Yog-Sothothery and AI

I've had fun doing the New Pantheon series of posts, although it's taken longer than I thought and I'm... ⅗s of the way through, I suppose. Two more posts to go to finish it. I've done a few things differently for those posts. I have a lot of AI generated images, which isn't new for me, and I generated most of them myself, but I did do some image searches of AI images that other people have generated and then uploaded somewhere. Not that I would feel bad about using images found online in any case, but I especially don't feel bad about using someone else's AI generated images, because... they're just AI generated images.

No, what is new is that I also used ChatGPT to generate drafts of some of the text. I didn't have detailed descriptions of any of the gods of the New Pantheon, but I knew more or less what I wanted them to be, so I threw a prompt in for each and asked it to whip up a little description, and for the most part, I liked my results well enough that it seemed easier to copy and paste and then do an editing pass (more for style than for content, but some of each) which I've never really done before. But I found it a useful shortcut. I suspect that as I did more of them, my editing got more radical, so that from a style perspective the later ones sound less like AI generated text. But, none of them are truly AI generated text, I used AI to generate a first draft, and because AI text usually reads like it was written by ... well, by AI, I had to edit those drafts anyway. I don't know that there's a reason to us this tool again in the near term, but I'm at least sufficiently happy with the results that I'll finish the next two New Pantheon posts that way, and keep the tool in my back pocket just in case I'm interested in using it for something else again. I'm curious if I use it to flesh out just a bit my rather high level and lacking in details 5x5 Fronts if the juice will be worth the squeeze. The important part of those is the high level outline; I don't expect the details to all be innovative and unique, so delegating some of that to ChatGPT is probably fine. We'll see what it does. 

I do get a bit annoyed with people who reflexively knee-jerk away from the word AI. Just because something is AI doesn't necessarily mean that it's useless slop. Just because something isn't AI doesn't mean that most of it isn't useless slop too. In general, my own personal experience is that AI mostly generates slop, but at least its slop of consistent quality, about the median in what is otherwise a sea of non-AI slop. And if you take AI as the baseline from which to improve upon, then you're already at least at the median of most of what is produced anyway. Not a bad place to start. Especially if you actually are capable of improving it and can use it to accelerate your output. And using AI to generate images for blog posts, YouTube videos and whatnot is now becoming pretty commonplace. AI is coming, no matter what you think of it. It's not going to live up to the hype of the boosters who claim it is a genius robot intelligence that can do everything better than you can, but it will 1) democratize certain tasks that are otherwise out of reach, like getting "good enough" art to make videos and blog posts more visually appealing (and eventually probably replace a lot of book covers and other applications, and 2) be a useful tool that can accelerate the productivity and output of people who find narrow opportunities to use it and can do so in a way that still gives them high quality output. I think it will really accelerate novel writing, for instance, turning details outlines into (admittedly, poor) first drafts. But that's still a major step and will cut a lot of time from people who are writing. I've also seen from Castalia Press, for example, that with a good editor, it can rapidly translate foreign works into English, for instance.

For instance, here's an AI rendering of my disco Sith Lord on Korriban from SWTOR, just for the heckuvit. 

I will also note that using AI this way is often kind of frustrating. I had to put in a few edits to the prompt and still didn't really get exactly what I wanted, but eh. It's close enough. It's a tool that gives interesting, yet not perfect results, obviously.

Anyway, I didn't mean to write a post about AI. I'm actually not sure what I intended to write a post about. Something vaguely Yog-Sothothery, I believe. So let's do that. 

I've been reading SPCM Sagas, i.e., adventure path or campaign-like products by Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos, a now defunct company that briefly made a bunch of 5e D&D products that brought Lovecraftian elements directly into D&D. Unlike other products he's worked on, such as Call of Cthulhu itself, which he created for Chaosium and which was published in 1981 (apparently, his first proposal was a Dreamlands supplement for RuneQuest, but they decided to go all in and just do a Cthulhu game whole hog. CoC also probably deserves a lot of the credit often given to Tracy Hickman for popularizing what later became known as the trad style of gaming in the earliest 80s. Don't get me wrong; it already existed prior to that, but because of CoC, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and more, the style became one that publishers openly catered to and it basically became the mainstream style within the hobby from the earliest 80s to, arguably, still today.) Anyway, in the SPCM stuff, it's not really horror, it's really just straight up 5e D&D, which is pretty anti-horror, with Lovecraftian elements grafted on top of it, sometimes awkwardly, in my opinion.

And in fact that's what I want to get to. Sure, the Yig Snake Granddaddy campaign that I just read prominently features serpent-men, Yig (obviously), Elder Things and the Great Race of Yith. All of the SPCM Sagas prominently feature something from Lovecraft's Mythos; Ghoul Island was ghouls, Ghatanathoa, and Deep Ones, etc. The next one takes place on Yuggoth and prominently features mi-go. Etc. and etc. But the reality is that D&D always did have perfectly viable Lovecraftian entities that are unique, but just as good as anything Lovecraft himself wrote.

Mind flayers, for instance, first made their appearance in 1975 in The Strategic Review #1, the precursor magazine to Dragon Magazine. They became more official in 1976's publication of Eldritch Wizardry, the third supplement for D&D following Dave Arneson's Blackmoor and Gygax's own Greyhawk. Lots of other elements from the early game are vaguely Lovecraftian too; Juiblex and all of the oozes certainly had at least some nod to the shoggoths (also more immediately and obviously to the famous 1958 b-movie The Blob. The biggest problem wasn't that the elements weren't there, it was more that the assumed gameplay had little to do with Lovecraftian horror, and they were reconceived, as was everything in early D&D, as gameable challenges.

By the time we get around to thinking of doing something different, mindflayers, for instance, had been in D&D so long and were so familiar, as were other very strange "Lovecraft-like" monsters like the beholder, that they were familiar and didn't have that Lovecraftian feel to them anymore. Of course, the problem is that Lovecraft's own creations have taken on that same problem due to being heavily promoted in the gaming sphere. Call of Cthulhu is probably the most popular game (over time, at least) that isn't D&D or directly D&D derived), and Cthulhu himself, partly as a consequence of his saturation in nerd culture has become a bit of a joke or meme. The new minions movie in theaters right now for families heavily features Cthulhu, for instance. And a title that's clearly derivative of Dungeons & Dragons, for what it's worth.

So yeah, I don't think that Elder Things, the Great Race of Yith or mi-go are particularly compelling as Lovecraftian monsters honestly; if I'm going to do Lovecraftian, I'd just as soon see all new, all original monsters. And apparently, that's exactly what David "Zeb" Cook thought when he wrote "I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City," one of his early products with TSR after being hired. This came out in 1981, and was specifically designed to be a Conan-esque jungle adventure mostly featuring yuan-ti, which it famously introduced. This is already Lovecraftian, or at least from the Lovecraft Circle, bearing more of a resemblance to Howard's creation from "The Shadow Kingdom" (alleged to be the first "proper" sword & sorcery story), but almost off-hand, as an aside, it introduced the aboleth. The aboleth was intentionally written as a nod to Lovecraft, but it's also a unique and new creature, not something like a D&D interpretation of a mi-go. Aboleth have kicked around in D&D ever since; they were added (like their co-module colleagues the yuan-ti) to AD&D explicitly in Monster Manual II, and have been in D&D ever since, getting pulled "forward" to the original Monster Manual for 3e and beyond. They also featured heavily in some 2e modules like Night Below, a big box-set module that's more like an entire campaign, where the aboleths are actually the end villains. They even featured in a novel trilogy during the 4e era. 

But clearly the best and most iconic aboleth product is the chapter on them in Lords of Madness, a late 3.5 era product that is considered by many to be one of the best products from the entire 3e era run (myself included.)

Now I'm not sure that aboleths have the same pop culture cache as some Lovecraftian entities, even within the D&D subculture. But they are just as good at being Lovecraftian as anything Lovecraft himself created, and actually, for my money, they're even better. They're not so alien as to come across as silly, but are sufficiently alien to come across as horrifying.

Sometimes ChatGPT is stupid

I tried to do another AI generated synthesis of one of my characters from some screenshots. Got some decent images, but then when I asked for a modification, AI got stupid and couldn't figure out which image I was asking it to modify. Here's what it gave me.

I really like the profile view, but I wanted him to turn his head to a three-quarter view. However, first it modified my image from yesterday instead of that one. Which is fine; I didn't need them, but they were good enough looking alternatives, I guess.

Then it still did the wrong one and give me this awkwardly posted alternative...

What's he doing? Saluting? Tipping his hat? Wrong image!

Anyway, I quit while I was ahead, but I want to continue to revisit using AI to turn screenshots into more artistic renditions of these characters. The result is usually pretty cool when I can get the AI to actually recognize what I want from it.

Here's one for Karr Tanus too, although it shortened the gun too much. I tried to get that fixed, and they just made it chunkier rather than longer. I'm not going to bother putting those fat gun images in.

Reading and gaming

So, I am still pretty occupied with SWTOR, but I've also made some pretty good progress on Dweller in the Deep, the Dark Waters trilogy final book that I've been reading. I'm now down to about 40-45 pages left. I might finish it today, but tomorrow is more likely. I'm also doing fairly well with Rise of the Seventh Moon, the final book in the Heirs of Ash trilogy, although whether I finish it before leaving town, or finish it on the flights I have to take (three legs on Monday) is TBD. I'm quite sure that I'll at least finish it on the flight if I don't before. But like I said, I've got plenty of other things that I'm set to read while traveling. It's been kind of nice to get back into reading just a bit after a good two month break where I didn't read much of anything because I was either out of town and busy, or playing SWTOR. I wonder how much of SWTOR I'm going to play "this time around"; will I re-up when it expires again in late March or early April, or will I have played enough by then to feel fine letting it go for a little while? Either way, I can't spend almost all of my free time on it every evening anymore. I'm already feeling a little bit burned out on that. I presume a new Galactic Seasons run will start before too long, though. We're starting the last week of the current season today. We'll see if I can get to the +200 cartel coins or not before the week is over. If I do, I'll almost certainly be able to get two characters in early March when the cartel coins for security key and subscription drop. I've got four planned characters that aren't built because I don't have a slot for them. Of course, if I decide to delete Embric Stane (and maybe re-purpose the name!) then I can get three of them built quickly. Whether I can actually play them or not remains to be seen, of course...

That honestly may be the best use of Embric Stane. I don't care about him as a character, and I don't really want to play him, but I've been reluctant to just delete him. But maybe I should, so I can play someone else that I'm more interested in playing in his slot. Next character to create, just based on how my doc is sorted, would be a trooper using the Operative class. Of course, I already have a trooper that I haven't started actually playing yet, so maybe he's not the best choice. I dunno. We'll see. I still haven't decided to delete Embric yet anyway.

So, Dweller in the Deep is an Arkham Horror novel, technically, but of course that just means that it's a 1920s Arkham Lovecraft pastiche; there's very little if anything that's specific to Arkham Horror that isn't already present in Lovecraft's own writings, or that of his contemporary "Lovecraft Circle" of writers. And I'm coming much more over the years around to the idea that the "correct" way to do Lovecraft pastiche isn't to use Lovecraftian elements, but rather to write stories with all new entities but which explore the same themes and ideas. That makes it less like pastiche and more like... just similar, in some ways. But that's probably for the best. The fact that Warhammer stuff is in some ways one of the best explorations of Lovecraftian themes isn't true because it was so true to a pure Lovecraftian aesthetic, but rather because it took the same ideas and did something new and different with them, in a new context.

Which is also the fun—sometimes—of seeing Lovecraft-like ideas in D&D. Although they normally do it wrong and just stick shoggoths or mi-go directly into the game. Zargon, in spite of his corny, hoaky name, is a good example of doing it right. Especially, and I kind of hate to say this, but it's true, with the 5e version of his art. Although I doubt anything else about the 5e iteration is the correct level of Lovecraftian.

Heirs of Ash, on the other hand, is an Eberron novel trilogy, and yeah; I'm almost done with that series too; should finish on my upcoming work trip, if not before. There's a little bit of Lovecraftian vibes here, with the myserious, unknowable Draconic Prophecy and those who pursue it, the mystery of the Mournland and what caused it, and the mysterious ancient, eldritch whatever stuff that's going on here and there. It's much more subtle, but it works, again, precisely because of that. The Lovecraftian pastiche that's really in your face starts to feel as if DisneyWorld created a LovecraftLand amusement park attraction, and the shoggoths and mi-gos are just animatronic features to entertain you, not have a genuine horrific vibe. 

Mi-go outside Akeley's farmhouse

Frankly, mi-go aren't even part of the Cthulhu Mythos proper anyway. Like "The Colour Out of Space", it's really more of a science fiction pulp story with horror-like vibes. But maybe that's the way Lovecraftiana outta be. Science fiction or fantasy with horror elements is like how Lovecraft himself often did it, and how Robert E. Howard did it, or Clark Ashton Smith, etc. 1920s rural New England is a strange place to keep as an iconic setting for Lovecraftiana anyway. 

I'll also finish Monster Manual II (the 3e version) and then I have at least two Pathfinder 1e setting books in my backpack to read while I'm at it. If it looks like I'm ahead on MM2, or even if I can finish it before I go, I'll load up a couple other books just to have more in my backpack to handle. And I'll load a few pdfs on my tablet and pack it in too. Not only will I be able to read while on the plane, specifically, but that's pretty much the only thing I can do other than fart around on YouTube and Reddit or whatever in the evenings in the hotel. No doubt, my supplier that I'm visiting would be happy to take me partying in the evening, but I don't really want to do that; after spending a whole day traveling or a whole day at their site, either one, I kind of want a quiet evening after with a nice dinner by myself, a phone call home to my wife, a nice hot shower, and a quiet evening in bed with my books until I fall asleep. That should mean that I get plenty of reading done.

I'd really like to read Cults of Freeport and even all three of the remaining Curse of the Crimson Throne modules before the month is over as well as the books I'm reading now, as well as whatever I read on my trip, but we'll see. I'd have to forego a lot of SWTOR to pull that off, I think. Which maybe isn't the worst thing for me to do anyway...

Post Birthday

It was a pretty low-key birthday. I had to work all day, so obviously there was that most of the day. Talked to my folks at lunch. They're in Houston at a cancer hospital running some tests and getting few answers. They're in their 80s (my mom) and just shy of 80 (my dad) and his condition seems to be related to "vax" related anomalous and unexpected turbo cancer. So that's not exactly good news, but it's not worse news than we've already known for months either. It just was a minor update; more the case that I actually managed to catch them and talk to them briefly.

I heard from three of my four kids. Didn't even think about until later that my youngest didn't call. Strange. Of the boys in particular, he's the one I would have expected to think of it the most. Didn't get a lot; we spent a ton of money recently, and are being careful (at least, more careful) this year; I ordered some stuff that I needed for about $50, and we went out to eat for about $40. I'm certainly in a place financially where if I really need or want something, I usually just get it without thinking too much about it, so birthday and Christmas presents being a big deal is a thing of the past, but because my wife wasn't working the last three months, we're watching cash flow until she can start getting paychecks again. Luckily, her position will actually improve in the new year, so we'll be in good shape soon with regards to cash flow anyway. Sigh. Sadly, I'm not going to be in a position to retire early to a 800+ acre ranch in Wyoming. But for more "normal" retirement options, I'll probably be OK, at least when I get to that age. Which, even after my birthday is not really all that close still. I'll no doubt be working well into my mid-60s, and that's not coming for many more years.

 — ( † ) —

Anyway, as expected, I didn't play much SWTOR yesterday, and I haven't read much of anything either, except for my Old Testament audio while commuting in the morning (I save the evening commute for music). I did log in to get the daily login, and got a seasonal accomplishment done. Did some crafting. No big deal. Took a few screenshots, and left them on my other computer, so I can't even add them to this post, although maybe I'll do so later tonight.

I did notice that I was wrong on my crafting. While I'm pretty sure that I had made Phillippion a biotech crafter, which I think I had done, and that I'd maxed out Hutran Thanatos, my Wave 2 Operative as a backup biotech crafter, I thought that I was going to delete Phillippion and changed my mind so that I had two biotech crafters. However, I logged into Phillippion and checked out his crafting companions menu, and he was maxed out on slicing. There was a change that I had made and forgotten about long ago. I don't have a backup biotech after all; Hutran Thanatos has to just be my main for that craft. I redid my list to correct that, and look at who will be backups, and in order to have one primary and one backup for each of the six crafting skills and a primary and backup for the slicing deal-e-o, I would need to utilize literally every single one of my wave 1 and wave 2 characters.

Which is perfectly fine, of course, but I just need to do it. What I think that I'm going to do is stop waiting for them to go into semi-retirement to become crafters; they can craft now, and start slowly bulking up their abilities, plus they'll be able to transform slain enemies into crafting mats. Especially the droids for most enemies, but biotech can scan monsters and get gathered materials out of them too. So all of my wave 2 characters will need to drop by the fleet and pick up their crafting and two gathering skills. 

Here's the list of current crafters:

• J'ohhn - Cybertech (maxed)
• Graggory - Armormech (maxed)
• M'aar'k - Synthweaving (maxed)
• Lu'ukke - Armstech (maxed)
• M'at Thew - Artifice (maxed)
• Hutran Thanatos - Biotech (maxed)
• Phillip'pion - Slicing (maxed)
• Taul Kajak - Artifice backup (not maxed)
• Anstal Tane - Cybertech backup (not maxed)

And here are the characters who will go pick up skills and start working on them, effective tonight.

• Vant Galaide - Armstech backup (Investigation, Scavenging)
• Revecca Arden - Biotech backup (Diplomacy, Bioanalysis)
• Elemer Kell - Synthweaving backup (Archaeology, Underworld Trading)
• Phovos Maledict - Armormech backup (Scavenging, Underworld Trading)
• Embric Stane - Slicing backup

There are six crafting skills and a seventh odd-man-out gathering skill (slicing) so it takes seven characters to be able to do it all, and fourteen to have a backup for each. 

I don't really need a backup for synthweaving, because M'aar'k has already gone into and come out of the expansion storylines, and he has access to his companions again, plus the expansion companions, like Lana Beniko, etc. But y'know. Why not? Maybe I'll even eventually get around to a second backup so I'll have seven more characters engaged in crafting. That way, anyone can go through the expansions without me feeling like I don't have access to crafting while they do so.

I've also been busily working on biochem. I think my strategy of earning money through Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenades was OK, but not the big spender. It looks like Advanced Kyrprax Attack and Critical Adrenals Mk-2 are where the real money is at; those sell for $7M on the GTN. They're obviously a bit more work to unlock and even to simply make, though. I also don't know if I'm hanging on to legendary ember, or if I'll have to grind for some. But I'll try them out and see how it goes. Meanwhile, Johhn is still making and selling grenades. And I'll be in a position to sell some OEM soon too, which is usually pretty big money. I should see a bump in my credit savings in game shortly. 

 — ( † ) —

Finally, SWTOR always makes me think of Capes & Rayguns, formerly Space Opera X, formerly Ad Astra, my space opera setting. I'd like to maybe go back to my planetary data sheets and update them with new ChatGPT generated images. The following was one I mostly did for fun, rather than attempting to resemble any specific planet already defined, but maybe I can see about using it, or even generating a new planet to fit it. It's also interesting to see my evolution through the image process; looking at what I got and thinking about how to change it.

This is meant to be kind of Korriban-like, with a ship in place that's leading an archaeological expedition of sorts.

I'd never been given two options to choose from before by ChatGPT. Maybe it's a New Years feature or something. I decided to go with the lower one as a bit closer to what I was thinking of.

Then ChatGPT took me a little bit too literally and put what is obviously a transparent pastiche of the Millennium Falcon in place. 

This one was a better ship design for my purposes. Then I just added a few more details, and voilà! I was done!

Some lightning, a droid, and an archaeological dig site camp out there on the plain in front of the pyramids, and all set.

Gaming this weekend

I left work early on Friday because I had been coming down with a major cold, or even flu or something, and felt miserable. I actually felt pretty miserable all weekend, but I still went to D&D on Saturday afternoon anyway, and I went to church on Sunday afternoon anyway. I stayed home yesterday from work, although I probably didn't really need to; yesterday was a major improvement on the weekend.

Anyway, it was an interesting session. No combat, hardly any rolls at all. My character went on a date, fer cryin' out loud, which is not really my normal way of playing D&D. But my friends' wife is running this one, so I guess it's a little more... feminine... than most games I've played. 

Not that it wasn't fun, it just wasn't really what I expected. I actually enjoyed it a lot with the exception of being just a little worried that I was hogging the spotlight too much. 

More to the point, the guy who hadn't confirmed did at the last minute, and he did show up. But I did make my pitch anyway to the other couple after he left. I think it's obvious that we'll have him and his adult son, who are the two relatively flaky ones, be flaky on occasion. The middle-aged dad is less flaky than his son, but both of them are always at risk of not showing up, sometimes with very little warning. Next time that happens, I'm going to text just my friend and his wife and see if they still want to meet anyway and I'll start up a smaller mini-campaign, one shot or even just an alternate campaign that will admittedly meet rather more infrequently. That said, I don't know that it needs to be more infrequently. Even without the last minute flakiness, it's difficult to get them on the schedule in the first place. 

They were on board with this. We didn't make any specific plans, but we did agree that this is a good plan. I'm going to have some stuff getting ready in my back pocket so that if this does happen when we are supposed to meet next, I can pull this out of my back pocket.

And I'm almost certainly going to go with the Cult of Undeath routine. Which means, I may need to pull the Carrion Crown read-through ahead, and actually read those rather shortly!

— ( † ) —

Other than that, I've played a bunch of Old Republic this weekend too. I finished Anstal Tane, my Second Wave Scoundrel, so he becomes the third Second Wave character to move into semi-retirement, i.e., I've finished the class story with him. Hutran Thanatos and Taul Kajak, coincidentally both Mirialan green people—one operative and one Jedi sentinel—are the other two. All three of them are working on becoming backup crafters too; Hutran is already a biochem crafter from when I thought I might delete Phillippion, and Taul is coming along nicely as a artifice crafter. Anstal already picked up, although just barely started, cybertech. 

The next second wave character to finish will be Vant Galaide. He's already max level, and only has three planets left to do. Since he's max level, I just do the class stories and skip everything else. Four hours or so of play will get him done, I think. I think I'll have Vant do armstech as a backup crafter. The next highest level characters are actual Third Wave characters; Mirabeau Tane the cyborg gunslinger trooper and Gael Heckett, the cyborg powertech smuggler are both in the sixties. Should I do them next, or should I let them "rest" and finish up some other second wave character? That's what I guess I need to decide.

2026

What am I going to do in 2026 with regards to my hobbies, the on-topic topic for this blog? Probably lots of things, but I'm not going to set goals or resolutions, because I can't know what I'll want to be doing in a few weeks, much less through the whole year. I can predict pretty accurately, though, I suspect.

First off, we executed a successful big family holiday. I went back to my house in the upper Midwest where my son and his family are living, and where my wife was helping as the twins were born. Her task was mostly helping with the other kids, who are still quite little; three, four and five respectively, and my daughter-in-law mostly handled the babies. My son had very little paternity leave, so was mostly at work. My daughter and her family also live sorta nearby with their baby, and my other two younger sons and their wife and fiancé respectively all came home for Christmas. Although the youngest and his fiancé were here the shortest amount of time, We did at least have the better part of a full week with literally everybody in town, and then another week with mostly everyone still in town. My in-laws even blew through town briefly. And then my wife and I took our two cars and caravanned back home together. Our cars, due to the weather up north and the long drive, are super dirty and covered in road salt. One of my tasks in the next evening or two will be to take them both through the car wash and vacuum them out. Today, though, is grocery shopping, which is a more immediate need. Yesterday was unpacking, mostly. My wife was gone for three months, so she had lots of stuff to unpack. My trip was only two weeks, so mine was shorter. Of course, I had to both pack and unpack both cars with all of the stuff, and I'm not that young anymore. Taking twenty five or so heavy loads up and down the stairs from the basement to the car and then from the car into our rental here wore me out. In spite of that, I haven't really slept super well. So, this'll be a relatively slow week, but then I'll get into stuff shortly. 

Firstly, I don't intend to stop my reading plans. I'm in the middle of a novel, and I've got long lists of gaming books in particular to read, plus plenty of fiction and even non-fiction on my docket. I haven't done much of any of this for two weeks, and I ended up capping the year off without finishing anything new that I hadn't finished before I left town, so about 110 total books. Some of those "books" were 32 page modules, so that's not quite as impressive as it sounds, but that was only a few of them; the rest were all legitimate books. This is by far my biggest year since I started tracking my reading, but I suspect that 2026 will at least look similar, if maybe not quite explicitly as many titles. In particular, before the year is out I want to finish the Freeport Trawl, the first one I started. I'm hesitant to say that I'm going to finish any other of my trawls during the year, but I will certainly make progress in them. It's reasonable to hope that I get close to finishing the 3e Eberron and 3e Forgotten Realms trawls, as well as get close to finishing the 3e and Pathfinder 1e adventure paths. But reading actual Pathfinder setting books and physical game books will slow that down. For other books, I intend to read at least a dozen novels or anthologies as well, but that's just a guess, not a goal. As I finish reading some of these, I'll document my progress on my offline tracker, and discuss it here, on my online "dear diary."

Secondly, of course I'll keep gaming with my current group. In fact, our next session is this Saturday. I would like to talk to them, though, at least the two most reliable parts of the group, if they think that the other two less reliable are going to keep our frequency low if we can't increase our frequency by running an off-bi-weekly game for those of us who would like to game more but are "throttled" by the less reliable pair. This, honestly, may be my best play to actually run something this year. My second best play is to try and do something online with a few people that I know who are interested in gaming and who may have some free time, like my son-in-law. But we'll see how it goes. Again, this is less a goal and more just thinking about what I think is likely to happen in the new year. What is for sure is that I will at least continue playing in the campaign that I'm in, although we're lucky if we play once a month for about four hours, so it's not really a lot of gaming.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to plan my campaign 5x5s here on the blog. Maybe I'll be focused enough to actually finish them this year. 2025 was not a year where I made a lot of progress on that front. No pun intended.

Thirdly, my passion for the outdoors isn't limited to the American west; the Rockies, the high deserts, and the southwestern deserts, but it's certainly concentrated there. I don't know for sure what our vacation schedule will look like, but I'd like to at least have one hiking/site-seeing or backpacking trip to the area. I'll probably end up having a wedding out west in the summer, although whether it's early or late summer is still TBD, and I'll probably try and take advantage of the fact that I'm already there to take more time off and do it then. But where exactly I go and what exactly I do depends on, among other things, when the wedding ends up getting scheduled. If I'm there in late May or even early May, or early June, then that's quite different than if I'm there in late August or early September. Many of the mountains won't be available due to snow in May or June still, and even if the snowpack is low and they are available that early this year, the chances of it being really wet, boggy and swarming with mosquitos because of snowmelt is quite high. High priority targets are the Red Castle area of the Uintas, and the Lost Creek wilderness in southern Colorado, as well as the Mill Castle trail in the West Elks Wilderness of Colorado. I've been to the West Elks before, but not to the Mill Castles area, much to my chagrin. I've always wanted to get back there. If I can convince my wife to come along for at least part of it, I've also got different plans; she's not up for anything really very tough, and she's not interested in sleeping in a tent. She's up for drive up hikes and site-seeing, though. Maybe I can take her between Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Royal Gorge, and we can even see Mesa Verde. She's always wanted to see the latter in particular. I'm a little less impressed with Injun ruins, but I did get to spend a few hours there this last year, and I wouldn't mind seeing more. Mostly because I like the scenery, though. I prefer that to the ruins. Colorado is really an incredibly beautiful state, and always has been. I fell in love with the place as a teenager in the 80s, and I'm incredibly bitter that it's turning quite rapidly into the next California. Which is also a beautiful place that I'm bitter that it's been ruined by liberals.

As a brief political aside, I'm coming around to seeing liberals more and more as actual enemies. They're not just our neighbors who disagree with us on a few points of policy. Even the nicest, most naive liberals are guilty of the equivalent of criminal negligence at best, while the less nice, less naive are guilty of aiding and abetting some of the worst political actors in the world, promulgating the worst political ideology in the world. Even Islam, Nazism and Communism are less destructive than globalism, feminism and liberalism. Of course, there's no real legal liability of criminal negligence or aiding and abetting a political ideology, not matter how dangerous it is. But there is certainly ethical and moral liability, and in 2026, I'd like to see a continuation of social liability. You position yourself as an enemy of your people, your family, your heritage and your nation, and you should be considered an enemy.

Anyway, aside over, like I said, only one western hiking trip, and then early in 2027 we're going with some friends of ours to Argentina, where we'll see the Bariloche region. The Andes in summer isn't the same as the Rockies in summer, but then again, their summer is the dead of our winter, and they are impressive mountains, with lots of Swiss settlement, leading to Swiss architecture and stuff. It's a good alternative to Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Utah or Idaho, I guess. 

Also, I'd like to do some shorter trips closer to where I currently live, in eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, and the Carolinas. This progress will mostly not be logged here, but on my very quiet Lone Star Hiker blog instead, though, honestly. 

Fourthly, the two images below will probably foreshadow what I'm into again right now...

Hutran Thanatos in his "black ops" work gear.

Hutran Thanatos relaxing in his retirement gear.

Star Wars: The Old Republic. I'm back again, after I think nearly a year and a half of not touching it. I have a brief month-long subscription that I just started, and I've played just a bit. I'm going to be making a video shortly where I review all of the eight classes, and have backup footage playing on silent in the background while I talk and have a synthwave backing track playing. White Bat Audio would make sense, but I'll probably use Lazy Laser, Neon Odin and/or Xurious tracks, because that's been my go-to for most Old Republic videos I've made. I'll probably re-up the subscription again before I quit playing, and I'll even buy the same month-long deal if it's available still. Otherwise, I'll just get the standard non-recurring two-month deal.

I won't be recording any story playthroughs. I'm just getting footage here and there of some of the cut-scenes and walk-around outfit showcases. I can use them in the background for discussion videos (like swtorista does) or I can use them for outfit showcase videos, which I've made a small number of back in 2023.

Let me briefly note my characters. I have a page dedicated to this, but I don't think it's completely up to date. In fact, I know for sure that it is not.

First off, my retired characters. I keep them around because they are either 1) doing new expansion DLC stuff, 2) they're crafting people who make all of my gear when I need to craft stuff, 3) very useful when I feel like jumping into a flashpoint or doing conquest or seasons or whatever. (Speaking of which, I re-joined more than halfway through a season. Needless to say, I'm not going to bother trying to catch up; if I'm still playing when the next one rolls around, I'll do that instead.) Some of these old characters have funky names with apostrophes and stuff so I could get them to take. My strategy now is to add first and last name to get that uniqueness, but y'know. My first pass was a much more primitive version of the game, and if I remember correctly, it had strict character limits. I'm leaving out the apostrophes and other weirdness and just writing them like normal names, so they're either more correct than the game, or not technically correct—depending greatly on your point of view.

Retired characters

• Maark - The Jedi Guardian and most played single character, probably. Certainly he's gone farther through the expansion stories than anyone else. Not that I really even care much about the expansion stories anymore. But y'know; there's scenery to admire and daily areas and reputation tracks to do, etc. He also does my synthweaving.
• Graggory - literally my oldest character, a powertech hunter, and armormech crafter. I think I stopped playing his story somewhere on Makeb, but he still does a lot of events and other stuff, and I love his look still.
• Mat Thew - one of my least favorite character names, but I love the Sith Warrior two-bladed dude. He's also the guy who crafts my crystals and dyes—artifice, I think that crafting is called. I'm reluctant to take him into Knights of the Fallen Empire because I don't want to lose my companions, but that would be the next step for him, and he'd be the obvious character to do it next. 
• Luukke - my original smuggler, a gunslinger (all of these predate the decoupling of mechanics and story) and my gun crafter—armstech. 
• Johhn - My original agent (a sniper) and my cybertech. This means that he makes most of the stuff that brings in the cash, so he gets more use even now than any other character, although I think I'm still farting around on Makeb with him in story terms. I honestly kind of don't care anymore after finishing the original story, and those characters mostly go into semi-retirement. Only one character has played through all of the expansions. Where I really lose steam is right before the Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne. Losing all of your companions sucks, and I don't love the Odessen companion menu, so I tend to only push characters beyond that if I really want to play the Valkorian story again.
• Phillippion - my Jesse Ventura guy from Predator trooper. He also does the biotech crafting. Of my OG characters, he's probably the one I play around with the least, because the biotech isn't really all that useful. He's my only commando. Maybe that would be another option if I'm looking to add another character. 
• Actsion - my OG inquisitor assassin dude. Now deleted.
• Corinthion - my OG Jedi shadow dude. Now deleted. I might even have gotten these names backwards. Don't remember or care anymore.
• Galation - my second hunter, a pyrotech. More reluctantly but eventually deleted because he was superfluous and I wanted the slot for a new character. I now have more slots and don't care, so I wouldn't probably delete him if it happened again, but whatever. He looks a lot like Graggory, and I played him the same, and before I changed it, they even had the same combat spec. He really was pretty superfluous. Plus, he doesn't craft anything or anything like that. 
• Hutran Thanatos - part of my second wave of characters, a Mirialan operative. For this wave, I went with unexpected racial mix-ups on the classes and gave them actually good names, I think. For whatever reason, I think this is the first of the second wave that I finished. He's in semi-retirement and I still use him for stuff, but he's not a crafter, and I don't need him. I just like having representatives of all the classes. Not that I don't stuck operative on many tech classes as a secondary class, but I honestly don't think about the secondary class all that much anyway. Pictured in the screenshots above.
• Taul Kajak - another Mirialan (by coincidence) who's finished his story. A Jedi Sentinel who was part of my second wave. I was actually recording his story at one point, but forgot to hit record for a section of it and abandoned the recording. Since that was still important to me at the time, I started another Jedi Sentinel, but I kept Taul around, because he's pretty cool. Only these two of the second wave have actually completely finished their class stories. I've been quite slow. I do have several other characters who are max level but who haven't finished their stories, though, in the second wave of characters.

Still in play Second Wave characters

• Embric Stane - my first attempt at using the big bruiser body type as well as the mercenary class. I thought about deleting him several times, but decided to keep him anyway. I have another mercenary hunter instead that is more advanced. I don't even think about Embric very often, but I'll get around to finishing him one day.
• Phovos Maledict - my next Sith Warrior, a juggernaut. I like this character a lot, but my advancement through the story hasn't been all that fast, really. He's only 35th level. I'll play with him some while I'm subscribed again, and advance him a bit. 
• Vant Galaide - the mercenary bounty hunter who "replaced" Embric Stane as my iconic representative of that class. Fully leveled second wave character who is on Hoth, I think, in the story. I'd like to finish him and move him into semi-retirement while I'm still playing right now.
• Anstal Tane - a sith species scoundrel. Again, in the second wave, the most "weird" thing we could do was play an unusual race, not an unusual class with the stories. He's also fully leveled and pretty close to finishing his story. On Belsavis or Voss, I think. Since he's fully leveled, I've mostly just been playing the story missions not the planetary ones. I don't need to grind for XP, so I can move them pretty fast. Mostly, the planetary stories aren't as good as the class stories anyway. With a couple of exceptions, like maybe Tatooine.
• Revecca Arden - Sith inquisitor sorceress. She's sadly behind for a second wave character and I need to give her some love. She's on Balmorra and is level 39, IIRC. Her last name should be an obvious call-back to Flash Gordon.
• Elemer Kell - Darth Maul-looking Jedi Sentinel. Because I was playing him and Taul Kajak at the same time, well obviously one of them needed to get more attention than the other. Sorry, Elemer. He's level 42 and either on Taris or just finished it. He's the last (in this list) of the second wave of characters. The third wave, below, were launched after the game decoupled class story from mechanics, and almost all of them—actually, I think literally all of them—are mismatched in terms of using some other class's mechanics with their story.

Still in play Third Wave characters

• Mirabeau Tane - a gunslinger trooper. The trooper by story is more of a James Bond special agent if you will than he really is a soldier, so I prefer to play him like one. He's actually fairly advanced; I just finished Tatooine with him and he's level 63. One of my most advanced third wave characters, and I've been enjoying him more than I thought I would.
• Codon Veile - a chiss sniper trooper. Operating on the idea that from a story perspective, the trooper is really the mirror of the Imperial Agent, I thought making a character that's the iconic race and mechanics from old promotional material for the agent, but playing him as a trooper would be fun. He's not really very far in, though. Still on Coruscant, I think, and only level 35.
• Wulf Hengest - I wanted to play a vanguard bounty hunter, where his signature weapon was a bowcaster, and Wulf is the product of that. I could play him more, but he's moving along nicely, for a late comer third wave character, honestly.
• Haul Romund - a mercenary smuggler. Although the hunter and the trooper are often considered mirrors because of their mechanics and "expectation" that they're heavily armored, I think the smuggler and the hunter are better mirrors (not mechanically, obviously) because of similar armaments, and the concept of them being semi-neutral free agents and Old West gunfighters in space. I actually rarely make my hunters heavily armored, and treat them more like typical gunfighters. Haul is my first attempt at doing that. He's been a fun one to play. 
• Vash Galaide - my favorite agent, although I need to play him more and move him along a bit. He's actually a powertech mechanically, though, although as noted above, none of his outfits are heavily armored; he's got a mix of black ops sneaky gear, disguises, and uniforms.
• Gandalf Greyhame - I wasn't sure that I even wanted to play another consular, but I decided to give one a go. I made him look like an old man, as close to the Gandalf archetype as I could get, and I'm playing him as a sith sorcerer blasting folks with lightning all the time. 
• Beorn Hengest - another bounty hunter, this time using the Republic zabrak race and the sniper mechanics. I've only played him a very little bit. He's one of the newest characters. I think he's still on Hutta even. 
• Gael Heckett - my powertech smuggler. Another one of my favorites. I just finished Taris with him, and he's level 66. Probably the fastest moving of my third wave characters, although Mirabeau is nearly as high level.
• Saxon Hettar - a sith species agent using the gunslinger mechanics. One of my newest characters. Still on Hutta in his Red Blade guise. 
• Karr Tanus - my rattataki scoundrel playing the trooper story. Kind of an odd one, but I wanted to fill up on some of the class specs, so he's a different type of scoundrel than Anstal Tane. I haven't done jack squat with him yet except run around on Ord Mantell leveling up, so he's nearly as much at the beginning as Vandal below—the only reason he's not is that the trooper is the only class story that you can't escape out of the first cut-scene, start playing, and then come back and restart from the first cut-scene. I had to at least go through the first cut scene with him, but that's all I've done.
• Vandal Guent - my very newest character, and the lowest level, 18. I literally haven't even started the story with him yet. Although I did run around killing trash mobs and doing heroics so he could get a head start. I do that with all of my characters. He's a vanguard, because I wanted to try another combat spec for that class, doing the smuggler story. 

All of these characters are fairly old; there are a lot of cosmetic customization options that have been added to the game since I created them. I'm tempted to start a fourth wave of characters. But I've got a lot of other stories to finish playing before I should think about that. I may look for a few holes in my line-up in terms of mechanical specs that I don't have a character playing, but realistically, I could just get them on my secondary class load-out if I wanted to do that. I don't know what any of these fourth wave characters would be, though. And I have so many characters still to finish that it seems silly to do so. I probably won't until at least I finish some of my second wave stories and move those characters into semi-retirement. 

All of my characters have a sneaky option in their secondary class, so if I feel like skipping trash mobs I can just turn on stealth and go past them. But I honestly don't use that very often or even remember that I have it. Needless to say, I don't enjoy playing the sneaky characters as my main class all that well. Anstal Tane has, for some reason, been the one exception to that so far, and he's max level and honestly almost done with his story. Hutran Thanatos as an operative is even further along, and I liked him well enough I suppose. 

All that said, I do have a Capes & Rayguns blog dedicated to space opera like my own setting development, and Old Republic, which are tied because I often use concept and images from Old Republic to work on my setting. While I'm into Old Republic, I'll probably update this blog less frequently and that one more frequently as a consequence.

Final Vanze Maledictus, and backup character Codon Veile

I watched some of my old SWTOR outfit videos, in part because I was raiding my SWTOR characters for names. I do eventually need to re-up my subscription and see how it all goes with SWTOR again, but I'm not quite in the mood for it now. Mostly I enjoyed listening to the White Bat Audio, Xurious, Neon Odin and Lazy Laser synthwave music that I use for my SWTOR outfit videos. I'm almost more interested in doing more outfit videos than I am in playing the actual game, which sounds kinda dumb, but there you are.

Anyway, here's the final image I decided on for Vanze Maledictus:

Just in case he bites it soon, not that I think that that's likely, I created Codon Veile. Codon Veile in my SWTOR game is a Chiss sniper playing the trooper story. Here, he's a blue-skinned air genasi rogue. The DM did tell me that the rogue character will be leaving the game when he moves out of state to get married at the end of the year, so it'll be nice to have a backup.

I do and always have kinda liked the genasi more than I should, perhaps. I suppose that's why I found ways to incorporate them as core races in most of my settings. Maybe a second remix of Eberron, a system neutral one, that replaces many of the races already in the game with planetouched would work quite well. 

Elves > Aasimar (old style; no winged guys)

Dwarves > Earth genasi

Halflings > fire genasi?

Gnomes > tieflings (pre 4e style)

Half-elves > Air genasi

Goblinoids > Orclings

Orcs, Half-orcs > Water genasi

I dunno; it makes a few of the changes sufficient that it would almost require reworking the nation where they are the most common too; especially the Talenta Plains and the Shadow Marches (or is it Marshes? I never can remember.) Maybe I'd be better off using my EFX map after all and just toning down the HoMM3 influences a little bit and playing up the Eberron ones. Maybe using the D&D names for these elemental races rather than my cute attempts to be more HoMM3-ish and call them genies and tritons, and efreets, etc. isn't necessarily the best idea after all.

I really need to get around to scanning that map, don't I?

One advantage of using the more D&D-like names is that it would be easier and more obvious to adapt the EFX setting to D&D if I do. I'm not giving up on preferring my own system and my own setting, but if I'm playing with 5e D&D heads, and I don't yet know the degree to which they're all ingrained with that system, then it might be nice to have an option to bring the setting to them in a different system. 

I almost feel like I'm back to my old Bloodlines Geocities setting development from 2001-2003 or so, though. Truly what comes around goes around.

UPDATE: I'll confirm later, but I'm pretty sure that we're in the beginning of a Hoard of the Dragon Queen run through. 

Johhn as the Droidmaster

I've mostly moved my SWTOR discussions to Space Opera X, but here's an interesting screenshot of Johhn using elements that give him lots of floating droids. A Droidmaster, if you will. There's five floating droids here.

Season 6

It’s now Thursday morning and I’ve had two days to play around with 7.4.1. Some people on Youtube and elsewhere have made a big deal about the addition of the "Date Night" events. This makes me wonder who the devs are targeting with this update, and who the player base is, or who they think that it is. Maybe I'm the one who's mistaken, and the romance options and stuff is drawing more women to the game than I imagined. I like a good romance as much as the next guy, but if that becomes the main focus of a swashbuckling space adventure game, then something is out of whack, by my account. The perfect amount is John Carter and Dejah Thoris from A Princess of Mars. Sometimes the originals got it so right that nobody else can top them.

That said, I don't really care very much about the expansions. Most of my characters go into semi-retirement after finishing the class story and then very leisurely wander over to Ilum, Section X and The Black Hole… if they actually make it there at all. By semi-retirement, I usually mean that I use them for seasons, events, outfit design for concept art for SOX, and other things like that, rather than that I'm actually playing the story with them. I think it's worth taking a moment to take stock of where my semi-retired characters actually are.

• Maark—the most far along; just finished Ruhnuk with him. Not super motivated to go to whatever is next; the new Voss area, or whatever, so when I play him, I'm very slowly grinding for Ruhnuk reputation. Not that I've done much if anything on that the last two weeks.
• Mat Thew—the second most far along; just finished Yavin IV and the Shadow of Revan stuff; haven’t yet gone to  Ziost, but that would be the next step. Not sure that I want to go on past Ziost and change all of the functional nature of his companions.
• Luukke—somewhere on Makeb. Haven’t gone back to see what’s still to be done, but I think I’m almost finished with it.
• Johhn—still on Ilum; I think I’ve done the Black Hole with him too. Or maybe Section X. I’m not really considering using him for any additional story stuff, though.
• Phillippion—haven’t started any post story stuff with him; I’ve only taken him to Ilum to grind Gree reputation (which is now complete.) Might have grinded some other reputation with him over time, like Oricon or Section X—certainly I did THORN and the BBA, but I’m not doing anything else story-wise with him at all. Don’t care to either.
• Graggory—I might have finished Ilum with him, maybe not. I think I’ve got Makeb on his next mission, but that’s been true for a long time.
• Hutran Thanatos—because he’s the most recent to finish, he’s the only one who I’m actually approaching the post story stuff systematically anymore. He’s finished Ilum (except the two flashpoints) at which point I’ll eventually do The Black Hole and Section X with him, and presumably after that, Makeb.

In general, I don’t much care for the post main story expansion stuff. Some of it is visually pretty, like Odessen or Ossus or Makeb or Onderon, etc. but I only go there for aesthetic reasons or to grind some special event or something like that. I don’t really care what happens to the characters after the main story when there no longer is a unique story for each class, and there’s barely a unique story for each faction. Sorta. None of these characters are advancing very fast, and for the majority of them, I really don’t expect that I’ll ever play past Ziost at the absolute most. I’m especially reluctant to use my crafting characters post Ziost, because they’ll lose access to their companions. Ironically, some of my newer characters might be better positioned to move forward past that, because their companions are just sidekicks along for the ride and the combat support.

The crafting characters, if they do advanced story content, it will probably be because I popped into a flashpoint for some reason. I am still trying to grind for a group achievement, after all, although I haven’t done anything with that since coming back to the game a couple of months ago. Too many other things to do!

So, date night and story advancement; I don’t care. Why do I care about game updates at all, then? Honestly, I don’t really. I find them inconvenient mostly, although I’m glad that they add some new elements, some new environments to visit and go do daily areas on (although lately, you can’t do the dailies without first doing the story, which sucks) and stuff like that. And I like Seasons well enough.  I’m doing season 6, and it’ll be third that I’ve done; the other three taking place while I was away from the game.  I’m not sure that the seasonal armors and weapons are all that cool this time around, but the mounts are nice, and I get extra cartel coins, plus season tokens that I can spend on older season stuff that I missed here and there. (Just added the Rapid Recon Walker to my collections in mounts a day or two ago, for instance.) Two evenings of seasons, and I’ve done all of the weekly stuff that I can. Just the log-on bonus and the dailies will get me another two or three reward track elements before next Tuesday. 

I’ve said before that SWTOR always leads me mentally to Space Opera X, and I’ve had some thoughts on the SOX setting, and how to make it potentially much more useful and fun for me by getting rid of the political alignment of most of the systems, and instead having all major political groups potentially operating on any planet. There’s a reason most planets in SWTOR have both Republic and Imperial stuff going on. Even Ord Mantell and Hutta are notable for their neutrality, and its telling that Ord Mantell for both factions was added to the latest update, and Hutta is coming yet this year too. Voss is maybe the poster-child of the neutral planet where both Empire and Republic have to operate discretely, but that’s just a case of mediocre execution of what is otherwise actually a good idea.

And here's Johhn on Oricon in his Daft Punk outfit.

New outfit video for SWTOR characters

SWTOR characters, and what they can represent in Space Opera X, since I like to use SWTOR outfit designer as concept art for SOX.

SWTOR end game

Well, I had mentioned that the lag seemed to be improved. I still had a lot of it playing Taul Kajak on Voss yesterday. I did finish Voss, including the bonus series. There were two major problems: 1) if playing Jedi Knight, then you actually defeat Sel-Makor as part of your class story before you face his minion in the faction story and have a lot of dialogue that doesn’t make any sense anymore, and 2) the bonus series is super long and tedious. I did it specifically because I hadn’t in a while and wanted to see it again, but I doubt I’ll do it with any of my next wave of characters (I guess I’ll do one Imperial character too, just to see how its different.) I also switched to my second combat style to sneak past a bunch of tedious trash mobs, and it completely screwed up my buttons when I switched back. Overall, my Voss experience was pretty frustrating. Too bad, as I think that it’s a pretty planet, at least, but that’s not sufficient to account for all of the other frustrating or dumb things that Voss offers. It hasn’t been one of my favorite planets to actually play. Of course, if I can get rid of the lag by getting a new graphics card and/or motherboard, that’ll be a major improvement, at least.

 I’ve been waffling a bit on whether or not I want to do the faction story on Corellia with this character, or wait for the next one to come around, but I’m thinking I’ll do it with Taul after all. For all subsequent Republic characters, I’ll just completely drop all exploration, heroic, extraneous flashpoints or faction story missions as soon as I hit max level. I mean, like a hot potato. I’ll abandon the missions in my mission log and ignore all of them from that point forward.

Unfortunately, I’ve never much liked the end game planets as much as I wish that I did. Hoth is the last planet that I really like. Belsavis and Voss and even Corellia have elements to them that are cool, but others that are not. I kind of like planets like Ilum and Rishi or even Yavin IV that come later more than I like these three. Part of my dislike of Voss is the “anthropology lesson” that the writers want to subject you to. They are proud of their setting development on Voss, and spend way too much time going over it with you as opposed to just letting you go adventure out on the planet. You’re constantly having to navigate the supposed tricky diplomatic situation because  of the Voss and their weird culture, and the impact of the Mystics, etc. The writers indulged in that way too often with many of the companions in the game, but Voss is where they really let it hang out there for the whole planetary experience.

In any case, with Taul Kajak now ready to go to Corellia, which is the last normal planet, I’ll almost certainly make that my priority, and just do Corellia and have done with it. Then I can check one more character off as “finished”, or moved into semi-retirement is perhaps more accurate, and decide what to do next. I’d kind of like to finish the two Ilum flashpoints with Hutran Thanatos, actually, and then have him do The Black Hole and Section X, etc. And I’d like to grind reputation on Ruhnuk with Maark. And, I’ve got Anstal Tane and Vant Galaide to move forward with, not to mention Mirabeau Tane. Plenty to work on; I mostly just have to decide what of all of those options I’m more in the mood for. And as I get Taul into semi-retirement, I’d like to make some outfit videos with him and Hutran, my two green guys, at which point I’ll feel like their semi-retirement is more legit. I somehow feel like there’s something still to do with them, and I think that that’s really it.

And then last night, I deferred some of my real life responsibilities to "veg". I listened to some music. I watched YouTube videos about the philosophy and text of the Dune books (the more I learn of them, the less I like them. I'm glad that I only read the first one, didn't even finish it, and instead just watched the sci-fi channel miniseries and now the new movies. They were better than the books, in most respects.) And, of course, I played around in SWTOR. I went to Corellia, although not with Taul Kajak; rather I took my old bounty hunter Graggory, my old agents Johhn and Hutran Thanatos, my old commando Philippion and my old gunslinger Luukke to the Spike and spent some time in the rakghoul tunnels. I had earlier reported that I might delete Philippion, but I'm now thinking that I probably won't; he's my only commando, and I won't be able to showcase any outfit videos or anything else using a cannon if I don't have any commandos. Since I don't really need or want a second commando, I might as well just keep him. Too bad he has a dumb name, but the same is true for Mat Thew, Maark Luukke and Johhn in most respects, and yet I'm not getting rid of any of them. Oh, well

I took some video in the rakghoul tunnels and on the surface of Corellia with another low cost outfit on Thanatos, but I haven't edited the video file or otherwise done anything with it, so here's some other screenshots taken earlier of the outfit that I had Graggory running around in. I'll get some rakghoul stuff later. Because there are two daily challenges that give you rakghoul cannisters, and you can do them pretty quickly, I did them both with all five of the characters mentioned, netting me ten new rakghoul cannisters. If I do that a couple more times this week, I'll be sitting pretty with regards to rakghoul cannisters. I'm a little short on bounty contracts, though—next time that event comes around, I'll need to grind a good twenty new contracts or so.

As noted, this Graggory outfit is very "smuggler-like" rather than hunter-like, but I tend to like my hunters to dress in normal gunfighter clothes quite often. Here he is showing off his stuff on Dantooine, Korriban, Balmorra and Nar Shaddaa respectively.

UPDATE: Actually, maybe I'll go back and do the Voss planetary and bonus series Imperial side with Hutran Thanatos, as well as Corellia planetary. And for Republic, I can do the Corellia stuff with Anstal. Because they belong to Operative and Scoundrel. I can sneak past the trash mobs easily. There's no point anymore in worrying about XP or bonus missions, etc (well, there won't be by the time Anstal is on those planets) so the whole thing will be faster and less tedious than with anyone else. And once I've said that I've done it again relatively recently, I won't feel obligated in any sense whatsoever to try it again for quite a long time.

This is part of what I mean by "semi-retirement." Hutran Thanatos finished the main story, he's max level—but there's still plenty that I can do with him, I find, so there's no reason to delete him, and plenty of reasons to still keep him around for certain things and do things with him. I'd actually like to play the next part of the expansions, probably up through Ziost at least with him too... but I feel no urgency to get that done.

UPDATE II: Good and bad news on the rakghoul tunnels. I didn't realize this before, but if you fast travel straight from the tunnels to your spaceship, it still shows your location as in the tunnels, which are treated as a separate world from the world that you're actually on. This means that if you exit your ship, you go straight to the tunnels too. Nice shortcut! Also, and I think this seems to have been changed, it seems almost impossible to draw aggro now in the tunnels unless you literally attack one of the monsters. You can literally walk through them and not draw aggro. This is very convenient too. The bad news: I forgot that you can only do the Jeelvic mission once per character per week. If my goal was to get 30 rakghoul cannisters, I'll now need to do it at least two more days than I thought, or with more characters than I thought. Or, I can settle and get less. We'll see how it goes. Taking five characters just to ride around and binocular the ceiling in a few places each isn't the most exciting thing, but it's pretty quick and harmless and gives me the currency I need. Sadly, all of the other missions just give reputation, and I'm all done with reputation.

I guess I could do the Heroic 4 and group up with somebody or other, maybe... Might be nice to try something different, and maybe I'll even get grouping credit for it on the social achievements.

Graggory on Dantooine

Hutran Thanatos' rakghoul hunting "discount" outfit

Graggory on Korriban

Graggory on Balmorra

Hutran and Raina about to enter the rakghoul tunnels...

Graggory on Nar Shaddaa