((The RP XP with MJ #53))

Welcome to the third “Captured Moment” with ((The RP XP with MJ)), my ongoing nod and /salute to the great RolePlay inspirations found throughout the living worlds of SWTOR’s awesome set pieces and NPC placement.

Keep in mind this little aside wasn’t produced, endorsed or even recognized by BioWare. It’s just me doing what every good RPer does: finding those captured moments of “realism” throughout the game and making up my own story to go with it. For the passing gamer, these are nothing more than animated space filler. For me, and maybe you, they’re somehting more. They’re little untold stories, pictures that spark the mind and give you ideas. Like this one…

CAPTURED MOMENT #3

WHAT IT IS:

A human male appears to wretch over the golden fountain trough on the lower promenade of Nar Shaddaa while a female Twi’lek looks on amused.

WHERE TO FIND IT:

(-986, 517) “Lower Promenade”, Nar Shaddaa

It’s probably one of the first humorous scenes you encountered the first time you played SWTOR: a human male throwing up into the fountain on Nar Shaddaa. Did he just have too much to drink? Did his female Twi’lek companion trigger his gag reflex by telling him the golden water was actually water passed by a Hutt? Or was it something more than that?

Bixlo was a business man. A shrewd business man.

He was famous throughout the black market networks of over six systems, a finagler whose expertise included bilking the hard earned credits out of the hands of more legitimate entrepreneurs. Bixlo Benns was known from Adumar to Tatooine as “The bahzanka jonsa yae” (The human with the Silver Tongue).

Until he met Herr.

Specifically, Herr’nika; a Twi’lek dancer and something of an entrepreneur herself. She worked the entertainment circuit from one hovering casino to another on Nar Shaddaa, never dancing on the promenade itself because that’s where she liked to unwind and spend her off-time. Alone. Herr’nika owned several of the larger residential blocks near the Slippery Slopes cantina as well as a controlling interest in the cantina itself. Most of the profits went to Sarthaa The Hutt, but her business was her own and Sarthaa never bothered to check Herr’s books. She was a generous business partner, after all. No reason to dig so deep into a partner’s pockets that you scare them off, or make them an enemy. Sarthaa was smarter than the average Yae with a bahzanka jonsa.

Herr’s specialty, and the trade with which she made her fortune, had nothing to do with her own dancing. Herr’nika designed, manufactured and sold holo units that recorded Twi’lek dancers in one club and broadcast them live in another. Revelers in the Silent Suns cantina on Coruscant were thrilled that they didn’t have to pay a cover charge to see a live projection of Mila’noko-Rah dancing for them—even if the actual flesh of her swaying lekku was several parsecs away on Nar Shaddaa. Club owners paid a small fortune for the projectors, and all Herr had to do was surreptitiously place a recording device in a club and calibrate it remotely from her ship. It only took a couple sales on Malastare and Coruscant to make enough to hire a staff to do the dirty work for her. Then all she had to do was sit back and collect.

Bixlo Benns fancied himself slightly more shrewd than the average Hutt, and heads and slimy tails above and beyond the likes of Sarthaa. He followed Herr’nika around Nar Shaddaa, listened in as she met with one of Sarthaa’s collectors, observed her tinkering with a receiver just outside the ship she had docked near the lower promenade, and traced one of the signals to Abregado-Rae where she just made a huge sale to a club owner there. After three days of close observation, he decided to make his move.

Bixlo Benns was going to get a cut of Herr’nika’s action with the oldest and most trusted technique in the book: simple extortion. He patted the pocket of his pants that held the small datapad packed with the details of Herr’s operation: frequencies, transmitter ranges, exact locations of hidden camera placements. All he had to do was loosen her up with a couple drinks.

“Hey, babe,” he smirked as he sidled up next to her in the Slippery Slopes. He nodded to the bartender and motioned to get a refill for the “lovely lekkus” next to him.

Herr’nika slid her eyes toward the human and corrected, “Lekku.”

“Huh?”

“The plural of lekku is lekku,” she said, though Bixlo smiled when she accepted her drink and threw it back. He ordered another for himself and slid closer.

“Name’s Bixlo. Bixlo Benns.” He held out a hand. The Twi’lek considered the hand for a moment, then took it, curling her long slender fingers around his. “Herr’nika.”

“I know,” Bixlo grinned. He jutted a thumb at himself. “Huge fan.”

“Really?” She downed her drink. Bixlo ordered another. Then he got another for himself, determined to match her swallow for swallow and drink her under the table. This, he thought, will be the easiest score ever.

Except that Herr’s drink of choice was water.

It was less than two hours later that a rather mush-brained Bixlo Benns decided to ply his silver tongue and entice Herr with an offer she couldn’t refuse. They strolled—rather staggered—alongside the band pit and flickering lights of the lower promenade when he stopped and turned to her. “I haff a bidness proposilinition for you, Herm.”

“I’m sure you do,” she smirked. Herr shifted her weight to one hip, amused as she started the mental countdown to Bixlo Benns’ pending failure. She started counting backward from twenty.

At “eighteen” Bixlo Benns suddenly lurched, made an “urp” sound in his throat, then lost an hour’s worth of Tatooine Sunrises into the golden fountain next to them. The next morning Bixlo would wake up at that same spot, minus his wallet, logbook, the datapad with all the extortion intel on Herr’nika… and his boots.

The lesson he learned: Find out what your mark is drinking before you start matching them swallow for swallow.

CAPTURED MOMENTS LINKS

“The Tale of the Lost Jawa”

“The Sad Tale of Arlon and Jurie”

If you have a favorite “captured moment” scene, screenshot it and send it to me (swtorliferp(at)gmail.com). If you’ve got a story to go along with it, let’s hear it; or if you want to see what I can make up, we can do that too. ((The RP XP with MJ)) appears exclusively on swtor-life.com every Friday. Contact MJ directly by writing to swtorlife(at)mail, leave a comment, or follow him on Twitter @MJswtor.

((The RP XP with MJ #44))

Welcome to the second segment of “Captured Moments” with ((The RP XP with MJ)), my ongoing nod and /salute to the great RolePlay inspirations found throughout the awesome living atmosphere of SWTOR’s set design and NPC placement.

Keep in mind this little vignette wasn’t produced, endorsed or even recognized by BioWare. It’s just me doing what every good RPer does: finding those captured moments of “realism” throughout the game and making up my own story to go with it. For the passing gamer, these are nothing more than animated space filler. For me, and maybe you, they are something more. They’re little untold stories, pictures that spark the mind and give you ideas. Like this one….

CAPTURED MOMENT #2:

WHAT IT IS:

A lone Jawa stands atop a half-buried sand crawler in a remote spot on Tatooine, apparently making a plaintive call to a cohort via holo.

WHERE TO FIND IT:

(-2346, 456) “The Dune Sea”, Tatooine

Let’s call him Vizxiz.

Several cycles ago, Vizxiz was a simple tool modeler aboard the Sandcrawler Jjakwi V. He wasn’t one of the favorites among the clan of 26 Jawas (well, 25 since Shaman Ulnazrik was eaten by a Krayt Dragon) who lived aboard the Jjakwi, roaming from one side of the Dune Sea to the other, looking for broken down speeders, crashed ships, and the tastiest of all Jawa pursuits: unclaimed droids.

No, poor Vizxiz had a hard time fitting in. Many of the Jjakwi’s clan were hard pressed to deal with him, grudgingly approaching him to repair or requisition tools. Behind his back they delighted in teasing him about his height (he was the shortest one in his crew) and his sight (Vizxiz’s eyes didn’t glow as brightly as his peers, earning him the nickname “Vizxiz oytia vyzt gr’eek!” loosely translated to “Vizxiz dim-seer” from a local rough Huttese translation to Basic from Jawaese).

One day the Jjakwi V was caught in a late-night sand storm. And, without Ulnazrik, their mystical all-seer to steer them through the hissing gritty mist, the crew had no choice but to sit and wait. Hours later, when it seemed no hope was in sight, Clan-Chief Tyaqua happened to notice that the crawler was getting hemmed in by huge drifts of sand. Now it’s good to note here that not only was Tyaqua the crawler’s clan chieftan, he was also the union boss of the Jjakwi’s crew and always the one the others would turn to when it came time to make a big decision.

His brilliant idea: “Abandon ship!”

So the crew of the Jjakwi V pulled their robes tightly around their little bodies, collected all the tools and droid parts they could (neglecting to pack any kind of water or nourishment), and headed out into the skin-cutting tempest of the storm. Jawas have a pretty good sense of direction, and superb night vision, but when it comes to navigating a late-night storm in the middle of the Dune Sea… Needless to say, they were never heard from again.

Until now.

It seems everyone forgot about Vizxiz Dim-Seer in all the commotion. He woke up to the silence of a new day, the light of the twin suns peeking through the tiny slit that served as the window to his quarters and tool shop. In a panic, Vizxiz ran from one end of the crawler to another, unable to find a door that wasn’t blocked, until he looked up and spotted the dorsal hatch above the clan-chief’s sleeper pod. That, he reasoned, had to be how the others left.

Vizxiz may not have been the tallest or brightest-seeing of the Jawas aboard the Jjakwi V, but given half a chance his crew might have recognized him as a pretty smart thinker. Vizxiz pieced together a holocommunicator from spare parts and the tiny tools that were made for his little rodent-like hands, toiling against the Jawa code of “Not look for uses in salvaged item, but rather to imagine someone else who might find use for it.” (1) Before too long he had established communication with the clan leader of the Zkozk VI, a sandcrawler just 74 kilometers away.

He stands there today, frantically trying to explain his situation as the Zkozk makes its long, slow crawl toward his rescue.

CAPTURED MOMENTS LINKS

“The Sad Tale of Arlon and Jurie”

RESOURCES

(1) The Jawa Code – from a Wookieepedia reference.

If you have a favorite “captured moment” scene, screenshot it and send it to me (swtorliferp(at)gmail.com). If you’ve got a story to go along with it, let’s hear it; or if you want to see what I can make up, we can do that too. ((The RP XP with MJ)) appears exclusively on swtor-life.com. You can contact MJ directly by writing to swtorliferp(at)gmail, leave a comment, or follow him on Twitter @MJswtor.

((The RP XP with MJ #36))

I’m introducing a new segment to the RPXP inspired by the great living atmosphere of SWTOR’s set design and NPC placement.

Have you ever stopped to smell the roses? There are a lot of awesome little mini “scenes of drama” (or comedy) playing out throughout the SWTOR universe. Around every corner or thoroughfare there are NPCs going about their daily lives, arguing, laughing, crying, throwing up into fountains. There are even Easter eggs and inside jokes for Star Wars diehards (have you found the “Darth Vader bounty hunter briefing” aboard the Imperial fleet’s Ziost Shadow as a nod to the scene in EpV, or the wookiee who pulled the droid’s arms out of its sockets per Han Solo’s warning in EpIV?)

Did you ever wonder what the BioWare designers had in mind when they set these scenes up? That has to be one of the most fun things about working on an MMO like SWTOR, the little inside jokes or captured moments they don’t expect you to actually “see” unless—like me—you stop to smell the roses.

So, I thought it would be fun to take a tour through BioWare’s Old Republic and make up stories for those captured moments found throughout the galaxy.

CAPTURED MOMENT #1:

WHAT IT IS:

A young dark haired male human apparently upset about something near a seated blond female human.

WHERE TO FIND IT:

(-946, 1441) “Garden of Justice”, SenatePlaza, Coruscant

Let’s call them Arlon and Jurie. That’s not what BioWare calls them, as far as I know, but let’s extend the RP beyond ourselves for a moment and see what we can come up with for these two.

Arlon and Jurie live in one of the sky-scraping behemoths that line the horizon of Coruscant. He’s a loadlift operator at the nearby spaceport, and she works the diner on sublevel 141 at the Senate Plaza.

One day Arlon comes home to a hastily tapped note on a datapad that reads, “My Dearest Arlon. I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’ve decided that I love Wokum more than you. I can’t go on living this lie and I have to follow my heart. The times we shared together walking in the Garden of Justice were memorable, but I need something more. Love always, Jurie. PS – Please don’t be weird about this just because Wokum is Trandoshan.”

So, what does Arlon do? He tracks down his lady friend at their favorite walking path and finds her sitting wistfully staring out into space, happy about her decision and waiting for her the taxi that will take her to Dosha. As for Arlon? He’s obviously at a loss for words.

Of course the scene could be more serious than what I’ve depicted here, or it could even be more lighthearted. How would you paint this picture?

If you have a favorite “captured moment” scene, screenshot it and send it to me (swtorliferp(at)gmail.com). If you’ve got a story to go along with it, let’s hear it; or if you want to see what I can make up, we can do that too. ((The RP XP with MJ)) appears exclusively on swtor-life.com. You can contact MJ directly by writing to swtorliferp(at)gmail, leave a comment, or follow him on Twitter @MJswtor.