((OOC)) Overdue Intro

[Mourne]

It's been politely pointed out to me that while some of the server vets here are familiar with me from PvP on Ferrex, most have no idea who I am, aside from my guild. So it seems that a character introduction was overdue and I intend to rectify that now.

As fair warning, there will be SPOILERS below...

My main character is Mourne, a trueborn Sith Warrior (former Emperor's Wrath from the story arc), whom I primarily PvE on. I play him more as Lawful Evil. He doesn't just kill people for the joy of it - it has to be justified. He follows the philosophy of Darth Marr, where his biggest concern is the health and wellbeing of the Empire (sic Eternal Empire), not so much about power or position. He's not a purist, and supports the notion that the Empire is stronger with other alien races like the Chiss. He believes that true power is internal, not external, and that all Sith bear a responsibility to put the Empire before their personal ambitions. A formidable tactician who's martial prowess with Lightsabers is considered peerless amongst the Sith. His closest allies currently are Ferrex, Agent Volarris, Lana, Captain Quinn, Vette, Major Pierce, and HK-51.

In the Eternal Empire story, he does kill Koth and Scorpio, but only because they betrayed him at critical moments in the story. He chose to save Vette over Torian, given his past with her. Surprisingly though, he doesn't kill Captain Quinn when he reunites with him on Iokath. The reason for that is because that ship had already sailed. It didn't seem appropriate to kill Quinn after all that time had passed since he betrayed you to Darth Baras, who you've long since killed, and he's been apologizing for it ever since. (I made him walk around the ship naked for a month as punishment, and felt that was sufficient humiliation.) I abandoned Jaasa as my LI and romanced Lana instead, which has been much more gratifying. He rules the Eternal Empire as an Alliance, seeing the value in cooperation (albeit manipulated or coerced) and genuinely wishing to make the galaxy more stable and peaceful rather than ruling it as a dictator to serve his own vanity or ambition, as Emperor Vitiate/Valkorian did. He intends to kill Theron Shan.

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Ferrex is my human Bounty Hunter who I primarily PvP on. I play him as Neutral Good, and although he'll take nearly any bounty if the credits are good enough, he prefers bounties for bad people because it keeps things less complicated. He generally supports the Empire because the pay is good and the resources made available to him are often superior to that of the Republic, but he has taken a Republic contract from time and time and has been known to rub Imperial leadership the wrong way occasionally when capturing a bounty instead of killing them. He doesn't agree with pointless killing and abhors cruelty. He believes that if you're going to kill someone, just do it and spare them the torture. While he values his Mandalorian heritage, he doesn't actively practice their ways. He values loyalty above all else. His LI (wife) is Mako, whom he's still searching for. His closest allies are Lord Mourne, Agent Volarris, Mako, Torian, HK-55, and his Akk dog, Rigel.

In the Eternal Empire story, he allows Koth to rejoin the Eternal Alliance, and permits Scorpio to merge with Iokath. He chose to save Torian over Vette, given his past with him. He rules the Eternal Empire as an Alliance, as he's uncomfortable with the idea of being an Emperor believing that absolute power corrupts absolutely. He intends to reconcile with Theron Shan and bring him back into the Alliance if possible.

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Last but not least is my Chiss Agent, Volarris, who I both PvE and PvP on (though not so much the latter since the 5.3 nerfs). I play him as Neutral Evil. He's a pragmatist, and loyal to the Empire because he believes it's the best chance for stability in the galaxy. While he's often had to deal with Imperial prejudice, it has only motivated him to strive harder to distinguish himself amongst their ranks. He distrusts the Sith, but understands that not all of them are poisonous to the Empire, and has even become a close ally with one of their more prominent members (Mourne). A brilliant strategist, he's often thinking several moves ahead of his opponents, which has helped to keep him alive. He's also extremely charming and very promiscuous, perhaps owing to the necessities of his profession, but managed to sleep with six women throughout the Agent story arc. His LI is Ensign Temple, whom he hopes to reunite with. His closest allies are Lord Mourne, Ferrex, Ensign Temple, Vector (who is still MIA), K1-Z3N, and his close personal friend, Doc Lokin.

In the Eternal Empire story, he banishes Koth from the Alliance and kills Scorpio feeling that it would simply be too dangerous to allow her to merge and control the advanced technological planet of Iokath. He chose to save Torian over Vette due to the value of Torian's connection to the Mandalorians. He rules the Eternal Empire as an Alliance, and tries to delegate as much power as possible to avoid the spotlight of leadership that makes it more difficult to work covertly. He privately believes that the old grudges between the Empire and the Republic will make lasting peace impossible, and while he's certainly betting on the Empire, he's all too aware that they can be treacherous when pursuing their goals, so he's made efforts to decentralize the powerbase of the Alliance to make himself less of a target and has secretly established an escape plan for himself and those closest to him in case that plan fails as he expects it to. He openly denounced Theron Shan, but given his experience with the Star Cabal, he believes that his betrayal was a necessary ruse to join the secret organization known only as the Order. He intends to play along to see where it leads.

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As for me personally, I've already mentioned that I've been playing this game since day 1, and moved to this server roughly a month into the game. I've been in GrimD ever since and inherited the GL position about 3 months ago. I enjoy PvE, and on most days, PvP. As with all things, the game is infinitely more enjoyable with good company.

I have a degree in Criminal Psychology, and was in a law enforcement career track for a period of my life before moving to the IT industry. Currently, I'm a network technician with A+/Net+/Sec+ certifications and have been in the US Navy now for about 12 years (I was Active Duty for 5.5 years, and Reserves for 6.5 now). My military service is spread over three decades, and I'm a veteran of both Gulf Wars. My wife also plays SWTOR, and we have a 6-year old daughter who plays Minecraft. I was deployed for 7.5 months out of this year, and will be deployed for another 5 months next year for advanced technical training.

Oh, and my favorite color is black and my favorite drink is gin & tonic garnished with queen martini olives.

[Seraphie]

Welcome again to the community here and thanks for the introduction! Always fun to get to read more about the characters and players around me.

I'm curious...

You describe all three of your characters as following the in game story. RPers generally avoid this as it makes IC interactions with other characters... challenging. You describe each of them as being an ally of the other two, and you describe how each of them rules the Alliance. So... do you rp all three of them as ruling the Alliance? They can't all three be "The Outlander". How do you work that out?

[Mourne]

I actually haven't RPed with any of them, but thought I'd present each of their backstories as if they were separate unique characters, which is essentially what they are as far as the game is concerned. For their "alliance" with each other, I consider that to be based on the perspective of each of them. This is also why I put each of their respective companions in the same armor and weapons so as to create the illusion of consistency between them. I don't consider that to be a role play aspect, meaning, I can't role play with Mourne and Volarris in the same room, but the game doesn't exactly allow us to reconcile or consider all our characters in one, shared story.

Hopefully that made more sense than it sounded.

[Seraphie]

I think so?

Just a comment on the reconciling our characters and having a shared story.

I have multiple characters who are tied together, for starters, five sisters, the best friend of one of them and the brother of the best friend. I have, at times, rp'd more than one of my characters, in game, simply establishing that both are there, and specifying through "name:" before I type the rest of what I type in /say. I don't actually consider the in game story to be the story for any of them. Stell's story edges close to it, with some of what happened to her early on, flying a smuggling ship, but some of them aren't even consistent with their class. Ange (in game Jedi Knight), the hostess for Dancer's Palace, works on the family farm most of the week, other than a couple days work at DP, and, while Force sensitive, and having received a bit of training on controlling and using it, she rarely uses it and is definitely not a Jedi, nor has she ever been.

I think you'll find it exceedingly rare in this community for anyone to consider their character's rp story to match the in game story, and no one will consider their character to be "The Outlander" because as soon as you do that, not only can you not reconcile that character with your own other characters, you won't be able to reconcile your character with anyone else's characters either.

Just wanted to throw that out there for you.

[Noth]

Yeah, echoing Seraphie here, playing a canon character (such as the Outlander) is considered bad form in wider RP communities. It can work if it's just you and your friends, because you get to decide your personal canon, but when dealing with a larger group of people you will find that it gets much more complicated. If your character claims to be the Outlander chances are they wil be ignored... It just creates a lot of conflicts that are impossible to reconcile.

What might be good, if you plan to head to events and RP with more people, would be to look at your characters' stories and pick out the generic parts of them, or find alternatives to the story that accomplish similar things in terms of character development but that do not place your characters as the star of the show. (i.e. maybe they were Alliance fighters, or they participated in major battles, but were not the commanders or Outlander, etc.)

[Ela]

((Oh jeez @Noth posted before I finished but I'm posting the original anyway...))

I have multiple characters who are tied together, for starters, five sisters..

FIVE?! I can barely manage the three Elariels! You are a wonderful machine, @Seraphie :)

Back to serious mode...for the three Elariel sisters, whenever I go into an RP event I always have "excuses" for why the others aren't there. Because I'm basically a slave to GSF, one of them is always on Fleet duty. The other is usually close by, in case a story element presents itself where the other sister would be better suited to RP in any given event. I usually choose Alexandra and Meagan for those roles, because they're like...polar opposites.

But to echo a lot of what's been said, I think all of us see ourselves as complete fringe characters to the "main" story. And like super fringe. We didn't win the battle against the Eternal Empire, nor did we save a planet, but...we were there! We helped! Or maybe we made a bunch of credits profiting along the way.

Point being, the Bioware crazies made it a little...uhm...strange...to reconcile the KotFE/KotET story with normal RP. So we just pretty much say, "yip! That happened. And I was there."

[Mourne]

I totally get what you're saying now. And yes, you're completely right about that when it comes to RP. If you're playing a specific, unique role in an RP setting, such as "Emperor's Wrath" or the "Outlander", it's usually not your character and is often referred to as a "feature" character that is typically used for a specific plot or story.

But, I don't RP anymore. The last time I actually did any real roleplaying was before my daughter was born. I simply don't have the time or patience anymore. So when I introduce my characters, I'm introducing them from the game point of view so that you can see the choices I made and why I made them. If I were to ever RP again, all that would of course be left out.

My mistake for not making that clear up front that I was introducing my characters as I've played them in the game, and not for purposes of RP with anyone outside their individual story arcs.

[Seraphie]

Oh! That makes waaaay more sense now! Glad I asked!

[Mourne]

Pardon me if I'm a bit rusty, but I think this is what everyone was looking for in terms of RP backstory:


While Drexil was pureblood Sith, he was born to unremarkable parents who were neither rich nor privileged. His father was merely a clerk at a space port depot on Korriban, and wished nothing more for his only son than he lead a productive life repaying his debt to a society that he only observed from behind his work station. Yet even at a young age, it was not lost on the boy that his father held no love or pride beyond the rote responsibility of his role in the great machine known as the Empire. He often thought about how the depot where his father worked held more modern conveniences than the meager apartment where they lived. He felt it then, the gnawing hunger for something more.

It was a few years later he was discovered by the Academy. Force sensitive, or as the official report read, "a Forceful being of great potential". It was the first and last time he ever saw his father smile. His training was brutal and unforgiving, as is expected of acolytes to winnow the wheat from the chaff. He started with 50 in his class, and by the end of the first year through mishaps and murder, that number was reduced to 31. The aggression and cruelty forced him to find the power within himself to rise above his former, simple life, and he immediately recognized that as his power grew, so too would his confidence and capability to bring into reality that which he intended. It was here that he honed his martial prowess, and the seed of the Dark side germinated, well watered with blood. As his skills increased, so did his knowledge of the Dark side. He determined to learn all that he could about how to control his own fear and hatred, rather than be controlled by it, and to use it against others.

So he looked to his forebears for insight. Yet the ancient monuments and tablets on Korriban brought him no warmth or comfort. Indeed, he felt only the coldness of death and darkness, and knew that he had no desire to be interred in any of the tombs on Dromund Kaas. He sometimes wondered how so many dead Sith Lords passing on the lessons of their tragic mistakes in life could go unheeded and unlearned. One only needed to read to be the wiser for it. His greatest revelation, however, was finding an old, dusty holocron laying at the bottom of a chest full of tattered scrolls. The holocron contained a personal journal from a former Dark Lord known as Revan. In that journal Revan spoke of the need for a Master to take only one apprentice at a time so as to preclude multiple apprentices from overcoming their Master through strength of arms. The question then occurred to him, why aren't the Sith Lords combining their strength instead of betraying one another in gambits for position and power? And so he resolved that he would not be doomed to make those same errors and would shape his own destiny apart from his brethren and see the Empire stronger for it.

By his last year of training, the 14 remaining acolytes in his class had come to fear his skill with the lightsaber, which had progressed to such a degree that he was now able to wield two simultaneously. He came to the sobering conclusion that out of that fear and envy, they would eventually attempt to end his life in order to advance their own standing, as was encouraged at the Academy. He knew what had to be done, and one by one he confronted and defeated them, until he stood against the last acolyte and explained, "Had you all faced me together, you would have saved yourselves." Though he could have easily beaten that last acolyte, he allowed him to live so that he might share the lesson. They both were graduated the next day, his birth name was stricken from record, and he was reborn as Mourne; so named for wherever his enemies were found, death and mourning followed.

His first and last Master was a Darth as unremarkable as his father. While not old, his Master was tired - weary of remaining wary of betrayal, numb from the constant pain and grief, and somehow distant from the Empire he swore to serve. He failed to grasp why such a downtrodden Sith Lord would choose him as his apprentice, and considered it at first to be some form of punishment for killing too many of his fellow acolytes. He later saw that there was much more to his Master than he initially thought, as evidenced by his uncanny ability to plan ahead and prepare for unforeseen events. Yet it wasn't long before he realized that he had the skill and power to surpass his Master, but sensed that his Master had a secret he had not yet imparted upon his apprentice, and so he decided to bide his time. He exercised patience and continued to train and learn all that he could until at last his Master could offer nothing more than his secret he had thus far kept.

As he lay in his quarters one night, musing about the foreshadowing of his father's smile, his Master came to him adorned in his burial robes. He revealed that he had the gift of prescience, and had seen the future of the Empire. He told the story of Darth Tenebrus, a humble Sith not unlike Mourne, who later became Emperor Vitiate, and who would eventually become Valkorian of a new, greater Eternal Empire. He then spoke of Sith Lords who would not be known for thousands of years, and the grim fate that awaited the Sith Order. His Master beseeched him to resist succumbing to petty ambition and to instead seek to unify the Sith under one purpose - survival. While much of it sounded incredulous, Mourne sensed his Master's fear and the truth of his words, and he knew at long last why his Master had chosen him.

Finally, his Master admitted that he knew his apprentice had long since outgrown his abilities, and when that had happened, he had murdered his parents to provide the necessary motivation for him to move forward and to become that which he was meant to be. Before he had fully processed the cunning foresight of his Master, he had already impaled him with his lightsabers. His senses heightened as the anger coursed through his veins, he watched the life leave his Master who sighed his last breath with what appeared to be a sense of relief, and he understood in that moment the burden that had been given to him. He buried his Master, and committed to becoming a weapon wielded with the singular purpose of changing the destiny of his people.

[Seraphie]

Very interesting backstory! I hope that at some point you do decide to wander back into rp!