Trooper Log #7: Tatooine, a backwater planet on the edge of nowhere

This Trooper Log series is posted simultaneously and in full on both my personal blog, Twilight Lynk, and StarWarsMMO.net. Enjoy!

Lynk and the rest of Havoc Squad continue with their mission and head to a planet far from the galactic core.

Warning: This entry contains spoilers from Star Wars: The Old Republic.

BEGIN TROOPER LOG //

Mission Log

Nar Shaddaa was behind us, finally, and we prepared for the next leg of our mission to take down the rogue Havoc Squad members. General Garza updated us on some new intel about Tavus and his gift to the Imperials, a cloaking device developed by the Republic that is powerful enough to cloak an entire capital ship. Somehow Tavus’ was able to steal this technology and bring it into Imperial hands. If these were to be mass-produced it would mean certain defeat for our forces and a swift victory for the Sith Empire. Thankfully, someone in that research division was smart enough to have a tracking beacon installed on the cloaking device, allowing us to locate his ship in a sector of the outer-rim. We set a course immediately for the Imperial ship to confront Tavus… with an asset this important, he had to be on that ship.

On arrival we discovered that the ship was mostly guarded by droids and some security traps, however once we disabled the traps and gained access to the device itself, we were greeted by Tavus himself. The coward wasn’t on the ship at all, it was a trap! Dorne and I managed to fight off the Imperial aggressors and recover the cloaking device, however the hunt for Tavis and the remaining defectors continued on. Our next stop would be an outer-rim world that most people probably haven’t even heard of.

Tatooine, a planet orbiting a binary star system, covered in an endless desert with patches of rock and even harsher deserts. Most people decent people tend to stay away from a planet like this, however it comes as a surprise to learn that small colonies of people have sprung up on this ball of sand. As if these people didn’t have a hard enough time trying to live on this planet, reports coming in from Tatooine tell of Imperials using suicide bombing droids against the civilian population of the planet. Bombs designed by former Havoc Squad demolitions expert, Fuse.

After having failed to capture Tavus on our last mission, I was determined to bring the next Havoc Squad member we found to justice, however things didn’t turn out quite as I had expected. From within the Imperial base he was in, Fuse contacted us to try to stop the bombs he designed from being used against civilian targets. Perhaps there’s hope for the former Havoc Squad member yet and my priorities changed from then on. I would find a way to thwart the Imperial plans on Tatooine and extract Fuse from the Imperial base. The knowledge he’s gained from his time with the Imperials will be invaluable to us and at this stage, I know he’d be willing to help us out unconditionally.

Instead of hunting down Fuse, our target was the Imperial officer in charge of their operations on Tatooine, Colonel Gorik. Dorne and I stormed the Imperial base after having dismantled the Empire’s operations on Tatooine. Inside we found Fuse, he had been found out and locked behind a security shield. Fuse urged us to go after Gorik, however the base was set to self destruct and we couldn’t just leave Fuse behind. I chose to shut down the self destruct and free Fuse. Gorik would get what he deserved another day… typically, as these situations seem to turn out, our backup arrived after all of the action had stopped. The base was secured and Fuse was taken into custody as an ally to our cause.

Jorgan may not like it, but I’m glad I didn’t end up killing yet another Republic special forces soldier. I’m not in this for revenge, I just want to stop these people from making a huge mistake and forsaking us to the Imperials.

Personal Log

I sometimes wonder what the other Havoc Squad members get up to while Elara and I are off on a mission on some planet. I mean, I sometimes send them off on some Scavenging missions and to do a little Underworld Trading, but there are plenty of times when they’re just in the ship and not on active duty anywhere. What do they do there all day long while I’m shooting Sand People in the face and stockstriking Geonosians? All I ever see Mr. Cat doing is inspecting the weapons every time I’m on the ship and M1-4X just stands in the briefing room looking around… which is understandable, he’s a droid so it’s not like he has much else to do aside from what I order him to do, but Mr. Cat’s fascination with that weapons rack has me a little worried.

Computer Log

To begin, the romp on Tavus’ ship was pretty interesting considering it was the first time where I was faced with any kind of objective that you could actually FAIL instead of simply not completing. It’s a bit of a pain but the bonus objective had you finishing the events on the ship without getting burned a set amount of times. You could get burned one or two times, but if you are burned by the traps any more than that bonus objective is lost. Not that much of a big deal but it made that entire mission a lot longer than what it could have been. The funny thing is that I’ve gone through this mission again with a friend of mine playing as the Trooper and with me as a Smuggler… he didn’t care about any stupid bonus objectives, he ran through every trap and got burned every time, haha.

Coming to Tatooine for the first time in this game was pretty cool, the first thing you’re hit with is music straight out of A New Hope. Suddenly, I was in the movies despite existing thousands of years before those events actually take place, but it was a nice nostalgia hit from the music alone.

On the armour front, I think the most mismatched I’ve ever been while levelling up this Trooper has been on Tatooine. I’m sure you can already see by the screenshots how I have a bit of yellow, orange, blue, green, red and black markings happening all at once. In fact, each piece of armour I had was different from the other. Things don’t actually start to get better until I get to Voss… which is quite awhile away in the games progress.

Thankfully this bug is long fixed now, but during the time that I took these screenshots of my adventures on Tatooine and other planets, I had to endure the whole “green glow” effect being stuck on my character from Elara’s constant medication. Speaking of Elara and being medicated, I love it when she says “I’ll help you!” and then starts medicating herself with Kolto randomly while you’re both just standing there with full health. I’m pretty sure Elara may have a Kolto addiction… just saying.

// STATUS REPORT //

• Name: Lynk
  Class: Trooper Vanguard
  Level: 27

The reason this entry has taken so long is because Uni has started back up for me and I’ve had to do some preparing and such… that and the fact that I’ve been taking part in some ops and that one weekend I went to Sydney. It’s been hectic, but unfortunately, now that Uni has started back up again, the Trooper Logs most likely won’t be released at a steady pace… we’ll see.

// END LOG ENTRY