Lana Beniko's Journal: Dark Arkous
Nice-Girl Sith Lana Beniko makes a report on Darth Arkous, some guy who I don’t know who that is. There were Republic spies on their ship who were plotting to blow it up but Lana discovered their subterfuge but one escaped in an escape pod but Darth Arkous flew out through space and stabbed her with his lightsaber but Lana thought that was pretty cool but then Darth Arkous told her he was going to Onderon but really he went to Manaan so now she doesn’t know what to believe.
Pointless. 1/5 Death Stars.
Surface Details
Varko is a Selkath customs agent on the planet Manaan. He has a pleasant conversation with a man named Tev Fith, who has come to the planet to do research for a biotech firm. Varko thinks he met Tev’s boss a few days ago, but it turns out to be a case of mistaken identity and Varko was thinking of someone else. Apparently “Tev Fith” is really Theron Shan in disguise but I had to look that up. Later Lana Beniko shows up and mind-tricks Varko into giving her information on Darth Arkous’s travel arrangements. The story ends with Varko going swimming. “Such a boring and forgettable day.”
You can say that again. 1/5 Death Stars.
Wanted: Dead and Dismantled
The bounty hunter droid BH-7X meets with another bounty hunter named Kern to discuss a contract on the Wookiee smuggler Jakarro and his partner, C2-D4, a disembodied droid head. Kern had previously tried to hire BH-7X but been unwilling to meet the droid’s price, so now the droid has returned to inform him that the half-priced mooks he hired instead have all been killed. Kern throws a bottle of booze at him, and BH-7X stuns Kern to collect a bounty on him, and then freezes him in carbonite or something. Because of course he does.
Of course he does.
HEY HAVE YOU EVER SEEN STAR WARS 1.5/5 Death Stars
Remnants
A human smuggler named Kaya is pursued through the jungles of Rakata Prime, the primeval homeworld of our old friends, the Rakata. Despite ruling the galaxy back when we started this venture with Dawn of the Jedi, the Rakata have since devolved into tribal primitives, making war on each other and anyone unfortunate enough to visit their planet. Known only as “the Unknown World” when it first appeared in 2003’s Knights of the Old Republic, that planet was given the name Rakata Prime in The New Essential Chronology, a Star Wars reference book published in 2005. A year later, however, Drew Karpyshyn featured the world in his novel Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, in which it was called Lehon. The following month, The New Essential Guide to Alien Species identified it simply as Rakata.
This vignette sticks with Rakata Prime, but YMMV.
Anyway, Kaya was hired by the Exchange, the major galactic crime syndicate of this era, as part of a crew sent to retrieve various artifacts and antiques from the planet’s ruins. The half-dozen other members of her team have all been killed by the natives, who are now chasing Kaya back toward her ship, throwing spears and indecipherable threats at her, while she yells into her comlink for her droid, Dominic, to fire up the engines.
She comes into the clearing where she’s parked and throws herself onto the ground as the droid turns the ship’s guns on the jungle and blasts away. “It felt like there wasn’t enough air on the entire planet for her to catch her breath.” That line is pretty banal but hey at least they put some kind of literary language into one of these things.
Kaya is safely aboard her ship but the action isn’t over yet! Once she and Dom (short for D0-M9) make orbit, they’re attacked by a Republic corvette and a Sith destroyer that strangely appear to be working together. The reason for this isn’t explained in the story, I guess you have to play the Shadow of Revan game expansion (available now for only $19.99 USD!) to find out. They get caught in a tractor beam but manage to break free when Kaya dumps the junk they stole from the Rakata into space.
Knowing that the Exchange will be pissed at them for losing their cargo, Kaya and Dominic Toretto decide to lie low for a while in Raider’s Cove, a trade port on the planet Rishi, where you, the player, can meet and interact with them in the Shadow of Revan game expansion (available now for only $19.99 USD!).
A little bit more substantial than most of these web vignettes have been, plus going back to the Unknown World and seeing the Rakata again warmed the cockles of my heart. 2/5 Death Stars.
Bedtime on Concordia
Mandalorian warrior Galron is out camping with his twin daughters, Tayn and Mari. As they turn in for the night beside the campfire, they ask their father to tell them a bedtime story. Galron tells them about Shae Vizla, the pretty redheaded lady who helped Darth Malgus blow up the Jedi Temple. Apparently she used to fight side by side with her brother until he was killed by a Jedi, which prompted her to volunteer for the temple attack. Fighting and killing Jedi is all fun and games until they start killing you back, then you have a reason to kill them, I guess. Galron says that after the Treaty of Coruscant, Shae and her whole clan disappeared, but he believes that she will return once she’s found a great enough challenge. Mari asks if she can sleep with her father’s helmet on, and he stays up all night carving his daughters practice swords out of wood.
Fun fact: Shae Vizla has no relation to the various prequel-era Mandalorians surnamed Vizsla.
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| Whew, I’m gonna need a rag over here. |
This story is kind of sweet but also kind of sickening. There’s one point where Tayn make-believes shooting a flamethrower and Galron mentally adds it to her armor’s construction list. Now I’m really endeared to this culture. 1.5/5 Death Stars.
Rishi: Places of Interest
This is another one of these online TOR vignettes that can only debatably be called a story. It’s a series of emails sent by a prospector named Rondo to his wife, Marani. There are several shorts published on the TOR website that are just emails or in-universe advertisements or transcripts of fictional interviews, none of which I am including in this series, but this one has the vaguest suggestion of a plot in that it relates a series of connected events in a narrative fashion, so it arbitrarily made the cut.
Rondo has come to the planet Rishi to strike it rich mining exonium, after his previous business venture on Mustafar led to permanent damage to his lungs. At first he’s optimistic, but he’s quickly made a slave of the pirate band who control the planet’s exonium trade. Rondo escapes by jumping out the emergency exit of their ship and ends up floating on a door in the ocean for two days until he’s rescued by native Rishii tribesmen. The Rishii introduce him to a local prospector who tells him where to find all the exonium he wants. Rondo follows the prospector’s map to a spooky cave but wisely decides not to enter upon hearing monster noises from within. Unfortunately, as leaves the cave he stumbles upon some kind of mysterious operation that he doesn’t understand but knows he wasn’t supposed to see. His final, unsent email to his wife cuts off mid-sentence, and we’re informed that his datapad was found by the Rishii villagers but “what happened to Rondo as he wrote those last words remains a mystery to this day.”
Oh but according to Wookieepedia I guess he was just killed by the Revanites, a splinter cult within the Sith Empire that worships Revan. Boooooorrring. 1.5/5 Death Stars.
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