Looking for a lore savvy human to shed some light!!!

[onesithsidious]

I played the game way back in 2012 when it first came out, I recently came back, subscribed, and felt abit lost as far as lore goes. Im currently grinding tier 4 gear so haven't yet played any expansions which I'm looking forward to doing. I was hoping someone with extensive knowledge could give a lazy guy a breakdown of whats going on. Spoilers I dont mind. Is Darth Malgus still around? Staele shan? when did Vitiate come into the picture?.. I need any and all knowledge, you can write it out from your perspective or post some links. I just wanna get all caught up to what's going on, figured it's be interesting to get the views of the community

[SteveTheCynic]

It's complicated. And long.

 

I'll use a spoiler box to spare the blushes of other readers. It's going to be a big one, and it will be VERY spoilerish for certain things.

 

So you've probably played the full base class story on at least one character.

 

From there, you go to Ilum, where you have a final interaction with Darth Malgus (more final for him than for you, duh), but I'm guessing you probably knew that as well.

 

So, what next? A bunch of (...) goes down on a planet called Makeb when the Hutts come calling to mine resources. There are two stories, one for the Republic, one for the Empire, and they involve the very first pair of same-sex flirters, a gay PBS Sith Lord (Cytharat) and a lesbian human Republic scientist (Lemda Somebodyorother). (Empire lesbians and gay Republickers are out of luck, sorry.) Darth Marr is involved in organising the Empire side of things.

 

Then we go to Oricon for a completion of the Dread Masters storyline, with a bunch of planetary missions and two Operations.

 

Then we meet Lana Beniko (Empire) or Theron Shan (Republic) for the Prelude to Revan, also known as Forged Alliances. This introduces the "large" version of the Revanites (rather than them being a sort of secret-society of a Freemasonry type), and bad stuff happens. This leads into the full Shadow of Revan story on Rishi and Yavin IV. Noteworthy; Theron and Lana are the game's first "playersexual" flirts (that is, they swing whatever way it takes to flirt with the player rather than being fixed as straight - like the class companions - or gay - like the two on Makeb).

 

The Rishi segment ends up with a meeting between the player, Lana, Theron, Darth Marr and Satele Shan. Then we go off to Yavin, where the player ends up facing Revan and a semi-restored Vitiate.

 

This leads us to Rise of the Emperor, known to most as "Ziost" because that's where it happens. Here, Revan is history, and Vitiate's spirit is on the rampage, and the player once again meets and can flirt with Lana and Theron.

 

Darth Marr is marginally in evidence, and so is Leontyne Saresh, the exgovernor of Taris who made good as Chancellor of the Republic. Bad stuff happens at the end of the Ziost story (just how bad is for you to see).

 

Next step is KotFE, Knights of the Fallen Empire. This opens with the player arriving on Darth Marr's flagship on a cross-faction mission to search for Vitiate, which of course goes wrong. As part of the aftermath of that, something more spoilerish than normal happens.

 

 

Darth Marr is killed by Vitiate in his guise as "Valkorion".

 

 

The player ends up killing Valkorion's body, and is imprisoned in carbonite for his troubles.

 

Five years later, Lana Beniko shows up on Zakuul (Valkorion's Empire's homeworld) to rescue the Outlander (the player), and a good time is had by one and all, resulting in the deaths of many, a meeting with Satele Shan and the Force Ghost of the person whose death was more spoilerish than normal up above, and the defeat of Valkorion's son Arcann.

 

One other extra-spoilerish detail.

 

 

Valkorion/Vitiate's spirit takes up residence in a corner of the player's head.

 

 

That's the end of KotFE. On to KotET, Knights of the Eternal Throne. The Eternal Throne, claimed by Arcann after the death of Valkorion, passed to his sister Vaylin. Arcann is mostly an angry young man with a chip on his shoulder the size of a medium-sized planet. Vaylin is completely cracked and far worse than Arcann ever could have been.

 

So the player ends up battling her in various ways, meets the Force Ghost / Sith Spirit of Vitiate's father, and ends up possessed fully by Vitiate, but beats him finally. This fight takes place inside your own head, and has some ... unique ... aspects as a result.

 

 

That about covers it:

* Vitiate is dead and destroyed.

* Darth Marr is dead but has returned as a Force Ghost.

* Satele Shan is still alive, but has become a bit hermit-like.

* Jace Malcolm is still alive at the end of KotFE and KotET.

* Darth Acina (whose name might ring a bell if you did the Empire Dread Seed missions) is Empress.

* The player is still around, and can be in a relationship with his or her class story partner OR with Theron Shan, Lana Beniko or Koth Vortena (a character introduced early in KotFE).

* The relationship with the three post-class-story companions can be same-sex.

 

After all that, there are the relatively recently-released stories of:

* War on Iokath (Eye Oh Kath, not Low Kath)

* Crisis on Umbara

* Traitor Among the Chiss.

 

These stories change the rules about the last of those spoiler boxes, making some of the statements untrue.

 

Not the one about Vitiate.

 

[devilkat]

I was in and out of the story back then, too, so I don't know exactly when things came out, but here's the breakdown so far.

 

Finish Vanilla storyline. Go to Ilum. Pubs and Imps are fighting over the crystals there. You join your faction to try and take them, BUT Malgus has been playing you both. He takes the crystals and makes a stealth armada and a stealth space station. You have to loosely join forces with the opposite faction to beat him. Takes 2 flash points, but you do. Malgus is now dead.

 

Next is Makeb. The Hutt Cartel is after Isotope 5, a not very well explained, but insanely powerful substance that can be used for pretty much anything. Pub side tries to stop the crazy Hutt and ends up having to evacuate all of Makeb's citizens before the planet breaks apart because of the Cartel's deep core mining. Imp side is there to try and steal Isotope 5 out from under the Cartel's nose by mining it themselves. They manage to stop the planet breaking up and get ahold of some.

 

Then, Shadow of Revan. You do one FP where you either attack Koriban or Tython, depending on your faction, then you do the other one because that planet will be attacked, too. You are aligned with your faction to start. Whoever your person is (Lana for Imps, Theron for Pubs) will be suspicious of their boss and bring you in to investigate. You go with them, meet the other factions representative, and help each other to figure out what's going on. After a FPs on Mannan and Rakata Prime, they have to go into hiding and you go your own way for a while with the promise of them getting ahold of you when they find what the Revanites are up to.

 

To Rishi next. Here, you learn more about the Revanites and their plans. You run around and p*** off a bunch of pirates, then do a couple of FPs and find out Revan's end game. You stop a space battle that was suppose to destroy large portions of both the Imp and Pub fleets, then you get the leaders of these fleets to agree to work together to stop Revan.

 

Yavin 4 is your next stop. Here, you work with the opposing faction to take down Revan. You learn the rest of his plan, kill a bunch of his minions, get the Imps and Pubs to really work together well, then take him on and beat him. This releases the Emperor, and now you have an incorporeal, world eating monster to try and take out. The Imps and Pubs go their separate ways.

 

Ziost, you can do or not. You miss a bit of story by not doing it. Depending on your faction, Theron or Lana will contact you saying something bad is happening on Ziost and they think it's the Emperor. You go there, find them and try to stop what's happening. You team up with both Lana and Theron and manage to free some of the people from the Emperor's control, but you lose the planet and a huge amount of the population to him.

 

Fallen Empire/Eternal Throne is a long, chapter based story arc. It starts with you meeting up with Darth Mar and getting attacked by an unknown force of powerful ships. You and he are captured and taken to the home of this new group. You find out that it's the Emperor in a different form. He gets killed and somehow moves into your head, so you get to talk to him throughout the entire thing. The overall plot is you trying to take down his son and daughter, who take over the throne and wreak havoc on the galaxy. They take out both factions and terrorize at their leisure. At the end of the game, you take the throne as either Peacekeeper, to put the galaxy back together, or as Emperor and you are now the strongest ruler in the galaxy.

 

Iokath is the next step. This is actually a return trip for you. You go here in one of the chapters in Eternal Throne. You have to choose to back either the Pubs or the Imps here. This makes a few minor (so far) changes to your game. You learn that there's a traitor in your midst and you were brought there to be a sacrifice for an evil superweapon robot that can destroy worlds. You get away and the next part is trying to find the traitor.

 

Umbara is where you discover said traitor and try to hunt him/her down. You get on a train that the traitor is on and fight FP style to the front. The traitor is revealed and tries to kill you before making an escape. You escape and fight another FP across Umbara to try and catch the traitor. You don't and traitor gets away.

 

Corpero is the newest FP and part of the story. You meet up with the Chiss guy from the IA story (can't remember his name) and he tells you where the traitor is. You go, run a FP against a bunch of very determined Chiss and droids, but you don't catch the traitor. You do learn that there's something going on and that the traitor may not actually be a traitor, but that's about it.

 

Sorry for the vague description. I didn't want to spoil every thing for you