Psionic Knights

As an aside, before I begin, I'm going to move a lot of my SWTOR discussion from my main blog, where I've been doing way too much of it, to this blog, where it fits a little better, since SWTOR is often the conceptual art tool that I use for Space Opera X, as well as an informant in general for how to make a good space opera setting. That means I'll have more posts here in general, although many will be about SWTOR and my progress therein, and less at my main blog, https://dark-fantasy-x.blogspot.com/, but that's probably a good thing anyway. The main blog can move back to its focus on fantasy stuff and pop culture, while this blog will be my source for space opera... and related pop culture a bit too. 

Anyway, that said, I've played a lot of stuff that I didn't anticipate, really. Trying to meet seasonal goals has had me diversifying what I expected to be playing to a large degree. I played a bunch of exploration and repeatable missions with Revecca Arden on Balmorra last week (although this doesn't actually advance her story, and the missions will still be available again, I presume, when I log back in with her.) I finished Coruscant with Gael Heckett and moved him to Taris, including putting on his Taris outfit. Which I immediately didn't like. I'm not sure what I thought when I created it, but I'm probably going to rework that. Not that the "space Barbie" is really the point, but I do like to have looks that I like if I'm going to be looking at my character a lot, and this one will almost certainly bug me over a very short amount of time.

I also made a slight change to my iconic space biker Anstal Tane; I gave him a new gun with his main outfit; a world drop that looks a lot like a 1911. I also have struggled a bit, I admit, with pants for him that don't look funky or just not quite right. I've had some that I was getting more and more unhappy with (they're some of my favorite pants in general, but they didn't fit the space biker look quite right) so I have some new ones now that look an awful lot like blue jeans. This turns space biker into maybe 50s space greaser, so maybe I should turn on a few more hot-rod looking speeders for him, since greasers were more into hot rods than motorcycles. There does seem to be a lot of overlap between bikers and greasers in terms of look and attitude though.

I looked up greaser on Infogalactic, and for the heckuvit, I also switched to Wikipedia. Infogalactic uses the accepted etymology that I've heard my whole life, that greaser as a term came about because of the grease used in their iconic hair styles, with maybe a double entendre that because they tinkered with hot rods, they got automotive grease on their clothes too. Wikipedia, of course, spent several paragraphs trying to claim, without evidence, that greaser was an ethnic slur against Italians or Hispanics, and then at the very end in one simple sentence, they say that basically, or maybe it was because they iconically used a ton of grease in their hair. Unbelievable. Thanks, Wikipedia, for the woke lies guilt trip that nobody asked for. 

I don't have a new image of Anstal with his new gun and new pants, but no doubt I will soon. I also will need to come up with a new Gael Heckett Taris outfit, since once I switched to what I'd created months ago, I immediately didn't like what I was looking at. Great.

I also played around quite a bit with The Black Hole with both Hutran Thanatos and with Anstal Tane, because I could use sneak on both and get through the Heroic (which is really big and feels more like a tedious flashpoint almost). I think that means that I can now skip The Black Hole on any other character both Imperial and Republic that I want to, unless I just feel like I want to do it again in a few months. But even then, it's repeatable as much as I want.

Finally, in order to get the daily conquest points rolling, which is needed for the Galactic Seasons stuff, I've been doing Heroics and killing bad guys all over the place, because they give you enough that it is worth doing. It also is a chance to grind XP on my early guys who are waiting to "start" their stories. So, I've been doing that in particular with Karr Tanus on Ord Mantell, and Saxon Hettar and Beorn Hengest on Hutta, and Gael Heckett just a bit on Coruscant too. But then I thought; why aren't I doing that with Gandalf Greyhame on Tython? Well, the reason is because Tython only has one Heroic on the Heroic mission box, but I did that, and then decided to just play him a while since I had him. I did think it was a bit funny to run around with an old man in as close to a Gandalf robe as I could get in SWTOR acting like a somewhat cocky young Jedi, but whatever. I'm sure I'll get over that joke long before I'm done with the character. Maybe I need another consular at some point again too. Or even a councilor or counselor. Sigh. Pet peeve, I know.

Well, I had an idea for a new Tarisian outfit for Gael, and while I was updating this post, I popped over and made it. I might yet tinker with it, but I kind of like it, and it's sufficiently different from most of what I do with outfits, that I'll keep it as an outlier in terms of look, I think. Besides, I'm on Taris now; it'll be a moot point if I alter it after I'm done with the planet, because I'll rarely switch to it again.

I saw Backseat Gamers use this same Zayne Carrick tunic, also undyed, for a forest recon scout, where he put the TD-07A Scorpion or one of the lookalikes, but with my cyborg sunglasses, I get basically the same look with just the Outlander Fixer facemask. It's kind of nice; I don't often play up the supposed toxic nature of Taris, and few of the NPCs wear masks either. But, they probably should.

And, using SWTOR as conceptual design, here's a concept art piece for the Nebula Corsairs, mysterious pirates of the Takach Nebula, possibly in the Zorga system with their base, who are careful to conceal everything about themselves, even their ethnicity.

Unfortunately, the image got a little bit of clipping.

Hutran Thanatos is an operative with the poisonous damage over time spec (Lethality, I think it's called), which spreads a greenish poison in a lot of his attack moves. So, I spent some of my dwindling horde of credits on the rakghoul tuning, which makes my weapons drip a green poison that exactly matches the color and and look of the lethality graphics. Voila! He'll wear that on most of his outfits now, along with a green weapon color crystal, because of course he will!

UPDATE: Finally, I also finished with Taul Kajak. One more semi-retired character, who's now on the Republic Fleet waiting to take the Ilum missions. But time for that later. In the meantime, I'm just ready to have one more checked off into semi-retirement. Maark, Mat Thew, Luukke, Johhn, Phillippion, Hutran Thanatos, Graggory and now Taul Kajak (and departed heroes Actsion, Galation and Corinthion) Westu Taul Kajak hál!

Taul's final moments in the main story were in the same digs as he started. Full circle!