and then rescued some other prisoners from a base, and found out that the cloaking device is in the Balmorran Arms Factory, which is one of the main reasons the Empire and the Republic want the planet, for its incredible capacity for building weapons.  And reasonably, the Barrager weapon is ultimately controlled from there, too.  So I had to take down some things in the nearby city of Sobrik before getting into there and getting both things, which was successful.  I wiped out the Barrager despite the fact that Madine wanted to keep it, because using up all the energy on an entire planet to wipe out one Imperial fleet is an incredibly efficient use of resources.

When I left, Doc invited himself along.  I still don’t care much for the guy, but when you get shot at as much as we do having a really good doctor along is a good thing.

Next, we’re off to save an apprentice who was looking into something we need.  So, basically, it’s Tuesday.

Halcyon Diary: Fight the Emperor!

So Kira and myself headed to the Oppressor to face Darth Angral and see if he really killed Master Orgus, but things got … complicated.  Remember how Kira was a “Child of the Emperor” before she fled.  Well, it turns out that that’s not just a title that he had for some of his servants, but that he can take over her body at times and subordinate her will.  And he did it when I faced Angral, but she managed to shake off his control and we put Angral down.  However, he took her over again and I had to fight her, but once I’d beaten her she managed to shake off his control again, and this time it seems to be permanent.  All that was left, then, was to disable the weapon on the ship and confirm that, unfortunately, Angral was not lying when he said that he killed Orgus.

Which was even more confirmed when Orgus showed up as a Force ghost, which very, very few living Jedi manage.  He said that we have to defeat the Emperor, and sent me back to Tatooine where an apprentice of Master Tol Braga had some sensor readings that needed to be taken in secret to the Jedi Council.  It turns out that Braga is planning on using them to breach the Emperor’s hidden fortress so that we can go after the Emperor directly.  That’s a pretty good idea.  However, he wants to try to capture and possibly redeem the Emperor, which is a monumentally bad idea!  Still, we can worry about capture vs kill later, once we’ve managed to get everything we need to breach the fortress.  And the place to start for that is Balmorra.

Halcyon Diary: Well, I’ve Been Through the Desert …

So, after that revelation, we headed out to Tatooine to secure yet another Republic secret superweapon.  This time, it was a weapon that used powerful shock waves as a weapon, which could obviously hurt a lot of people but, if it was used at full power, might even shake an entire planet apart.  Which means that it shares an idiotic trait with a number of these weapons:  being so devastating that your enemies would want to take it over just so that they could wipe out the planet that it was created on.

Here, Master Kiwiiks was sent to secure the facility, and she was Kira’s Master before me.  Obviously, having had her secret revealed Kira was a bit leery about meeting her and having to reveal it to her, but she also was quite fond of her and so wanted to make sure that she was okay.  When we got there and discovered that Kiwiiks had been kidnapped by the Sith along with the weapon, that made her pretty frantic.  The Sith had activated the weapon and told us that we’d have to fight him for the new ones, a deal I accepted and, of course, managed to win.  He had left Kiwiiks near the weapon, and so it was causing her a lot of damage, but we fought our way through and rescued her, no harm done.  And it turns out that Kira’s other fears were unfounded, as Kiwiiks was accepting of her, believing that the good in her and the good she had done outweighed any potential darkness from her past.

This was also a very thematic planet, because while we were trying to stop a new weapon that was a threat to its makers and potentially the galaxy, when I hooked up with the Republic Reclamation Service it turns out that they, and Czerka, were after an ancient weapon that was a threat to its makers and potentially the galaxy.  What are the odds?  Basically, this one was some kind of system that turned people into cyborgs that were controlled by an imprisoned alien, who wanted me to free him so he could take over the planet and eventually the galaxy.  Gee, I really had to think hard about that one before deciding to destroy his access and leaving him imprisoned forever.  The sad thing is that the Czerka rep that I encountered who I had to put down when he tried to take this thing away from me probably would have made the deal and ended up giving up everything he wanted to gain from that due to his shortsightedness.

Yeah, it looks like sentients just don’t change, as I traced through generations of idiots who can only see the very short-term and don’t care about the rest, creating things that usually end up hurting them short and long-term.  And after this we head off to the masters of that sort of thinking:  nobles, as we head to Alderaan.

Halcyon Diary: Surprise!

After finishing up on Nar Shaddaa, we got a call from the General saying that a high-ranking Admiral who was an ally of Angral, the Sith Lord who wanted to kill me for doing my job and defending myself, wanted to defect.  Yeah, this seemed like a trap, but we couldn’t ignore it just in case it was legit.  Well, surprise, it turned out to be a trap, as a Sith showed up instead.  So I was completely and totally shocked that the set-up that I thought was a trap turned out to be a trap.

But then I was actually surprised, as the Sith revealed that Kira was somehow “related” to him, as a “Child of the Emperor”.  Kira didn’t deny it, and in fact pretty much confirmed it, so it wasn’t just a lie he made up to rattle us.  We fought him and ended up killing him, but obviously Kira had some ‘splain’ to do.

She said that the Children of the Emperor were a group of Force sensitives trained in the Sith Academy and then taken to see the Emperor, retaining no memory of their interactions with the Emperor but given the titles and the extra training that went along with those titles.  Kira did get that far, but then she ran away and joined the Jedi, and tried to put the past behind her. and hid it from everyone because she figured they’d react badly to her if they knew.  Which seemed to be confirmed when we went to tell the Jedi Council about it and some of them, well, treated her like she was a Sith traitor for hiding it.

I defended her.  And not just because I might have feelings for her, you understand.  No, it’s because she had fought through a lot to get away from the Empire and had committed to changing her life as per the Jedi Code.  In all our time together, she hadn’t done anything suspicious.  And so all we had was a title that she rejected and some kind of potential influence the Emperor might have over her and exercise at some point.  That’s not enough to take her dream away from her and treat her like a traitor, and I was pretty blunt on the matter.  Eventually, they decided that she should stay with me for the time being, and if I have my way that’s going to be forever and a day.

She might be regretting it, though, because our next stop is Tatooine, and she is definitely coming with me into those desert wastes.  I am a firm believer in redemption, but she’s going to have to work for it.