Lit THE TOR ENCYCLOPEDIA: Spoilers

Advozse entry:
notorious for pessimism, skilled burocrats (that fits!)
they do not value posessions, not even their own weapons, since volcanic homeworld Riflor made them get used to destruction and loosing what they have.

Devaronians:
a note says their red skin once caused them to be mistaken for Sith

Zabrak:
have to pass 3 ritual tests (remniscient of Dathomir Nightbrother tests) only thereafter they get their facial tatoos.
when the Sith Empire settled on Dromund Kaas they discovered several Zabrak colonies near by with subspecies of Zabrak that evolved different than their ancestors culturally with different traditions than their pro-republic cousins.

have two hearts

made me think of this:

Zabrak in Love: "I give you my heart!"
Human Girl: "What? And who the hell gets the other?!"
Zabrak in Love: "But..."



MON CALAMARI QUOTE:
"The Mon Calamari hail from the ocean world of Dac and are widely considered to be among the Republics most brilliant species."

 

They straight up mention the Trayus Acadamy and say it wasn't the only Sith Fortress in the system

Vitiate is worse then Nihilus morally, Nihilus consumed for self preservation and was basically a Force of nature. Vitiate was willing to wipe out the entire Galaxy just so he could become a Godlike

Really their no less OT reminiscent then Revan's Sith Empire

 

Ratatakki lived in isolation until Darth Vich discovered them at the beginning of the Great War and formed a forcesensitive Ratatakki Army.

woohoo... that I want to see as a video one day: Ortolan Army fighting for the Republic on Hoth alongside Talz warriors..

seeing the Selonian entry and image I only can do this: oh Corran...



Hutt update:

Quote: "Several scientists, statesmen and religious leaders wgo shaped the course of the galaxy have been Hutts."

Blotus is mentioned

"In modern day famous Hutt inventor Doctor Oggurobb has introduced major advances in droid engineering."

 

oooh animals and nonsentient species get size meansurements given.. sweet!

their profiles go like this:

Classification (herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, etc.)
Habitat (terrain, etc.)
Average Length
Intelligence (low, medium, high)
Distinctive features (horns, color, etc.)


and damn they feature lots and lots of animals... I know who will be pleased!

 

now on to Droids!

I am impressed with this encyclopedias listings so far.



HK-47 NEWS

"The droid continued to be spotted sporadically throughout the following centuries (after Revan left!) though its tasks and current Master are unknown."

Imperial scientists built HK-51 based on HK-47 designs but never used them so far and their fate/mission remains unknown.


G0-T0 mentioned under Interrogation Droid entry as former Exchange leader.

Foundry Entry! hah it was hidden in DROIDS section of the book, who'd have guessed..
built by Rakata into an asteroid, huge facilities
can create more droids in hours than state-of-the-art facilities of Republic or Empire can in a month!

ooooooohhh Droid Rights and Rebellions infobox:

latest Droid Rebellion was lead by a sophisticated analysis droid called "Mentor" who copied his rebellious programming into others... but the rebellion was stopped before he could broadcast a galaxywide signal for rebellion.

now on to PLANETS

 

Soa and Eternity Vault not yet but I guess under Belsavis planet entry maybe

 

Wow... this book sounds like it has a TON of interesting stuff...

Hutt... inventor? Why isn't this guy a companion option!?

 

Holy moley, thats completely new to me. And very very nice. Gorefiend will be pleased. So, finally we get some early Hutt history down and the reason for the Cataclysm which had long been only mentioned but no detials on it. So, the Hutts are similar to quite a few races to profit from the Rakata's collapse. Perhaps they even reverse engineered those ancient Hutt droid designs we have seen. All in all, very nice.

 

I'm not sure just what the premise established by the end of KOTOR II actually is. It seems vague. Though I had different ideas at the time, the way it was handled by TOR seems to make sense in retrospect.

 

Eternity Vault, Eternal One etc. is all in the book too under planet writeups with some planetes getting a doublepage others 4 pages even. there is a lot in those planet entries about sidequests, and other stuff going on on these worlds.


FLEETJUNKIEALERT:
Corellia's Blastfield Shipyards can service thousands of ships a day and finish dozens of full-scale warships a year.

and yes the book has an alphabetical index in the back so you can check where to find intel on whatever you are looking fore. so an encyclopedia indirectly still despite being a visual guide. a thick one

ok last doublepage of the TOR ency... POST-TOR outlook/content... sweeeeeeeeeeet

and no, I will not spoil this! sorry folks. now its buy time support your local bookstores if you can and don't have to rely on amazon.

 

No arguments here.

Any other info on Dac pop up in your readings? I noticed that in this era there isn't any reference to their future status as a major shipbuilder.

--Adm. Nick

 

nope, guess they didn't convert their cities to ships yet

 

While Revan's Empire is undoubtedly reminiscent of Palpy's; the True Sith Empire is far more similar. It even comes with "Star Destroyers", Grand Moffs, an Emperor, and their very own Vader.

 

Harrowers aren't Star Destroyers. And their have been other Emperors in SW aside from Sidious
And Malgus is as much as a Vader homage as Malak. Revan too with a dash of Sidious. So yeah

 

That's kind of the point. KOTOR II left it so the True Sith could be nearly anything, with the clear indication being they were existentially different from the existing Sith. And TOR took that open-endedness and ran with it in the narrowest, least creative interpretation possible.

 

But, importantly, the Revanchist Sith were Republican secessionists. The "true" Sith are an utterly alien society that ended up looking exactly like the late Republic. Yawn. (Head canon handwave: Vitiate had a vision of a Sith Empire dominating the galaxy -- Palpatine's -- and thought it was his destiny, which is why it ended up looking so similiar.)

And, while KotOR I/II were certainly inspired by elements of the films' design, TOR makes a much greater habit of directly lifting stuff. Is Malak a Vader homage? Sure, he's a tall bald guy with cybernetic parts. Malgus, on the other hand, is Vader, sans helmet, with a gas mask. Visually, he's borrowing a great deal more.

That's not to say TOR has no original stuff. Of course it does. It's just far more shameless about mixing in the carbon-copies.

 

Notice the quotation marks I used. While Harowers may not be SD's they are a blatant copy of the SD design.

Sure. I never denied that. But they were not in Revan's Sith Empire. Although truthfully, I have almost no problem with this.

Yes, Malak and Revan are both inspired by Vader. However, Malgus looks virtually the same. TOR, specifically with the Sith Empire, took far more visual ques from the films than KotOR did and therein lies the problem. Personally, I find this boring and uninspired especially since the Sith Empire could have beentruly unique due to it's lack of connection with the Republic.

 

It has been established, however, in the 2nd Ed Starships of the Galaxy that the concept of "Star Destroyers" was an old one.

 

Oh you giant tease. I actually wasn't going to buy this as it didn't sound very interesting but after reading what bits you shared with us. Payday can't come soon enough.

Remember when the very first image from TOR popped up and it was a space battle with completely unfamiliar ships? And how people went: What's this? I don't recognize anything! This isn't Star Wars!

So while I too would have liked seeing more new designs, at the end of the day I'm fine with it. Besides, my Sith warrior wears the same freaking face mask as Malgus, because it looks awesome.

 

I'm cool with this idea. I mean, it's an MMO that needs to appeal to the "average" Star Wars fan, so I can see why everything looks so familiar, even if it is somewhat disappointing.

I suppose, though, that though the Sith Empire looks quite a bit like the Jedi order in the prequel era, it still would be completely different than any Sith Empire that had come before. So, though it's not completely unique among the entire canon, it is unique in its place in the timeline. I suppose you could argue that the TOR Sith Empire is unique, though, in the fact that it has a much clearer hierarchy than any other Sith Empire; an Emperor, a Dark Council (this one in particular is unique to the era, even though it's just a mirror image of the Jedi council), and quite a few different ranks among the Sith Lords.

When bookstores charge nearly three times the price for most books that amazon prime does? Sorry, my conscious has limits

 

Ultimately, there are sadly quite a few elements of the Sith Empire that make it no different from the Galactic Empire of latter years. An Emperor, Emperor's Hands, Moffs, Star Destroyer looking ships, red armoured Imperial Guard, anti-alien views from humans etc etc. Would have preferred it if they had taken a different path but I think its because they wanted new people joining the game to understand that "See this Sith Empire? They are the Empire you know!". I think really they should have chosen another visual style for the True Sith then the one we got in TOR.

 

Still should have been a New Sith Wars game.

 

well that is true of course. Germany got fixed book prizes for everyone. no individual prices in each bookstore. so that is better here.

 

Don't need to go into details but anything new on the Star Cabal? Mostly in terms of membership and stuff.

 

In my experience this is not usually the case.