Long-time readers of this blog may remember that I used to
have a page devoted to my characters. Each of them would be listed with details
of their class and accomplishments, and alongside that would be a short
in-universe biography.
I chose to scrap that page with the blog’s revamp, although
truth be told I had long been dissatisfied with it even before that point. The
biographies were fun to write, but at the same time it also felt that I simply had
to come up with stories for each of my characters the moment they were listed,
rather than allowing myself time to develop their own backgrounds naturally. As such, I felt I needed to scrap that altogether until such a time as I was ready to give it another shot.
I mentioned in my last post that I’m not much of a skilled artist, but I do enjoy giving drawing a shot every now and again. The same is true of writing. Over the past few years, I have been jotting down snippets of stories whenever a good idea popped into my head, and last year I was able to complete the first draft of a five-chapter long short story. It’s not going to see the light of day anytime soon, but I was ecstatic to finally complete a piece of writing at last.
~~~
I have several key weaknesses when it comes to creative
writing:
I’m not good at approaching a story or character from the
audience’s point-of-view. Because I know who my characters are and where I
would like the story to go, I’m not great at discerning between what’s obvious
for me and what is or isn’t obvious for the readers, particularly if I’m
deliberately keeping something vague prior to a big reveal later in proceedings.
Getting from Point A to Point B to Point E often requires
leaps of logic or contrived coincidences. Often these are clunky compromises
where I want the story to end in a specific location or have a certain outcome,
but as a result are decidedly not what would ‘actually’ happen. Consequently,
endings and middles often feel very disconnected from the rest of the story.
Dialogue is my absolute bane. I’m not a very good judge of
character from literature alone, as I need to see a character in action to
really know how they feel about things. This is where my mind’s eye does come
in useful, as I can see many scenes play out in my head and in those moments
the dialogue does flow naturally – however, when it comes to writing down what
I’ve just seen, the words that were ‘spoken’ no longer come to me. I need
telepathic writing abilities, quite clearly.
Like dialogue, creating credible character motivation is not
a forte of mine. I’ve had two notable concepts in my head for quite some time
focusing on the adventures of my knight and consular, but the motivations of
the antagonist in the first are very tenuous. Since the second adventure
requires the first to happen, I cannot simply hand-wave it away either.
With all this in mind, I haven’t written anything of any
real substance for quite some time. Instead, I’ve just been focusing on
creating little ‘Codex entries’ – shamefully ripped off from SWTOR, of
course – for the characters and concepts I would like to focus on. It helps to
approach these things from a different perspective, whether it be from a
generic “this is who this character is” blurb or an in-universe assessment of a
powerful artifact, as it immediately forces me to start thinking about them as
more than ‘just’ the author, if that makes sense.
I have created over a dozen of these things so far, and all
but two of my nine characters feature somewhere along the line. Since both characters
are ‘just’ soldiers within their respective militaries in-universe without any
ties to other characters or an angle that I thought would be interesting to
push, it’s unlikely that they will receive one for the time being. Eventually, I'm sure.
I would like to share a small selection of the revised biographies that I have
created today. A couple of things to note:
Firstly, despite what I said above, neither my inquisitor
nor my warrior’s biographies will be listed here. They have been written, but I
am just not satisfied with either and will be revising them once I’ve decided
how best to do so.
Secondly, all these biographies are set within the in-universe
date of 3628 BBY / 25 ATC, the same year that the galactic war between the
Empire and the Republic breaks out again after the incursion on Ossus. As a
result, the war with Zakuul will still be relatively fresh on the galaxy’s
mind; I wanted to explore how such a monumental and devastating invasion will have impacted
everyone, from the Jedi to the common civilian, and what sort of threads could
be spun from that.
Moreover, I didn’t want to create the sort of biography
which would require constant updating as the in-game years advanced. It also
gives me some wriggle room in case I decide things don’t work, while still
providing a solid foundation to build from for future concepts.
Finally, there is some considerable overlap with some of
these, and one or more characters may feature in multiple biographies. I have
tried to differentiate these moments, with each coming from a different
perspective and providing new insights, but I apologise if any of these seem
repetitive. Part and parcel of building connections between specific characters!
So, without further ado, here are the current biographies
for five of my characters:
~
Athena Relles (21)
The Relles family is not known for its ambition, nor its
overt dedication to the Republic war efforts. Yet, if you were to gauge them by
their youngest member, you would be mistaken for thinking that the cathar
family were all staunch supporters of the Republic cause.
Athena Relles enlisted in the Republic military with her two
best friends as the war with Zakuul was nearing its end, although only she
succeeded in completing the training. Since then, she has served in the 249th
and 146th Divisions, being transferred to the latter unit upon
promotion to lieutenant. Like several in her cohort, she is adamant that the
Jedi had abandoned and betrayed the Republic when Zakuul invaded, and she is
keen to do her part to defend the Republic in their stead.
What none of her fellow squad-mates know, and what Athena
will never openly admit, is that her older sister is herself a Jedi.
~
As a young girl, the expectations for Kirta Maclin’s future
were very high. Her father was the senator for Mirial, while her mother was a
high-ranking individual in the Republic navy, and both parents hoped that their
daughter would follow in their footsteps. Kirta, on the other hand, had no such
desires. She disappeared from her university campus one evening, signed up with
a crew of pirates captained by Delri Faarn, and vanished into a life of her own.
To distance herself from her parents, or perhaps to avoid
bringing their own careers into disrepute by association, she created the
pseudonym “Cal Pheiya” for herself. Three years after joining Faarn's crew, she led all but one of
the crew to mutiny and steal their increasingly greedy captain’s vessel, and
ever since they have been leading profitable lives smuggling weapons to
resistance groups on Imperial-controlled worlds.
~
Miora Berrine (32)
Left on the doorstep of a local Jedi on the streets of Glee
Anselm as a week-old infant, Miora Berrine has known the Jedi way her entire
life. Regarded as an adept swordswoman, she was gladly taken on by Jedi Master
Eiros Ragan as his third and final student at the age of seventeen. It was
during her many excursions to war-torn battlefronts that Miora developed an
intense animosity towards the Sith. Her attitude has at times almost caused a
handful of diplomatic incidents, each one carefully defused by her very patient
master.
When Zakuul invaded, Miora faked her death, cut herself off
from the Force to remain hidden from any who would search for her, and
purchased an estate on Manaan to live in solitude. Her recent rediscovery and
return to the Jedi Order, as prompted by her former master, has awoken not only
her connection to the Force and pride in the Order, but also her extreme
disgust of Sith. It is presumably Master Ragan’s hope that taking the young
cathar Jedi Vihala Relles under her tutelage will teach the headstrong nautolan
a thing or two about being a more centred and open-minded individual, an
outcome which seems highly unlikely given her history.
~
Phirella Robana (25)
Very few, if any, records seem to exist of the early life of
the Mandalorian bounty hunter Phirella Robana. It is at least evident that she
was moderately skilled with small arms and hand-to-hand combat even
before she was discovered by and accepted as a sister of the Mandalorian Clan
Robana at 19. It is therefore likely that she was a member of some street gang
growing up, possibly indicating that she was orphaned at an early age. Certainly,
she does not appear to have any family to speak of outside of her adoptive clan.
Using her skills and newfound reputation as a Mandalorian,
Phirella spent the next two years on Nar Shaddaa, steadily developing her
bounty hunting career. Towards the end of one late-night hunt, she discovered a
litter of recently orphaned exoboar pups in an exotic beast-wrangler’s sail barge. She
claimed one for her own, naming him Moss, and the two have been traveling the
galaxy as inseparable companions ever since.
~
Vihala Relles (26)
Taken from her family at the age of five, Vihala Relles has
walked the Jedi path for just over twenty years. Like many of her fellow students,
the invasion of Tython by the Empire, followed swiftly by the war with Zakuul,
changed the young cathar’s life forever. Gone were the comfortable halls of the
Jedi Temple; for seven long years, all that Vihala and several other Jedi knew
were the cold and bare corridors of the Valor-class cruiser Lamar’s
Fortitude.
When her master, Dolores Ogia, eventually became the
colony’s primary healer, Vihala found herself being escorted to the water world
of Manaan by the colony’s leader, Master Eiros Ragan. There, she was introduced
to Ragan’s former padawan, Miora, with the intent that the nautolan take Vihala
as her own pupil and educate her in the re-established art of Jedi diplomacy.
The cathar’s feelings on the matter are not documented, although it has been
observed that she appears to be deeply uncomfortable when accompanying her
master to important diplomatic gatherings.
~~~
It has been quite fun coming up with proper backstories for
my characters again. Some of these have emerged through the course of gameplay –
I characterised Miora as someone who hated Sith about two, three years ago, for
example – and others just from the hypothetical situations I would put them in.
And, of course, I do have to be self-detrimental at times as well. The entire thing about Cal’s name being a pseudonym is my gently ribbing myself for being very, very bad at keeping characters’ names consistent over the years, even for established characters. There’s another character who has my “seemingly irresistible tendency to offer her thoughts on any situation, even those which she lacks full understanding of”.
Going from the above quote, I have found it quite interesting to weave in what I hope
is a healthy balance of negative and positive character traits and views in some
of these biographies, something which I’ve not historically been very good at. I like to believe that Athena and her squadmates’ views that the Jedi abandoned
the Republic in their time of need was an actual, albeit somewhat extreme, belief
that some people would have had when the Eternal Fleet was bearing down on everyone.
Sure, they’re not perfect, but I do hope that, as time
progresses, I am picking up new skills to improve my writing and
characterisation abilities. I’ll probably keep my focus on single-chapter short
stories for now – I already have one that’s fully-drafted featuring Athena – as
those tend to be somewhat straight-forward. I probably will post a few of them
to this blog once I’m happy with them.
For now, though, these five are all I’m willing to share. There
will, I’m certain, be more on the way, but I need to revisit a couple. I feel
they’re more setting up these specific characters as the antagonists in a
concept than they are as fully-fledged individuals.
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