A Series of Unexpected Events

When I wrote about skipping story content last year and why I'm conflicted about it, one of the arguments I gave against it was that at least for me, there can be quite a difference between imagining how a character would react to certain story beats in the abstract, purely based on their personality and alignment, and actually playing through that same content, because small details such as certain pieces of dialogue can end up making quite a difference to the way things feel in the moment.

I've had a great example of this recently in the form of my bounty hunter - or should I say "one of my bounty hunters"? I'm up to three of them at max level for some reason and have been splitting my play time between them in the most awkward of ways. Anyway, this story is about my dps Powertech T'ir (don't ask me how to pronounce that, I just added the apostrophe somewhat randomly when she lost her original name during the first round of server merges), who is the bounty hunter with the most story progression and on whom I've been making a concerted effort to get caught up with current events. In case it's not obvious, this means that this post will contain spoilers about story content from KotET onwards.

T'ir's a Chiss and tends to lean towards dark side decisions, so I thought everything would be pretty cut and dry for her. She's not exactly an Imperial loyalist, but she's been getting along with the Empire well enough, so I couldn't really picture any set of circumstances in which she would defect to the Republic when given the choice.

So the other week I finally finished the last chapter of KotET on her. Declaring herself an Empress at the end seemed like quite a high point for a bounty hunter fond of personal power. I don't think she has any real desire to rule nor interest in politics, mind you... she just likes being the strongest and punching people. Calling herself an Empress must have felt like a bit of a joke to her, to be honest.

Then it was time to go to Iokath, to find the Republic and Empire squabbling there. T'ir didn't really want to support either of them - they both seemed kind of beneath her at that moment. Acina had previously been an ally, but here she was trying to snatch some superweapon for herself behind everyone else's back - typical Sith scheming, bah!

And who was representing the Republic? Jace Malcom, a hardened war veteran with whom a bounty hunter could actually see eye to eye, and who also happened to be her boyfriend's dad. (In hindsight I honestly I have no idea how or why I ended up in a relationship with Theron on this character... they are/were a terrible match. However, the point is they were a couple at the time, so the familial relationships were a consideration.) With all that in mind: Why not side with the Republic on this occasion and bash some Imperial heads in? To a bounty hunter like her it's all the same anyway. (Fun fact: If you pause this story arc after "defecting" and then click the launch button to resume, it will put you in the wrong base and you'll get murdered by guards as soon as you arrive. Huzzah!)

Anyway, if you're all caught up with the story, you know what comes after that - the traitor story arc. Oddly, the bit I enjoyed most about that was the interaction with Aristocra Saganu. In particular, there was one line of dialogue where you get to say something along the lines of: "Really, you'd sell out one of your own just like that?" and his response is: "You're one of our own too." I actually had to pause and blink there for a moment to realise that he was talking about the fact that T'ir is a Chiss just like him. I hadn't even considered that! At the end he also sent her a letter about how she was a role model for all young Chiss, which I thought was great.

The issue of the traitor himself largely played out as I expected. While there were a couple of heart-wrenching lines about love, T'ir wouldn't have become a bounty hunter if her heart was that easily wrenched. I'm not sure she would have been able to pull the trigger herself, but simply turning her back on him when he had already been injured by someone else's hand was surprisingly easy.

Where do you go from there though? Surely not back to working with the father of the man you just left to die? Handily though, Emperor Vowrawn also wrote her a letter asking to let bygones be bygones and saying that he'd quite appreciate her working with the Empire again. He might not be so bad; he reminds her a bit of Darth Tormen... I also think she'll get along just swell with Malgus, though I don't know how well he will like someone who already switched sides twice. I guess the best way to find out is to play! I'm very curious to see how things will play out for her from here, as I never expected to have an Imperial loyalist that would be dealing with Vowrawn instead of Acina...