Fantasy vs Space Opera

One recurring theme of my hobbyist endeavor is space opera vs fantasy. In reality, I don’t want to pit them against each other, because I like them both a lot, but one has to be a favorite that gets the more of my attention than the other. My love for space opera tends to come in waves, while my love for fantasy is more along the lines of “steady background noise.” Sometimes space opera crests high enough to rise above the level of fantasy, but other times it troughs to a point lower than fantasy. I still love space opera, but when that happens, fantasy by default comes to the fore. In contrast, I don’t think my love of fantasy is very variable. I think it’s constant. But from a practical standpoint, that’s not very different than going back and forth between the two. I have two settings that I’m nominally still developing, although I don’t do much with either anymore on a regular basis; one is a fantasy setting that’s kind of like a grubbier, darker, almost horror-like sword & sorcery; Conan combined with the X-files, maybe you could call it if you’re OK with handwavey shorthand, the other is a kind of Star Wars-like frontier zone space opera. Considering that Star Wars as a setting is quite broad, I’d suggest that from a setting perspective, its more like the Mandalorian show than the mainline movies; more toned down, more frontier and fringer focused, more aligned with a lot of the same literature that Star Wars itself synthesized than with Star Wars itself as its become since the first movie was released in the 70s.

In many respects, the difference between the two genres is less marked than you would think, and more based on superficial cues rather than major structural ones. One side effect of Star Wars is that fantasy elements in science fiction have become more mainstream than ever, and the idea of literal space wizards and monsters being fought with swords by space-faring fantasy heroes is a mainstream idea. For both genres, I’d guess that I’m more interested in telling stories, or exploring situations if we’re in an RPG environment, that aren’t unique to either genre. Intrigue, skullduggery, frontier/wilderness exploration, and thriller/mystery with a darker supernatural twist would be common to both; although it would “look” a little different in a space-faring setting than in a fantasy setting. But looking different and being different are not the same. Like the iconic and much maligned (in the past; somewhat rehabilitated today) Bat Durston story, but as likely to be a space hardboiled or a space horror story or a Cold War space spy thriller as a space western. The point is that they are plots and characters that are not unique or original to science fiction, but the setting is a science fictional setting.

I’ve also talked before about how as a kid, I wasn’t very interested in Westerns. I thought that they were an old-fashioned story from my dad’s generation. But in reality, as I’ve come to discover, it was the setting, not the tropes of the genre itself, that I struggled with. I’ve since both come to appreciate the setting of the Old West, largely driven by my many wonderful hiking trips taken over the same territory in west Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana, and my appreciation of the tropes of the Western as a superlatively American story about the American character. The same is true about hardboiled stories, although they are more cynical, obviously, and the Cold War spy thriller is maybe not uniquely American given that its most iconic example is James Bond, who is a British character written by a British author, but it certainly captures the zeitgeist of Western civilization including America during much of the twentieth century. Although the Cold War is over, I think most have found that the themes are still relevant with only minor adjustment. Frankly, although I dislike subversion of genres, I think in this case it makes some sense to cast the Western globalists as the villains. It was already a theme in spy novels that spies questioned the morality of their actions, and had cynical doubts about the governments that they represented, so this is maybe less of a subversion and more of an expansion of an existing theme.

This begs the question; if I’m more interested in crime stories, hardboiled stories, Western stories, spy thriller stories, etc. why not just operate in those genres explicitly? What does adding a fantasy or space opera setting add to the experience? That’s a good question. I’m not sure that I know the answer to that, but I can noodle around with some of my own thoughts. First off; I like fantasy and science fiction settings for their own sake. I like making up the details rather than having to research them, I like the exotic nature of alien planets and fantastic settings. They’re fun, and as a fan of fantasy and  science fiction, it’s a big part of why I think it’s fun. Exploring the exotic setting is a reward in its own right. Secondly, having that setting means that problems which couldn’t be an issue in a more realistic setting can be used when desired. If you’ve ever read Jeff Sutton’s First On the Moon, a Cold War spy thriller written in the late 50s involving astronauts trying to claim the Moon as sovereign territory for their respective empires pits an American astronaut vs a Soviet saboteur embedded within his crew. But the story involves astronauts in an extremely hostile environment, and technical problems involving the launch of the lander, the oxygen stores, etc. play an important part of the plot, which wouldn’t be the same if it were set in even the most hostile Earthly environment, like Antarctica or something (except possibly deep underwater.) Thirdly, the themes of those stories play a little different in different settings. Given that the actual cultural landscape has changed since Westerns were as popular as they once were, for instance, or hardboiled stories, there often has to be subtle updates to the themes too. Putting them in a different setting makes the themes stand out, and the nuance between a cowboy in space and a cowboy in 1870s or 1880s in the Territorial west is different.  It’s a bit difficult to explore a theme about culture clash with all of the baggage that our culture has heaped on the actual Old West and the specific peoples who lived there, but if you wipe the slate clean and use stand-ins to explore those same themes, it’s significantly different. Granted, I don’t mean literal stand-ins, because I dislike allegory being too strong myself, although maybe not as much as Tolkien famously did, but I’m not interested in exploring the relationship between the American homesteaders and the Sioux or Comanche, I’m just interested in exploring some similar situations, and maybe seeing how it applies to colonist Third Worlders feeling entitled to take our First World countries from us. Or just exploring the theme more generally and seeing where it  goes. And fourth, if there is any allegorical (or applicability) issue, as noted offhand just now, stripping the baggage of real history and what people believe about it due to propaganda or for whatever other reason, makes the theme more robust and applicable. It isn’t going to be very applicable if people can’t see past the real life players and their biases with regards to them.

Not that exploring cultural or political themes is really my intention with either fantasy or space opera. But you can’t help but introduce them, the same as your biases and beliefs, even if you don’t want to, so I don’t pretend to ignore them, I just don’t want to make them the major focus of anything I do. But they will certainly lurk in the background, because you can’t help but have them lurk in the  background of any type of creative work.

Taul Kajak, shown above in his very original look, just finished Belsavis (including the bonus series) and hit level 79. He's about 20% or so of the way towards level 80, just guesstimating on the green XP bar, which given that I've still got two whole planets to finish before I get to the end of his normal story, is more than enough. Given that I haven't played the planetary or bonus series on Voss or Corellia in a long time, I'm actually thinking that I might do them with Taul.

But I'm also feeling a little burned out with him for the time being, so it's time for him to tag someone else in and take a break on the bench for a little while. Playing Jedi is a bit more tedious than most because you have to engage everyone in hand to hand rather than just sitting back and plinking your enemies to death by spamming the 1 key. Which isn't exactly fun either, but it least it's not difficult or tedious, so it's to be preferred sometimes. 

On the other hand, if I wanted to finish him off, I could ignore the planetary stories entirely, just do the class stories, and be done fairly quickly, and still have no problem getting to level 80 before I'm done (and if for some reason, I'm not quite at 80, spamming the Coruscant Heroics would probably put me over the top.)

Space Opera

The history of the space opera is an interesting one. Arguably, space opera is the earliest and original format of science fiction other than some proto-science fiction adventures. (It’s arguable, because some critics distinguish between space opera and planetary romance. Which I actually think is fair, although it’s questionable to what degree you can really call planetary romance true science fiction at all, honestly. Edgar Rice Burroughs kind of created his own thing with the Barsoom books and others that bear little resemblance to much of the science fiction that followed.) E. E. “Doc” Smith is usually credited as the founder of space opera as it was known in the 30s and 40s when it was quite popular. In addition to Smith—who sadly, I have never read—some important authors in this space and time include Edmond Hamilton (often credited as a co-founder of the subgenre, along with Smith), Leigh Brackett and others, many of whom I have read.

Realistically, many of the “non space opera” science fiction of the 50s and 60s, like Tubbs’ Dumarest, Dickson’s Dorsai, Herbert’s Dune (don’t know why everything starts with D) or Niven’s Known Space or Piper’s Terro-Human Future, and many others that are later, like Alan Dean Foster’s Pip and Flinx from the 80s, etc. were heavily influenced by space opera, including the big sweeping scale, interstellar empires and space feudalism, etc. although the focus of the stories was perhaps less on the space opera-like setting and swashbuckling melodramatic plots. Joseph Campbell and his stable of authors like Isaac Asimov and others may have done sweeping interstellar empires, but they notoriously disliked space opera, and were part of a cabal of editors and writers who kept it down in science fiction literature during much of the 50s and 60s… although it lingered in other media for some time; the Buster Crabbe Republic serials of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were hugely popular (as were the source material that they were based on in decades past.) But it’s fair to say that space opera was at a nadir during much of the 60s and 70s until George Lucas and his friend and frequent collaborator/partner producer Gary Kurtz were chatting during or shortly after the filming they did together of American Graffiti about what to work on next, and they both agreed that the kind of fun, action and melodrama oriented space opera of the Flash Gordon Republic Serials was something that they both missed and would love to work on. Which of course, they did, a little bit later. Dino de Laurentis owned the rights to Flash Gordon and wouldn’t let them go, so Lucas set about synthesizing all of the science fiction, especially the old space opera stuff that he read, into a new setting that was little more than a fusion of a bunch of stock elements, with very little that was truly new or innovative, other than 1) its obvious and immediate intention for a new medium: feature films, and the changes that that would entail, 2) lots of psionic powers and mysticism was pretty normal in the genre by this point (see the Bene Gesserit of Dune, for instance) but combining them with Oriental mysticism in particular and Japanese samurai films in particular was a new idea. To be fair, the influence of the samurai picture was greatly reduced from Lucas’ early drafts, but greatly reduced does not equal completely excised, and some of it lingered in the conception of the Jedi. 3) Although neither Lucas himself (nor Kurtz) probably deserves credit for this, Star Wars was made what it was in the editing room, and its impact on pacing in the genre and even beyond in the entire world of film-making, is hard to underestimate. Hirsch, Chew and Lucas’ own wife Marcia certainly deserved the Oscar that they won for Best Editing more than most winners of that award ever do. But Star Wars as a space opera setting, not as a feature film with innovative feature film features, was really heavily based on the Lensmen series by Smith, with some stuff from Dune, some serial numbers filed off, and of course Lucas’ influences from beyond the science fiction genre, like the Western, the chivalric romance, Japanese samurai films, and World War II aircraft movies. The plot is in many ways an early set-up in the first twenty minutes or so that gives a generous nod to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, turns into an extended Where Eagles Dare homage, followed by a synthesis of the plots of two already similar movies; The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron. With plenty of details changed, of course, and significantly different characters and tone, but still, the plots are easily remarked on and it’s clear the Lucas liked all of those movies. He even used the WW2 aircraft movies as reference points when asking ILM to create the Death Star attack sequence; he wanted the dogfights to look the same, but in space.

But my point here is that Star Wars really isn’t very original, and little of what it did was ever meant to be original. Not that that’s a problem, but it’s worth pointing out. People sometimes think of it as original because nothing had been done in that medium before, and it made space opera mainstream, so people who had no exposure to the vast body of work that Lucas was digesting and regurgitating (basically) probably felt like it was new. Science fiction films prior to Star Wars were dark, often allegorical, cynical or weird (cf. Silent Running, Soylent Green, 2001, etc.) Then again, similar problems were infiltrating all of Hollywood and other entertainment media as well; heroic, idealistic Westerns had been replaced with cynical Revisionist anti-Westerns, vigilante crime stories like Dirty Harry were popular, etc. If the characterization of the Carter years and the lead-up to it was called an American malaise (and it was) it was reflected in our pop culture too. One thing that Lucas tapped into, whether consciously or unconsciously (I sometimes think the latter given that he described the Empire as the United States and the Rebellion as the Viet Cong at one point) was the desperate desire of the American people to feel confident and right again, and not be deluged with reflections of the problems that liberals caused in our country in our pop culture due to their dysfunctional self-hatred. I’m not always sure if pop culture leads culture or the other way around, but it’s no shocker that not long after Star Wars came out,  Reagan was elected with a kind of America First type agenda and a firm belief that America was a great place full of great people, in spite of what the politicians and other radicals had done to it during the late 60s and 70s.

I’m personally a little less interested in the specific tone of the original space opera, but I’m even less interested in the cynical woke attacks on that tone and identity politics that were already started to creep into pop culture as early as the 60s and which really metastasized following the 2016 election and the complete flipping out of the most broken and dysfunctional aspects of America—which sadly, kind of steal the show in our country, since they infiltrate the corporate world, the governmental world, the academic world, and the various entertainment media. We’re bombarded non-stop with anti-American and anti-white agitprop and hate speech. So, space opera doesn’t have to just slavishly repeat the tone and tropes of the 30s and 40s, or even the 50s and 80s—but it also shouldn’t subvert them and turn them upside down. It’s possible to have a more organic rather than resentful and destructive evolution of the genre, and that’s what I’m looking for. Star Wars was originally an organic evolution of the tropes of the earlier Republic serials take on space opera, which was in turn an organic evolution of the works of Smith and Hamilton et al. but Disney Star Wars has been a conscious and mean-spirited rejection of what Star Wars was and an attempt to wear it as a skinsuit for hateful, resentful, covetous and envious woke ideologues. This is exactly the reason why—or at least one of the prominent reasons why (another being that it's just simpler to play in your own playground, even if you’re using someone else’s toys)—that my Star Wars Revised game setting, originally set 1,000 years after Return of the Jedi, evolved into Ad Astra and from there into Space Opera X. I want to explore different themes and different tones with different details than Star Wars has done, although in a setting that is superficially very similar to it in many respects. But it’s also just as superficially similar to other space opera settings, for the same reason and  in the same way that Star Wars itself is superficially similar to them. Space Opera X is a synthesis of all of the pop culture influences that are in my mind, and Star Wars itself looms large there, but not monolithic or alone.

One of the curious things about Star Wars is that it literally embraced the critiques of critics of the past generation. The first issue of Galaxy, for example, mocked the idea of space opera by having a passage on the back cover that was simultaneously set on Mars and in the Old West, and showed that with the substitution of a few descriptive words;  Martians for Apaches, rayguns for six shooters, etc. that the passage itself was identical. While the idea that science fiction could be so divorced from science that the plots, characters and scenarios could be transplanted from one genre to another without any change was mocked by the Campbellian crowd, in reality, there wasn’t ever anything wrong with that, and Star Wars has shamelessly adapted plots, characters and scenarios from all kinds of other genres, most especially Westerns, hardboiled or noir stories, Arthurian romance, samurai tales, spy thrillers, etc. And its done so reasonably well and reasonably successfully, to the point where later generations are probably both confused and even miffed at the suggestion that it shouldn’t have ever been done. The Mandalorian show was successful (for a time) by rather carefully and cautiously being a flat-out Western set in space, Boba Fett promised (and then failed to deliver) the idea of The Godfather or some other kind of crime story set in space (and was instead a really cheesy remake of Man Called Horse interspersed with a nonsensical and incoherent crime story with a main character that they shied away from making a criminal, for some reason), the Andor show promised to be a spy story set in space (although many, including myself, had tuned out by then. I may yet watch it, though. I’ve consistently heard relatively good things about it.)

So space opera just becomes shorthand, in its modern, evolved definition, for adventure stories that are set in space but don’t focus on the science so much except as a bit of color. In fact, most space opera that I’m familiar with specifically uses pseudo-science and absolute technobabble in place of science. In some cases, Star Wars included, they have flat out magic and space wizards replacing science, and they do it with a straight face. The Campbellian ethos is well and truly dead, and I, for one, don’t miss it. A good example of actually good elements representing this stuff even comes from the terrible Rise of Skywalker movie. Exegol, the Sith cult dark lord magic planet is actually a cool element. (I’d love to see it brought into the Old Republic. If Exegol is supposed to be this really old Sith world associated with the quest for immortality, it makes sense that Tenebrae slash Vitiate slash Valkorian would have been there at some point.

Space Opera X

As a quick aside; I mentioned Space Opera X below. I have a lot of material here under the old name for that, Ad Astra. I have a wiki too. And my other blog, which I actually never really figured out how to make distinct from this one, so I didn't do much with it, has some additional material. In fact, most of the most up to date stuff is buried in blog posts there.

This is a terrible way to organize setting material. It took me a few minutes, looking in several places, before I could find the name that I renamed the Carrick Grand Marches to; I had almost started to wonder if I remembered that wrong and I made no change to the name at all! (I had. I just had to find it.)

Because playing SWTOR always makes me hanker for more Space Opera X, I want to make some blog updates, but I don't want to make them here on this blog. I want to add setting data sheets to the wiki. I want to update the wiki with the latest from the blog. But I like the format of blogging. My blogging is often terrible to read, terrible even for me to reread, but it serves as a useful stream of consciousness brainstorming activity, so I like making updates on the blog.

I think I'll keep using my other blog for that. Ironically, although it's called Dark Fantasy Gamer X, it's really evolved into the Space Opera X blog, for all intents and purposes, and Dark Fantasy X is come back home to this blog.

As another aside, I'm struck by how often I create similar looking outfits for different characters using similar elements. I have a lot of Mandalorian style helmets on the green Havoc Squad Officer breastplate, for instance, and lots of Infamous Bounty Hunter coats making up winter outfits, and I like the Winter Outlaw in general, even for outfits that are lighter than Hoth and Ilum, for instance. Those are just a couple of examples, but given that I like what I like, I find that on looking at my characters, I don't have as much variety of look as I would think. Maybe this isn't a bad thing, because I do like what I like and I don't want to end up with looks that I don't like, even if the alternative is looks that are repetitive. But I'm tinkering just a bit with some of these too, and where I find that I've overused certain elements, I'm changing them out in situations where they don't look quite as good as they do somewhere else where I'm also already using them.

This also has some tie to Space Opera X, because I sometimes use the outfit builder to create archetypal characters or character looks that I can use in Space Opera X, especially with the various gunfighters (I don't have anything that's quite the same as a lightsaber in Space Opera X, so I can't use the Jedi and Sith to get quite the right look.)

Here's, for example, a few pictures I took a while ago of Luukke on Ossus showing off the "prosperous free trader" look; one that I think could be representative of a small-time businessman who makes his living as a spacer transporting freight from places of supply to places of demand. Many such independent businessmen will barely eke by; making just enough to stay ahead of creditors, and to refuel and resupply their ships for their next run without actually ever getting ahead. This guy, on the other hand, has been a bit more savvy than most and done well for himself.

SWTOR Keepers

I did it, over the weekend. Hutran Thanatos got to level 700 with his crafting and gathering skills, and I deleted Galation. Farewell, oh digital friend that you were. 

RIP Galation 2019 (?) — 2024

I also played a fair bit with Taul Kajak, my Mirialan Jedi Sentinel. He just arrived on Belsavis now, and he's level 76. If the planetary and character story arcs on that planet don't get him all the way to max level, I presume that the bonus series will finally do the trick. I've decided once and for all that I do want to get another character to max out slicing and replace Phillippion, and I'll have gotten rid of all four of the characters I had with the worst names, that I'm not really very interested in doing anything with anymore. But I don't want Taul Kajak to be the guy who does that. He's just not going to be a keeper in the same sense. I'll probably actually keep him, I mean, but I won't do much with him except glacially slow tinkering around with the post story story. I've already got a Jedi Knight for one thing, although he's not a Sentinel, he's a Guardian. But either way, I don't want any of my new keepers to be another Jedi Knight or Sentinel. I have a Jedi Knight, and I have a Marauder Sith Lord, who's more or less equivalent to a Sentinel.

I'm actually thinking that the most different character I have who's reasonably far along and who would make a good slicer, is Anstal Tane, my sith species Scoundrel playing the smuggler origin story (I actually created him during Onslaught, so all Scoundrels were smugglers at that time.) So my crafting/gathering keepers would be 

1) Jedi Knight Guardian - Synthweaving (Maark)

2) Sith Warrior Marauder - Artifice (Mat Thew)

3) Smuggler Gunslinger - Armstech (Luukke)

4) Bounty Hunter Powertech - Armormech (Graggory)

5) Imperial Agent Sniper - Cybertech (Johhn)

6) Imperial Agent Operative - Biochem (Hutran Thanatos)

7) Trooper Commando - Slicing (Phillippon) change to Smuggler Scoundrel - Slicing (Anstal Tane)

It's maybe not the most diversity I could have; two of them have the same origin story (agent) for instance, and it will become two more with the same origin story (smuggler). But I don't need to delete some of my other newer characters just because they're not crafters, and in fact I don't intend to. The ones I want to delete are the really old ones with stupid names and haphazard progression.

I will have three origin stories of Trooper, but none of them will be an original trooper class; I'll have one gunslinger, one sniper and now one scoundrel.

I have several mercenaries, but no commandos once Phillippion is gone. I know that they're supposed to be mirrored, but I don't really think of them as similar in feel, and I greatly prefer the mercenary to the commando with his big cannon. They're not all bounty hunters, although two of them are. I don't know for sure if I'll keep Embric Stane either; I was queued up to delete him earlier, and decided to play through with him anyway. I could always change my mind and delete him, or delete him after he's finished, either one. I also have one vanguard, but he's actually playing the bounty hunter story. I'll keep him just because I've created an original trilogy Boba Fett lookalike outfit for him that I want to keep indefinitely. 

And of course I'm super light on jedi consulars and sith inquisitors, because those are my least favorite classes.

I don't have any plans to delete anyone else, except for Phillippion once I get Anstal Tane up to max slicing (which I won't do until he's max level) and maybe Embric Stane too, since he's superfluous in every sense except that he's the only "big" character that I have. There isn't any particular rush to do so, though—I have enough newer characters still on my docket that I really shouldn't be entertaining creating more, Karr Tanus notwithstanding. Speaking of which, I picked up Gael Heckett for whatever reason this weekend too and played all the way through Ord Mantell with him, did the heroics one more time, and took him off to the Republic Fleet. Then I had him do the Ord Mantell bounty since it's still bounty week until tomorrow. Maybe twice, even—Saturday and Sunday, I think. He's level 25 and he hasn't even done the Esseles yet, so he's somewhat grossly over-leveled, but that's OK; I like characters to be higher rather than lower level. Sure, they're level synched, so there's not a ton of effect in terms of their ability to play any planet, but I like to have more options rather than less on the combat quickbars, because otherwise they're kind of boring to play.

If I were to play my old paradigm of trying to keep everyone more or less within a 1-2 planet band, except for a few outliers and the older characters, I'd probably need to do the same to both Saxon Hettar and Beorn Hengest (and now Karr Tanus too); finish up their starting planet and get them to the Fleet, before turning to any of my other newish characters that mostly have all finished the second planet and are on their way to either Taris or Balmorra, depending on faction. That's where Haul Romund (smuggler), Vant Galaide (bounty hunter), Wulf Hengest (bounty hunter), Embric Stane (bounty hunter), Phovos Maledict (sith warrior) and Revecca Arden (sith inquisitor), Codon Veile (trooper), Mirabeau Tane (trooper) and Vash Galaide (agent) are all at. But I still haven't decided that that's what I'm doing, and it does maybe seem a little boring to have everyone in the exact same place. I've been focusing more on my outliers that are ahead anyway.

I think part of the problem is that I enjoy the beginnings of the stories more than the ends sometimes and the later middle sections. I'm thinking that I'm going to finish the story with Taul Kajak, since he's sorta in the endgame, about to start Belsavis. I shouldn't need to do the planetary stories on any of the three last planets if I don't want to, because I'm already pretty grossly over-leveled with him too (level 76 on a planet that was designed for about level 40) but I think that I often skip the Belsavis, Voss and Corellia planetary stories, so I should probably do them soon with someone just so I don't forget them. Maybe they don't all have to do the same planets; Taul can do one, and the next two characters that come along on Republic side can do the other two respectively. Or maybe I just do them all with Taul and quit with my other characters once I hit max level, dropping all but the class stories for a few playthroughs. Because the planetary stories are only faction specific, not class specific, they get tedious after a while, because you repeat them much more often.

After I finish Taul, which hopefully won't be much more than a week or so of playing, then I'll turn to Anstal Tane and finish him; he's the furthest along otherwise, and he's the one that I've targeted to take over Slicing. Elemer Kell is the next farthest along, having finished Taris on the Republic side, but he's a jedi sentinel, and so is Taul, so he'll take a backseat while I do a couple of Imperial characters after this; probably Vant Galaide, and then either Revecca or Phovos. 

And I hesitate to think too far ahead after that and will likely change my mind by the time we get here, but Haul Romund and either Mirabeau or Codon would probably be after that, followed by Vash Galaide or Wulf Hengest and the other of either Revecca or Phovos.

Whew. Lots of playing still to do. UPDATE: One good reason to switch back and forth between two or three characters is that you get tired of doing the same thing with one all of the time. My Jedi can't sneak without swapping his combat profile, and I get tired of drawing aggro on people that I have to fight hand to hand. I get tired of drawing aggro in general, but when I can sit back and take potshots with the 1 key and be done in a few seconds with a minor combat, it's not quite as bad as when I have to jump into hand to hand and be a little more engaged. Playing is supposed to be relaxing, not stressful. 

Hoth was a big planet, especially because I did all of the planetary story and the bonus series, and then after the idiotic "let's kidnap the emperor!" plot went spectacularly sideways, I headed off to Belsavis, which is also big, with Taul Kajak. For some reason the last three planets, which are actually fine, feel tedious to me because I've been doing the story so long by this time that I'm ready to be in the endgame. But... it takes quite some time to do it, and the opponents are geared for high enough level that they're not quite as easy to mow through quickly. It's a real shame, because Voss is beautiful, and Belsavis is a fascinating ecological idea. Corellia is ... eh, whatever, WW2 Dresden. We got it. 

Anyway, I did some other stuff between Hoth and Belsavis, like playing Ord Mantell with Gael Heckett, mentioned above, and a few other things with a few other characters. But I think that after I finish a Jedi on Belsavis, I need to go back to one of my tech Imperial characters that's due to start Balmorra and cleanse the pallet by shooting stuff. I think Vant Galaide has been calling me for some time, honestly.

SWTOR vs Space Opera X new discussion

I decided to pull a few minor triggers in my SWTOR landscape. First, I took Hutran Thanatos, who just finished all of the Ilum story arc (with the exception of the two back to back flashpoints that really finish the story arc), took him to the fleet, and started training him in Biochem crafting. I spent a lot of time in the background while doing other things trying to keep that crafting leveled up; I’m in the upper 400s for the main skill and the two attendant gathering skills. As soon as I hit 600, of course, I’ll have hit the original crafting level cap, and I’ll have to spend credits to get him access to the next 100 levels and the “new” max of 700. Because I don’t really do much with Biochem, I don’t have a bunch of cool one-off schematics that I’m worried about him picking up, so once he’s done that, the reason for keeping Galation, my current Biochem crafter, will be gone.

 As a curious aside, I think I’ve gone farther in the story with Hutran Thanatos than I have with my original agent, Johhn, who’s still got some Ilum missions to complete. Then again, I’m pretty sure Johhn did Section X, the Black Hole and CZ-198. Technically, out of order, I suppose. Either way, that’s a curious little fact.

 I did this in part because I realized that I had way too many bounty hunters. Part of the reason for this is my “abortive” attempt to play the story with Graggory, my oldest actual character, meant that I thought I needed to create a Graggory look-alike for the bounty hunter story, and Galation was that character. (I actually had two characters on another account from way back during the demo days when you had to have a subscription just to play. I don’t even have that account anymore, so realistically Graggory is from my “reboot” of SWTOR playing much more recently; like in 2019 or so.) But I kept him because he was my Biochem crafter. If Hutran Thanatos becomes my Biochem crafter, then the reason to keep Galation becomes nothing more than nostalgia and holding on to something old that I don’t even need anymore. I’m quite certain that this isn’t a compelling enough reason, so the second change that I’ve triggered is that I’m preparing to retire Galation completely and delete him. This will be a slightly longer winding down process than maybe it needs to be, but I want to be thorough. I want to get Hutran Thanatos all the way up to 700 on his crafting skills first, I want to find a home for the legacy or unbound gear that Galation is holding on to (I know for sure that he’s got stuff like ice scrabbler jerky; the only schematic that is unusual, although I don’t know if I care to lure anymore pet tauntaun babies to any more characters anymore at this  point.) I’m also pretty sure his cargo hold is full of armormech crafting sets that Graggory made. Not sure why they ended up with Galation, but they did. Someone else will have to hold on to them. Johhn, being my default “banker” is probably the obvious choice, but we’ll see.

 Another aside. When I first made my big wave of characters of all of the classes, I didn’t have any idea what to name them. I decided to go like Luke (Skywalker) and name my Jedi knight Mark. Although in order to make the name work, I had to add some apostrophes and doubled letters, and he ended up as M’aar’k or something like that. I tend to write it Maark for ease. When I had Maark, not knowing what else to do, my mind was drawn to making a Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I still needed four more names, so I kept going in the New Testament and made an Actsion, Corinthion, Phillippion and Galation. I tend to hate all of these names now, but they’re not worth changing. Of course, Corinthion, Actsion and now Galation will all be deleted too. My next wave of characters had better names, using first/last name format and cool “Star Warsy” generated name list names. I tend to like all of my new names, at least so far. Phillippion is just my slicing gatherer, so I could do the same thing to him once I get another "new" character into the max level and finished with the main story category. Then my only real original badly named characters will by Mat Thew, Maark, Luukke and Johhn. Which aren't nearly as bad as Actsion, Corinthion, Phillippion and Galation were.

 And finally as part of the winding down, I recorded and edited some footage last night of Galation wandering around showing off all of his outfits. His outfits are maybe a bit on the old-fashioned side; I used a lot of world drop stuff, for instance, because I didn’t have a lot of cartel market or reputation items yet when I created most of them. This is maybe a bit of a last hurrah; he gets to show off his stuff before it all disappears forever. Once I document the pieces used, I’ll edit some sound (music and maybe me talking) and post it on youtube. It’ll be a nice tribute to Galation when he goes away forever.

 The third thing that was triggered was, that by deciding to get rid of Galation, I can create a new character and still be in the same place with regards to open character slots, so I went ahead and did it. I’m actually down to one open slot, but once I delete Galation, I’ll be back to two, which is plenty given how many characters I still need to play through before worrying about possibly making even more. I wanted a rattataki and I wanted another scoundrel with the damage over time spec instead of direct damage, so I created him as such, but he’ll be playing the trooper origin story, since that’s the one I have the least of. I not only created him, but played around with him to get him to 10^th level, took him to the fleet, and got him some stuff out of my legacy bank. I’ve created about half a dozen outfits for him, which I’ll show off, including one that looks almost exactly like an outfit of someone else’s that I highlighted a few posts ago. I’ve said before that my interpretation of the trooper is less like a regular soldier, and more like a James Bond-like agent. He has a reporting structure, sure, but he doesn’t stand around in uniform, participate in parades, salute his superiors or otherwise act in a stereotypically military fashion. He’s combination special forces and more the operations side of intelligence—an aggressive, action-oriented spy or something like that. Again; more James Bond than anything else. That actually mostly works with the story as written, it especially works with the three troopers that I have ongoing, who are respectively a gunslinger, a scoundrel and a sniper rather than a more direct combat soldier-like type of class. I also don’t really believe in my troopers or my bounty hunters either one running around all that often in heavy armor. They’re more like gunfighters from the Old West… except in space.

 I named this character Karr Tanus, which is a slightly respelled version of a name from my Space Opera X setting again, and which sounds very Barsoom-like, now that you mention it. Given that he’s a somewhat exotic alien rather than a human, I like that he’s got a Barsoom sounding name rather than a “Star Wars” sounding name like many of my human characters do. He’s obviously still on Ord Mantell and hasn’t even done the first mission yet (although as part of my leveling up, I did the Heroics—go figure.) But I didn’t make planet-specific outfits for him, I’m intending rather, like I did with Hutran Thanatos, on playing most of the run in my main outfit. Although I have a few other alternatives, because of course, why not. And I can get some variety when needed here and there.

 SWTOR always brings me back to Space Opera X, and although I haven’t done much except re-read a few of my posts on it, and think about what needs to be done. The biggest unfinished yet crucial task to get it “ready” is detailing the worlds of the Takach Kingdom, which has become less of a minor aside and more likely to be a major “protagonist area” or at least protagonist home base or friendly ally. There’s a few big differences between the Space Opera X setting and Star Wars. To wit:

 Star Wars has a lot of aliens compared to Space Opera X. Of course, I have some. But I really focus more on human ethnicities, many of which are quite exotic, because they diversified long ago on different planets than Earth, although genetically they are similar enough to be considered the same species (one of the great mysteries of the setting.) So, I’ve got exotic pale gray people, blue people, red people, and people with funky colored eyes, etc. And of course, a lot of people who are simply the descendants of Americans who went into space many, many generations ago. It’s mostly humanocentric in the way that Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age is. The aliens are mostly there for color and flavor; the setting is really telling the story of recognizably American space cowboys, swashbuckling adventurers, princesses, and whatnot.

First, the travel limitations make travel less easy and instantaneous (relatively speaking) in Space Opera X rather than Star Wars. There are comparisons that Traveller (the game and setting) make to Colonial ships having to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the 1500-1700s, which was a major undertaking to do still, or to the Pony Express maybe. And my system works very much like Traveller’s. You can’t talk via holocommunicator across the breadth of the galaxy, nor can you travel via hyperspace from one end of the galaxy to the next in a relatively short time. You can’t communicate long distance at all except in person through bulk jump (hyperspace, basically) travel, and then regular signals when within a single system. It takes months to get from the edge of the Monarchy’s main space lanes to get to their colonies in the Colonial Main, and that’s with many stops at many star systems in between, which hopefully occur without incident. Communication is as bad as travel; you can’t communicate across interstellar space at all except by making bulk jumps and then sending a signal when you’re close enough. Keep in mind that it takes NASA something like 18 hours to send a signal to Voyager 2 on the far edge of the solar system, and then it will take another 18 hours for Voyager to send a signal back. Communication—and travel—in space is a big deal. I actually like what this does to science fiction. Rather than handwaving away a solution like Star Wars has done where you can make a phone call across hundreds of millions of light years and it works just like a phone call to the neighborhood next door, the limitations force an interesting frontier vibe on the Colonial Main, the main area of my setting where stuff is happening, and that frontier vibe is crucial to  the flavor of the setting. You have to be self-sufficient, because help is never close by. 

Secondly, Star Wars had a very simple conflict system; the cartoonishly villainous Empire vs the “regular folks” of the Rebellion, or the Republic in some areas. Sometimes a few other players are woven in, like the Hutt Cartel, or other gangsters, or even extragalactic invaders in the New Republic novels, or the Alliance and Zakuul as two additional major players for part of the Old  Republic. Space Opera X is more about relatively smaller communities, and even those communities refer back to about half a dozen or so “major” groups, all of whom could be allied or antagonistic towards each other. My Revanchist Republic is actually the most overtly evil, being based mostly on modern day Clown World SJWs and wokesters. Even my Sith Empire analog, the Seraeans, have redeeming qualities, especially the Colonial ones who often are out in the Colonial Main because they chafed under the Imperial order anyway. This is more like a space-faring space opera Hyborian Age in some ways all over again; multiple nations with differing characters, so I can have all kinds of different stories and conflicts when I need them. Just like Howard may have wanted to tell a story in Ancient Rome and then another one in Ancient Egypt, and have it be somewhat coherent, I have multiple cultures that represent a combination of a real, often historical, culture and a modern ideal. But if you want to be able to tell any kind of story, you need more than just two political poles. So, that’s what I’ve done.

Anyway, those changed assumptions, or differing assumptions, mean that Space Opera X will necessarily feel a bit different than Star Wars, and it will facilitate more the kinds of stories that I prefer to tell. Not that it doesn’t still strongly resemble Star Wars, but to the extent that it does, it more resembles Star Wars as it was in the 70s than it became even after Empire Strikes Back. Much more Flash Gordon-like than it later became. Y’know what would be extra cool? If I could have access to the digital assets of SWTOR and make animated cut-scene like movies, but whole movies, or episodes of shows, or whatever, using them. I’d have to make some modifications; Chiss that have normal eyes, Rattataki with hair, etc. But how cool would that be?

UPDATE: Work's been very crazy today, but I do have another window open and I can take a few seconds here and there to start gathering and crafting missions. I passed the 600 level threshold with Hutran Thanatos, so I'm very close to not having anything left to hold on to Galation for. He'll be gone by the time the weekend is over.

CYOA: #11 The Mystery of the Maya by R. A. Montgomery

I read this over a week ago, but I’ve been busy and haven’t written up my review like I normally would have already done. I had said earlier that I thought R. A. Montgomery was the writer that was more likely to throw gratuitously “cool” stuff into his books just because it was cool, and Edward Packard was the one who was more likely to either show off some research he’d done, or try and teach an educational or philosophical or social or political theme in his work. I’ve come around with this re-read as an adult and flip-flopped that assessment, at least so far. Granted;  I’m still  pretty early in the series, all things considered. Mystery of the Maya is number eleven in a series that lasted for over a hundred volumes (not that I’m going to review more than about twenty five or so of them). If you recall, I’m coming off, recently, five Packard books in a row; The Mystery of Chimney Rock, Your Code Name is Jonah, The Third Planet from Altair,  Deadwood City, and Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? not to mention, of course, the original book in the series, The Cave of Time. I’ve also already read four total books by Montgomery now; Journey Under the Sea, Space and Beyond, The Lost Jewels of Nabooti and now Mystery of the Maya.

To be fair, maybe my impression was made by the later books in the teens and twenties, where I do think Montgomery’s titles tend to be more action and adventure for its own sake and Packard’s tend to be more high concept and sciencey.  The difference between space opera like the hugely mainstream popular stuff like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon vs. the “genre ghetto” of “more serious” science fiction in the Campbellian tradition, if you will. Stuff like Montgomery’s Escape! and The Race Forever and War With the Evil Power Master or even The Abominable Snowman come to mind, while Packard’s titles like Inside UFO 54-40 or Hyperspace certainly seem to fit the bill of trying to be too intellectual instead of too cool and fun and adventurous. Unless my more modern read-through coming up changes that perception of those upcoming titles. Of the books so far, the opposite has been true—Packard’s are more fun and Montgomery’s are more hippy gibberish and navel gazing. Space and Beyond was an insufferably incoherent blend of stock science fiction ideas and shallow proto-woke New Age philosophy, while Packard showed a capability at capturing the important aspects of a given genre, even when he didn’t always have the absolute best ideas out there (spies chasing a secret whale song so that it could be decoded to discover a secret humpback whale hideout, for instance.) And Mystery of the Maya is no exception. In fact, it fits exactly what I had previously called Packard’s MO; it reads like Montgomery had just taken a vacation or cruise ship to Mexico, visited some Maya ruins, gone to the library and read a quick and shallow book about the Maya, and then decided to write a Choose Your Own Adventure book that’s half cultural anthropology treatise, half New Age weirdness. The premise is that you’re a journalist on your first assignment, which is to discover the breaking news of why the Maya civilization disappeared hundreds of years ago (yeah, I know.) While there, most likely you’ll take a magical potion and travel back in time to the Maya age, where you get to interact with the Maya and experience all of the things that some cheap tour guide in Mexico told Montgomery about the ruins that he was looking at at Chichen Itza or Tulum (which is curiously misspelled consistently here as Tulumn. I can only assume that cruises to Mexico weren’t as common in the late 70s and early 80s as they are now.)

While I didn’t particularly love this one as a kid, and when I was divesting myself of some of these titles, I would have loved if someone else picked this one up, in truth, nobody did, so I still have my original copy. Mine appears to be a first printing, from 1981. The trade dress on the spine was the larger colored letters rather than the normal title; a trade dress fluctuation that was briefly flirted with and then abandoned. It claims to have 44 endings on the cover, and there are 134 pages, which really is kind of a crazy endings to page number ratio. Most of these books are about 110-130 or so pages, and a typical number of endings is somewhere in the twenties. The price printed on the cover was $1.50.

One of the reasons that I never liked this one all that much is because it’s also the first book in the series to have a different illustrator, Richard Anderson instead of Paul Grainger. While he’s technically a fine artist, I presume, his style is neither the over-the-top coolness of Grainger, nor something more realistic, like some other illustrators later in the series would do. He feels like a “generic” children’s book illustrator of the era, whereas Grainger was very unique and had a lot of character, like a very specific kind of edgy cartoon or something. Anderson’s illustrations all have big heads, big noses, kind of exaggerated paedomorphic features ($10 word for the day right there. I learned that through reading about dinosaurs, though.) And of course the “you” protagonist is illustrated as a skinny little ten year old looking blonde girl with twin side ponytails. I mentioned briefly in my review of Deadwood City that as a little boy of about nine or ten or so myself, that was never going to be popular, although it doesn’t bother me now, of course. Rather, I’m more bothered by the fact that Anderson’s illustrations simply don’t have the same character or classicness; it feels generic and forgettable, whereas Grainger’s illustrations are iconic and memorable. I don’t remember Anderson doing any more titles, but I admit that I didn’t pay much attention, especially as we got past about title number twenty-five or so. Throughout the teens and twenties a number of other illustrators and even authors were featured.  Of the illustrators, Ralph Reese was a favorite of mine, different to but nearly the equal of Paul Grainger in terms of being iconic to the series. Anthony Kramer I never much liked, but he did plenty around this period too. And, of course, Grainger was still around for a lot of these titles still too. I can only presume that the workload that they were demanding was too much for Grainger to cover it all on his own (or, on the writing side, for Packard and Montgomery to cover on their own.) So, a sad chapter was gradually coming to an end already in the series, as they had to branch out to new creatives that changed the look and feel of the series over time.

Of course, there are books from this era that had illustrators I didn’t much like, but they were books that I liked. Packard’s Underground Kingdom, coming up soon (number eighteen) with Kramer illustrations comes to mind. And hey, it’s a hollow earth Pellucidar-influenced title, so that’s probably why. But the illustrations didn’t sell it, that’s for sure. And some of the new writers were good too. Space Patrol, number twenty-two, was written by Julius Goodman and illustrated by Ralph Reese, and was probably one of my absolute favorites of all of the titles in the series for many years. It was finally the space opera title that I had wanted Space and Beyond and The Third Planet From Altair to be, but they weren’t. But getting back to Mystery of the Maya, while the illustrations certainly didn’t help this title, it was really the written content that was never my favorite. A cultural tourist, even one who goes back in time, just isn’t my favorite idea. There’s not a lot of stuff that you get to choose to do that’s super interesting; sit around watching the priest be creepy, tagging along on a raid against the Toltecs, or tagging along on a mercantile sailing business just isn’t the stuff of high adventure which was always the main attraction of the series.

If for some reason you don’t go back in time, you probably will end up seeing weird Blavatsky-style aliens taking people off world because they’ve decided that they’ve proven worthy. This was obviously written years before the Heaven’s Gate episode, but it’s still strange and creepy even so rather than exciting and adventurous. Ultimately,  this title fails to be one of my favorites because the theme just wasn’t one that I was super interested in in the first place, and because the execution wasn’t as good as most; you’re kind of a passive observer in this weird cultural anthropology case study rather than having adventures of your own. Packard’s upcoming The Forbidden Castle is a better example of what we’d want, because you’re a much more active participant, and because we just have a much more intrinsically close tie to Medieval Europe than we do to classic period Maya civilization. To be honest, I’ve always wondered about the intrinsic  mystery of the Maya, lowercase. Why have the Maya captivated intellectual’s curiously more than the Toltecs just to the west, for instance? The Maya clearly had a civilizational collapse, but the people didn’t go anywhere, and millions of people in the Yucatan still speak languages descended from the Maya language even today. There really doesn’t have to be any explanation for their disappearance, because they didn’t disappear. Simply, their civilization fell and entered a dark age, which was the state that they were in when the  Spanish encountered them. I don’t know that it was any more notable than the dark ages that preceded Classical Greece or followed Classical Rome, though—we just don’t know as much about it.

And that’s kind of my point, Lacking a compelling high concept, and lacking much in the way of anything interesting to say or do within the high concept, the book just is kind of flat. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, it just simply isn’t all that interesting. But before I go summarize the endings that I encountered in this book, let me discuss me and the rest of the series briefly. The next book is number twelve, Inside UFO 54-40. I actually bought this when it was new; this is the first book I the series that I remember anticipating its release and picking it up quickly when it was new. However, it’s not one that I have anymore, and of the ones that I “recovered” and rebought on abebooks or thriftbooks, it’s one that I did not bother with. I never really loved that one, and given the somewhat disappointing run of ten through twelve, I think somewhere around here my perception of the series started to change. Also, as noted above, new illustrators and even new writers started to pop up in the later teens and twenties. And, of course, I was getting older. I discovered these books when I think all eleven that I’ve reviewed so far had already been printed, so about 1981. By the time we get to number twenty, it was 1983 and by the time we get to number 30, it was late 1984, which is admittedly a pretty aggressive publishing schedule. By 1984-1985 or so, I wasn’t a nine or ten year old kid anymore, I was now a twelve or thirteen year old junior high kid, and I was more interested in Dungeons & Dragons, or at best, the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and other similar titles rather than Choose Your Own Adventure, and heck, by then I was already reading Lord of the Rings, Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and other stuff that made Choose Your Own Adventure seem pretty hoaky in comparison. I remember clearly buying number fifty, the Return to the Cave of Time, a kind of fan service title, I think, when it was new at the end of ’85, but I’d already missed most of the titles numbered in  the thirties and forties by then and had kind of wandered into stuff that was more interesting to me. I also don’t remember liking that one as much as I’d hoped to, and I think I bought it as much for the nostalgia bait as anything else. I even picked up a handful of titles here and there when they caught my eye after that, but my relationship with the series was going to hit a point of no return sometime in the twenties.  

I still have all of the titles (minus number twelve, Inside UFO 54-40 as mentioned) up through twenty-three, as well as several other later twenties titles, and some titles from the thirties and forties, but the idea that I’d buy sight-unseen any of these titles took a major hit after being disappointed with this brief run, including today’s title, Mystery of the Maya. 

When I come back to reviewing again, we’ll have another Montgomery title, number thirteen, The Abominable Snowman, followed by Packard’s The Forbidden Castle, Montgomery’s House of Danger (a really crazy one), Packard’s Survival At Sea, Montgomery’s The Race Forever, Packard’s The Underground Kingdom, and Richard Brightfield’s Secret of the Pyramids. That one breaks up the Packard/Montgomery run with the addition of some new talent, and marks another turning point in the series, so there’s no reason to talk (quite yet) about what it does after that. I’m curious if my experience now will match my memories and impressions from decades ago, but some of the later teens and early twenties titles were always among my favorites in the series, including The Abominable Snowman, The Race Forever, Escape! and Space Patrol. Which is probably why I had a more favorable opinion of Montgomery’s work in the series than I’ve actually seen so far. 

Anyway, as is my wont, here's some of the things that I did while investigating the mystery of the Maya:

• traveled in space with aliens, just like the ancient Maya apparently. More than once.
• didn't travel in space with aliens like the ancient Maya, because I blew my big chance
• got sacrificed by the Mayan priesthood
• went on a raid against the Toltecs, but it was a weird raid because nobody was hurt or lost or anything. I wrote about my experiences.
• got killed by a spear in the back during a raid
• got kidnapped and held for ransom after falling all the way through the earth and ending up in China
• Also got put in prison by corrupt Mexican officials
• got lost in the jungle while on a raid, but made it back alive with a couple of friends
• passed out in the jungle on a raid, but woke up in the modern era again
• tried to get buried treasure that I knew about from my trip to the past, but it was gone and I got buried alive in a cave in
• escaped the police by going to the past
• get lost in the jungle and died
• was the lone survivor of a Mayan shipwreck, but was transported back to the modern era and wrote my book
• get stuck in some kind of time loop in a Mayan boat, where I can see cruise ships but can't interact with them.
• talk about a revolt against the Mayan priesthood, but after reviewing the challenges, end up in the present again instead.
• came back to the present in a dangerous situation and worried about where to go to dinner
• got a mysterious package claiming to be from the Plumed Serpent himself, telling me to go home because my own people are in danger and need my help
• got a clay good luck charm and sent back to the present
• went to recover treasure, but it was already stolen
• went to recover treasure, but the Mexican government showed up and claimed it. I apparently didn't mind, because it went to a museum.
• got involved in Mexican revolutionary politics, but ran off back to Miami and said forget it
• witnessed a Mayan plague, and then came back to the present and wrote a book about it
• joined the revolutionary Red Hand gang and became a terrorist and a criminal, but of course, Montgomery romanticizes it
• joined the Red Hand, got arrested, and faced a firing squad
• got stuck in the past, but couldn't communicate with anyone
• zoomed around to various periods in the past, saw the post collapse Mayan landscape, came back and wrote my book
• went to the Region of Light in space and got bossed around by some alien consciousness
• wrote a book, started a lecture series and became a famous Mayan scholar
• got killed by a poisoned arrow
• a couple of different endings where I tried to stay in the past or something, and exactly what happens is a little confusing but seems unhappy. Like I'm suddenly sitting on a beach alone, not sure if I'm in the past or the present; weirdo Montgomery stuff like that
• watched the Mayan civilization fall, a few times. Not even clear if I came back to the past or not in at least two of these endings
• went into space, but came back as some kind of messenger of hippy new-agism
• didn't go to space, but wrote a book about aliens and the Maya
• stuck in the past as a laborer carving on the pyramid
• sacrificed by the Toltecs instead of the Mayas
• Became king or something of the Toltecs and refused to go back. Twice, even
• became a herald of a Mayan god or something

SWTOR to play next

I've played quite a few planets with several characters now. Anstal Tane just finished Tatooine and is level 55 or 56. (I do still have the bonus series to do, though.) Taul Kajak is ready to go to Hoth and is level 71 or 72. Hutran Thanatos recently finished his gig altogether.

Those other two will relatively soon join Hutran in the "completed" category. I have a lot of other characters who are much less far along on their journey, and I have two open character slots. I'm thinking (and I know that this is crazy) about starting two other characters, in part because there are still a few races that I haven't used, including Rattataki, Twi'lek and Miraluka. I also never unlocked the cartel races; Cathar, Nautalan and Togruta. But I don't really like the aliens anyway; I like humans and near-humans; i.e., funny colored humans. But I've only used a few of those two; I've got a few cyborgs (although I usually forget that they're not just human), two Mirialans, two Sith, one Republic and one Imperial style Zabrak, and one Chiss. Oh, and one girl, heh heh.

In any case, as I'm looking over potential characters to still create, I'm noticing that I have relatively few force users. I just don't like them quite as much. I'm not counting my original run of characters; they're all mostly done with the main story, and I have little interest in doing too much with the expansion stories with any of them except for my first Jedi Knight, who's doing expansion duty for everyone mostly. I've even deleted two of them, my Inquisitor and Consular, because they didn't happen to have a unique maxed out crafting, so there was no reason to keep them. I'll probably eventually delete Thanatos too, when I've decided that I've done enough with him, and the rest of my next wave of characters. Or maybe I'll just buy a few more slots eventually.

But I decided to do an inventory of my characters by what is now called origin story. Most of my characters were created during Onslaught or earlier, so origin story also mandated mechanics. I've italicized all of the characters who've finished the main story, although some of them are still on Ilum, or otherwise on story that predates the first major expansion, Rise of the Hutt Cartel. I've also added my deleted characters in faded gray

Jedi Knight

• Maark (Guardian)
• Taul Kajak (Sentinel)
• Elemer Kell (Sentinel)

Jedi Consular

• Corinthion (Shadow)
• Gandalf Greyhame (Sorcerer)

Sith Warrior

• Mat Thew (Marauder)
• Phovos Maledict (Juggernaut)

Sith Inquisitor

• Actsion (Assassin)
• Revecca Arden (Sorceress)

Smuggler

• Luukke (Gunslinger)
• Anstal Tane (Scoundrel)
• Haul Romund (Mercenary)
• Gael Heckett (Powertech)

Trooper

• Phillippion (Commando)
• Mirabeau Tane (Gunslinger)
• Codon Veile (Sniper)

Bounty Hunter

• Graggory (Powertech)
• Galation (Powertech)
• Vant Galaide (Mercenary)
• Wulf Hengest (Vanguard)
• Embric Stane (Mercenary)
• Beorn Hengest (Sniper)

Agent

• Johhn (Sniper)
• Hutran Thanatos (Operative)
• Vash Galaide (Powertech)
• Saxon Hettar (Gunslinger)

Just based on numbers, you'd think I need to play another inquistitor or consular, with the assassin or shadow mechanics. But, those are the characters that I have played and deleted, and all of my force users have used the second combat spec as either shadow or assassin so that they can sneak through trash mobs if I'm in the mood to do that. Plus, those are my least favorite stories, so I'm already doing them a second time as it is, I just don't have my original character still archived. Which is retrospect is kind of a shame, but if I hadn't deleted those two, I'd be out of slots right now. (Then again, slots are relatively cheap.)

I don't need to do another bounty hunter origin sory; I've got four of them still in play, one of whom I literally haven't even started yet. The other tech classes, I still have two of each in play. Although I never got around to deleting them, Hutran Thanatos, Embric Stane and Taul Kajak were "failed" recording characters. The thought was that I do delete them, but I decided to play through with them anyway.

I also have two Jedi Knights in play. That would suggest that maybe another Sith Warrior would be the obvious choice, but... I don't know that I need two of those in play right now. 

I'd kind of like to do another scoundrel, with a different combat discipline this time (Anstal Tane is direct damage) or another operative with a different discipline (Hutran Thanatos is damage over time.) I don't think there's much need for healers or even tanks in solo play, but there's still another DPS spec on each that I could play. Although they're mirror images of each other.

But assuming I do either of those, which origin story should I play? I obviously don't need any of them, with at least two in play right now for each, and four in play for the bounty hunter (the one I need the least.) I already have an agent, a bounty hunter, and a smuggler that I literally have created but not actually played any story with yet. Maybe one more trooper with a rattataki? I'm still not sure how much I like the trooper storyline, but if I play the character as a somewhat cheeky James Bond type with General Garza as Judi Dench's M rather than as an actual soldier in a more traditional sense, it works quite a bit better for me.

We'll see. I probably won't actually decide and create any more characters until at least I've had a chance to finish off another few more characters. Taul Kajak and Anstal Tane are the closest to being done and moving into a semi-retired state, but that doesn't mean that they're that close. Sigh.

Here's one of the screenshots I took so I could make my list, showing off an interesting agent look for Johhn.

Maybe instead of adding slots, the solution is to finish playthroughs and delete unwanted characters. I know for sure that I'll delete Embric Stane, because I never actually intended to keep him anyway, and I'm only playing him through because I figured why not; I had him ready to go. Almost immediately I was unhappy with his design and I have Vant Galaide doing everything that Embric Stane was supposed to do. Galation and Graggory are also kind of redundant, but the reason I keep them both is because they are both maxed out crafters. I could, however, always advance someone else in Biochem, which I don't really care about that much anyway, and maybe Galation doesn't have to be kept forever anymore either. I do have a crystalline boltblaster MK-3 helmet that's a little difficult to replace, but I do have one spare lookalike in my legacy bank. It'll bind on equip, but someone else can still keep up that particular look even without Galation if I want. That would free up another slot, and frankly, leveling up a crafter on... I dunno, Hutran Thanatos or someone else that I'm more likely to want to keep because he's a truly unique spec on the mechanics for me at least would be nice.

In fact, I think I just talked myself into that right now. I double checked Galation's stuff; and other than that helmet, which I do have at least one replacement available for, there's nothing on him that is unique or that I'd miss if I deleted him. Plus, that first wave of names is super cringe and I don't like any of them. Getting rid of another of them isn't the worst thing ever...

The Red Blade and more

I posted a few images of Hutran Thanatos as the Red Blade a week or so ago. However, I thought of that particular outfit partway through his playthrough of the Red Blade. I had forgotten that it wasn't my original Red Blade disguise, until I was trawling through some old video capture I had, where I found some of my playthrough of Hutran Thanatos before I stopped recording it. Here's how I originally did the Red Blade disguise:

I've said before that I don't particularly like the "real" Red Blade outfit, which looks like a knockoff of Lando Calrissian's skiff guard disguise at the beginning of Return of the Jedi except redder and a bit spikier and more heavy on the armor.

Of course, the whole point is that nobody knows what the Red Blade looks like, including how he dresses, I presume. For me, a good Red Blade disguise simply has to look 1) red, and 2) kinda piratey. I accomplish the latter by giving my agent the eye patch, and anything else red will work.

Anyway, like I said, I updated his Red Blade costume before I was done, and then because I was using his normal "uniform" for almost the entirety of his playthrough, I just kept it because I didn't have any reason to replace it.

And when I do my Saxon Hettar play, I'll use this outfit; he's obviously a different character, and a different race.

Here's a few screenshots that I got off of swtorista's archive of tor-fashion. These are not my characters. However...

My gunslinger (trooper story) Mirabeau Tane is a cyborg with a bit of eyebrow gear, but otherwise looks very much like this, and by coincidence, I'd created an outfit very similar. My headpiece is a gasmask without the hat, and my brown secondary dye is a little bit lighter than his, but it is still almost exactly the same outfit. 

Ziost is an interesting place to have an outfit like this. I actually think that it works quite well. 

I can't remember off-hand which weapon I have in my hands, but because my character is a gunslinger, it'll be a pair, not just one. I do have that pistol (Fortitude) and I'm sure I have outfits on this character that are using it, but that would be remarkable if it happens to be this same outfit.

I probably have different gloves, boots and belt, but those are significantly less noticeable than torso, head and pants.

Also; this is very similar to my cowboy outfit. The dye module isn't quite the same; his is darker. And I don't have those pants available to this character yet. And I obviously have a different headpiece, and my guy has a blaster rifle, not a lightsaber, but it's interesting to see where we were going somewhere very similar again.

And finally, a few pics of Anstal Tane, my sith species space biker playing the Scoundrel spec (I started him during Onslaught, so by default, his story is smuggler.) I've never seen another character much like him, which I quite like. 

UPDATE: See?

SWTOR Winter gear

I'm making some of those SWTOR "walk around slowly showing off your outfit" videos. I thought it'd be fun to have a winter themed one, so I have some footage. Needs editing, but here's the screenshots of the four outfits that I decided to showcase for this "part one."

I've showed this one before, recently, since Hutran Thanatos is about to go to Ilum when I play him again next. This is one of two "Han Solo Hoth" like coats in the game. The other one has the hood up, but of course, many headpieces will make it disappear instead. I like that here the hood is down, and headpieces don't interfere with it. I also dyed it a crafted white/light gray dye, which for most intents and purposes is sufficient to look like just white/white in most conditions. But it sure is cheaper!

Vant Galaide, my first mercenary created during Onslaught when you still had to play the bounty hunter story to play a mercenary, showing off his Hoth gear. He hasn't even been to Hoth yet. I'm on Balmorra with him. This is obviously mostly based on the Infamous Bounty Hunter; the first "real" Mandalorian outfit that was based on the look from the movies and shows of actual Mandalorians, rather than a "Old Republic" original take on the concept. Because of that, the outfit was super popular on the cartel market and I used to see everyone running around dressed in it (usually uncustomized, however.) I think BioWare realized how well it sold and started creating more alternatives that were more Mandalorian show looking, or actual ESB Boba Fett looking, etc. and put them out there too.

Luukke, my original smuggler, showing off his cold weather gear. Sadly, I created this outfit long after he'd already played Hoth and even Ilum, but I still really like it. The coat is dyed, but it's an older high level craftable coat, and I think you have to be at least level 65 or 70 to wear it. The dye is also a high level and (relatively) recently added craftable dye that I use a lot, because it's a darker gray than the black/gray dye module that you can craft, and the "black" is actually a very dark navy, so it has just a bit more color than pure black. It's a decent alternative, and it comes in reverse too, and it's craftable.

Mirabeau Tane, an odd first name that I took from a figure of Texas history (I went to a school named after him as a kid) hasn't really been anywhere cold yet either, but he's prepared with this great version of a Season jacket, that has a kind of biker or aviator look to it once it's dyed. I can't remember the dye; I think it's Honorable General, but it might be the reverse of that (Underworld Crime boss, I think it's called?), whichever one made the jacket look like brown leather. He actually has three cold weather outfits, which is probably a bit much. The one that actually looks the warmest is based on the same coat as Vant's above, so I decided to go with this lighter look, which probably will look better on planets like Alderaan, Ziost or Elom. And it looks like you could even wear it just about anywhere that doesn't look overtly hot, like Tatooine or the jungle planets, although maybe I'd want to hide the balaclava in that case.

I have at least four or five more options coming in a part 2 later, but I'll wait until some of those characters are high enough level to actually get to Hoth. Three of them don't even have spaceships yet, and two of them haven't even really started their story at all yet. It's exciting to have all of these options, though! I almost wish there was another cold planet that I had reason to have them running around in. And maybe I can show off another one of the outfits where I have more than one cold outfit per character, or something—although they do start to use a lot of the same basic coat models after a while.

This idea of starting my three newest characters with a unique outfit for every one of the original main planets has really been pretty fun. I'm excited to see it play out with them.

UPDATE: Here's the video. Music is "Winter Chan" by Xurious, featuring Zephora.