Right then For my hunter: Mako - Smart, cute, extremely useful, keeps my *** alive in every fight, wife material. Oh wait, wife. She better not die. If anything happens to Mako I'll nuke whoever's responsible with enough Mandalorian Iron warheads to turn SWTOR into Space Fallout. Then delete my Bounty Hunter. Gault - He may well be a huge liability, but his god-tier scoundrel skills are always welcome in my crew. Excellent sniper, funny smarmy guy. Gets along well with my hunter, who's also pretty chill. He stays. Torian - Ehhhhh. I dunno. I'm not a huge fan of the kid. All the Mandalorians we know - Canderous Ordo, Mandalore, Shae Vizla - they've all got their own personalities and senses of self, aside from their Mandalorian identity. Torian was literally the first boring Mandalorian I'd ever seen. Nothing defined him for me other than the whole 'my dad broke laws, my dad must pay' thingy, and after that was done and all, it seems as though Torian looked at "The Mandalorian Cultural Guidebook for What To Do With Your Life" and saw the words "go get yourself in big fights!" and decided to join up with me. Torian reminds me of that uptight stick-up-his-ars* third grader who runs to complain to the teacher every time a classmate breaks a rule. I don't dislike him, but don't want him on my crew either. Blizz - Keep at all costs. Duh. I don't need to explain this decision. Skadge - Lots of hunters, light side ones in particular, don't like Skadge because he's a big unruly bully, and want him gone and all. I can't say I'm entirely with them. I actually might keep Skadge because 1) as a Bounty Hunter it only makes sense to have a friggin Hulk in your arsenal of things to take targets down with 2) Because Skadge is interestingly quite self-aware, he wants to be left to skulk by himself on the ship and he knows that he's only there to be a muscly brute at my disposal, and he seems fine with it and 3) He has an ugly personality, but an interesting one all the same. That having been said, he's hardly a priority, I might choose not to take him along if there are good substitutes. HK51 - I never did get around to collecting the parts for this guy. Always wanted to, never actually got to. Oh well. I guess I'll settle for the new HK55 unit. More than one HK unit somehow doesn't feel right anyway. Treek - Nah. Never got her, never wanted to. Niko - Yeah he seems like a cool guy. He might fit in really well with my chill-a*s 420' blazing space mercenary gang. Or he might not, because he seems to root for the Republic - and my Merc (although he isn't an Imperial by any means) is at best non-partisan, at worst, cynical about the Republic and a supporter of the Empire's practicality and meritocracy especially under Marr's leadership. Roight, other character companions! Vette - I've always wanted Vette. Vette the dual-wielding pistolerette belongs in MY mercenary crew. She kinda feels really out of place in the Wrath's entourage unless the wrath marries her, which would then make sense. M14X - Fiercely loyal to the Republic, I know. But the republic no longer exists. Given this, and some changes in circuitry, the M14X would be a perfect mechanical companion for taking down marks with the hunter. Also, two HK droids feel weird but M14X and a HK droid doesn't so.....I can have 2 killer droids!

PROOF? There's one (or three) companions I don't wanna see dead. Like, really.

Darth Marr's/Satele Shan's reactions! The Wrath blasts through the durasteel doors. A hundred corpses and dismantled droids lie at his/her feet, smoldering from lightsaber attacks. An Eternal Empire guard tries to run and flank him from the side and gets knocked and hurled back with a casual wave of the hand. The Wrath walks up calmly. Wrath: It's been a while, Darth Marr. (....) Wrath: *frowns* Darth Marr's assistant, trembling with fear: M-m-m'lord? Darth Marr: *exhales* Damn. Darth Marr and his companions are surrounded and utterly outnumbered by elite Eternal Empire soldiers. Marr single-handedly takes on scores of them, but his companions are wearing out. Darth Marr, midcombat: Fools! Defeating us won't remove the true Sith - A hail of target missiles rain down from the sky and blasts the soldiers, turning the tide of the battle. Marr looks up and sees the bounty hunter. Bounty Hunter: That service is free for loyal customers. Marr and the hunter destroy the soldiers. One by one they all drop dead. Darth Marr: You're the best thing I've spent credits on since this suit of armor. Bounty Hunter: I know exactly how you feel.

Heheh nice, if I may suggest an edit to the agent's: Arkann: (frowns) Who are you? I haven't seen your face in any of our records. Agent: Of course you haven't. If you had, you'd be dead.

And for the agent: Two hundred sniper rifles are aimed and locked on the carbonite chamber as the carbonite thaws. After five seconds, the chamber is thawed completely and two hundred sniper rifles have their crosshairs set on the heart of - Nobody. The carbonite chamber is empty. One hundred and ninety-nine snipers frown in panic and confusion. The last one remains perfectly calm.

This seems fun. Let's continue. The Sith Warrior is thawed out of carbonite. Guard Captain, over the holo: You're unarmed and outnumbered 20 to one, prisoner. These guards are armed with stasis staves that make you feel a century of electrocution in a minute. If I were you, I wouldn't pull any funny business and coopera- argghhh! ahhhhhgggghhhhhh! *The hologram shows the guard captain floating in the air, grasping desperately at his throat as he chokes, and then collapses with a thump* The Sith Inquisitor is thawed out of carbonite. The Inquisitor is immediately bound by several chains and stasis nets, and taken to the guard captain. Guard Captain: With this key, I can free you from those chains, prisoner. All you have to do is sit tight and obey instructions - A massive lightning storm appears out of nowhere and fries the army of guards around the captain alive. Guard Captain: What?....H-how..... A bolt of lightning strikes and electrocutes the captain. Guard Captain: No...we sapped all your power-! Inquisitor: Through power, I gain victory. The Guard Captain's mind is clouded with fear. He whines and steps back from the completely restrained prisoner. Inquisitor: Through victory, my chains are broken. The guard captain's mind is addled beyond function. He babbles incoherently. Inquisitor: The Force shall set me free. The guard captain drops dead. The inquisitor sits among the countless bodies of fallen guards and cackles with laughter, still completely bound by the chains and electronets.

From what I know, all your present toons won't go anywhere. I don't think they'll let you bump up a presently low-level character to 60 instantly. They'll most likely have 12x xp boosts and whatnot to allow say a level 25 character on Tattooine to play through the original bits. Given that they'll be shifting the game years forward, there might be some issues to contend with when it comes to allowing you to start a toon from chapter 1. That having been said, they'll probably find some way to reconcile those issues, so original SWTOR class story gameplay won't be eradicated. They spent 200 mil on the original game as it was during launch, they won't scrap the first 3 chapters that easily. It makes no business sense. If you wish to level a toon from the very beginning (i.e. the noobie acolyte on korriban who eventually became the Wrath) or whatever, you'll get to.

We RPers, we always find a way. Give us a rock and a dead mouse, and we'll give you a narrative to get addicted to. As long as BioWare doesn't do a Call of Duty and say that the entire justification for the new story is "HERE ARE DEM GUNS, GO SHOOT DEM ROBOTS CUZ I GAVE YOU DEM GUNS TO SHOOT DEM ROBOTS WIT" (And they won't screw it up that bad) we should be fine. Granted stories will have to evolve and change. For many RPers (myself included) this change is exactly what we've all been needing - to shake things up a little for RPers who's stories have been stagnating. The time gap leaves questions and plot holes, but it gives RPers creative ways and opportunities to fill those plot holes. If anything, this change gives us more story-creating options not less.

Smuggler: These guys getting carbonized is a recurring theme. I'd wager someone hired an army of Mandos to carbonize the voidhound. I' m putting my money on the Smuggler's love interest/some random hot alien chick/dude coming to rescue him/her. Jedi Knight: Probably sent to an overwhelmingly dangerous mission, got outnumbered/betrayed, then carbonized. Consular: I dunno this one. More likely than not the Consular agreed to being frozen as part of some diplomatic maneuver to save some peoples, while biding his/her time. Trooper: Same as Jedi Knight, I guess? Bounty Hunter: Probably freezed himself. The hunter is the master of carbonite, nobody carbonizes him/her faster than he carbonizes them. Why? Maybe as part of some cunning gambit involving a price on the hunter's head. Sith Warrior: The Dark Council ganged up on him and did a number. Or he was backstabbed . Also a good chance he did it willingly - maybe he was in some location of dangerous residual force energies / nuclear radiation and he used carbonite to protect himself (carbonite mutes out force signatures and all that stuff, its the galaxy's best preservative coating) Inquisitor: This one's a real question mark to me. Imperial Agent: It'll appear that Cipher 9 was defeated and carbonized, but his/her being in carbonite would be a part of some epic master conspiracy S/he cooked up himself. More likely than not Cipher 9's carbonite chamber would be guarded by 5000 guards who have no idea why so many people are needed to guard one frozen guy.

Thank you, this was very much the explanation I wanted. Its just that as a player character all the other stuffsies I was "swatting out" felt like the bulk of what was going on, so I didn't quite get the sense of there being a war and me being a veteran of it. I spend way too much time in cantinas RPing to realistically be a war vet, which is the odd thing.

Haha that would've been my bad as I blitzed through Corellia and didn't pay much attention to the fact that the fighting had resumed.

Ahh, uhm, okay. So I'm gonna assume after Revan is good and gone, Imps and Pubs go back to killing each other like the good ol' days until Eternal Empire comes along? Okay fair enough. One wonders why the Eternal Empire is opposed to the Bona Fide Empire though. If they're all into eveeeeyulllll then why not the Eternal Emperor a)rekt the Dark Council, take over the Empire and carry on or b)Ally with the Sith Empire?

Hmm. What if it's some new/force-infused carbonite technology which completely stops/delays aging? I mean that way they wouldn't have to reskin anything. Save for some non-companion NPCs.

That's fine and all I guess, but WHICH war were my characters great veterans of? When were my characters being great veterans of these wars? In present gameplay time, or in the non-gameplay sometime in between the game's present state up until the moment we get frozen in carbonite?

Ayyyy wait up, when did this resurgence in conflict occur? Also character storylines end at different times - for instance, Bounty Hunter chapter 3 ends BEFORE knight chapter 3 because knight chapter 3 sees a new supreme chancellor as it was. Was never aware there was a resurgence. I thought the whole time it was empire + republic kinda teaming up in an uneasy alliance to get rid of huge-*** external threats like Revan and what have you.