Pacis Meets Amity

When my pacifist character hit level 75 (the level cap at the time), I said that I was going to take a bit of a break from playing her, since Legacy of the Sith was supposed to be imminent and I was sure that I would feel more like focusing on my "regular" characters for a while once it was out. Aside from LotS being delayed, this broadly turned out to be true, and I didn't even log into Pacis the unarmed Mirialan Jedi for more than a year.

However, now we've got a Galactic Season with peace as its theme, and a companion who proclaims to be a pacifist but honestly isn't very good at it. Pacis would show Amity how it's done, I caught myself thinking one day... and with that, an idea was born.

Checking on her for the first time since 7.0 was honestly a bit sad, as Legacy of the Sith has not been kind to the pacifist play style. The Go To Sleep Tactical I was so proud to acquire at max level (since its extra CC allowed for additional pacifist quest completion opportunities) was removed from the game for being too OP in PvP. And those quick travel items I loved so much for letting me return to Dantooine at any time as long as I kept a swoop racing daily in my log are no longer viable as they reset and get removed from your mission list every day.

So I just did a couple of rounds of the Dantooine peace time dailies as a warm-up before setting off to the fleet to prepare for new adventures. I also bought the Two Cloaks Tactical since an extra escape seemed like the next best thing to have as a pacifist after the no longer existing extra crowd control.

Pacis has never had any companions because she had to stop doing the story in order to avoid violence before she had a chance to acquire Qyzen. I admittedly could have got her a Cartel Market or reward companion before now, but what would've even been the point, considering that their main role is to assist in combat, something she doesn't engage in? However, Amity just seemed like a good fit thematically, so I started the quest from my collections and made my way to Alderaan.

I will say that the intro conversation felt pretty funny in context, with the "best" options barely allowing me to acknowledge pacifism as a thing. When Amity talked about how he's very capable of defending himself, I wanted to reply something like: "No, no, no. Don't even think about it. We'll always run away!" The first thing I did the moment he joined me as a companion was to take his weapon away and put him on passive. Because that's how you behave as a pacifist, Amity!

Now, his introductory mission requires you to visit three shrines on Tython, Voss and Ilum that spawn a dark side beastie when Amity meditates there. Unfortunately you can't progress without killing it, which was of course completely out of the question. I did kind of sneakily get around that however by always waiting at the shrine until another player came by, spawning my mob and then vanishing out. The other player would always kill the mob and my hands were technically clean... but I still felt pretty dirty, both for offloading a spawned mob onto another player (even if it had low health and posed no real danger to anyone), and for effectively facilitating a death... something I had wrestled with previously and had decided back then to avoid going forward.

Ultimately, it didn't matter anyway, since completing the mission requires you to talk to Amity on your ship... and of course Pacis doesn't have one of those. So he'll just have to follow her around as she wanders the galaxy as SWTOR's biggest hobo. Next week is Pirate Incursion, so I think I'll take that opportunity to return to Dantooine and have Pacis show Amity around there once it's quiet again. He has a lot to learn after all, and Pacis has five new levels to gain.