Rants tag

Rants, ruminations, and rambling remarks from my mad, muddled, meandering mind.

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

The Zabrak Twins

You'd think I'd have enough SWTOR toons by now. After all, prior to the two you see here, I had thirteen on The Ebon Hawk, and another four spilled over onto Begeren Colony. The "problem," of course is that BioWare has created a-cheese-ments for taking one of each race all the way through a story, which also unlocks that race for hitherto inaccessible classes. For example, thanks to Silverleaf the Bounty Hunter, I now have a Rattataki Jedi Knight. For the most part, though, I have stuck to Humans, Cyborgs, and a couple Mirialans. Since I have pretty much all eight classes accounted for, do I really need to complete more races? Which brings me to these two. Ionanthe the Knight and Ukunga the Agent are my two Zabraks. (Just yesterday, I spent a little coin to change Ukunga into a waif and altering her face a bit. But these pics are from last week.)
Ionanthe (a Greek word for "Violet") is a Zabrak from the southern continent of Iridonia. After training on Ossus, she traveled to Tython to undergo the Trials necessary to become a full Knight. This coincided with the uprising of the native "Flesh Raiders," led by the fallen Jedi Bengel Morr. Ionanthe was instrumental in quelling the Flesh Raider threat, including the first recruitment of a Force sensitive Flesh Raider shaman into the Order. She later stopped the Sith Lord Tarnis from launching the Planet Prison weapon over Coruscant, which would have trapped the capital of the Republic behind a ship disabling ion field.

Ukunga (from a Swahili word meaning "fog" or "mist") is an Imperial Agent, originally from the eastern continent of Iridonia, trained at the Imperial Academy on Dromund Kaas, and initially assigned to Nal Hutta in a bid to gain support for the Empire from the Cartel, represented by Suudaa Nem'ro. Following her first assignment, Ukunga returned to the Seat of the Empire and assisted in foiling a terrorist plot to destroy the generators powering Kaas City. Unfortunately, the terrorists had a secondary target in the form of the Imperial Dreadnought Dominator, destroyed in a the skies over Dromund Kaas, with the loss of 3,000 people aboard and a number of the planet's inhabitants on the surface. Thereafter, Ukunga was promoted to the rank of Cipher Agent and given the assignment to track down and dismantle the Eagle terrorist network, who claimed responsibility for the Dominator attack.

I  know, I know, these are basically the Prologues of the class stories. There's not a ton of stuff on Wookiepedia about the Zabraks, and and I created these two to occupy a little time when Scooter is otherwise indisposed. As it turns out, Zabrak are the only race besides human who can be any class. On the other hand, I am curious to see if the red and purple tattoo pattern of the imperial Zabrak and the earth tones patterns of the Republic will translate to the other faction once I have completed these.

On an unrelated note, despite this only being my third post this month, I have been getting a steady heartbeat of traffic—perhaps influenced by the upcoming Warcraft movie—making May 2016 my most heavily trafficked month ever, as of some time last night.
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This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Audiobook Review: Durotan

On the recommendation of the MMO Gamer Chick, I picked up Durotan on Audible to listen to on my daily commute. Despite any misgivings I have about the evolution of World of Warcraft gameplay, there's no denying that Chris Metzen and the Blizzard creative team have built an epic world with nuanced depictions of characters and cultures. More nuanced, I dare say, than Tolkien or many other greats of speculative fiction. Christie Golden's fleshing out of Metzen's story is no exception. And Toby Longworth's excellent narration and portrayal of the characters kept me in rapt attention. I have never been partial to Orcs in Warcraft, but hearing the tale of how Thrall's father guided his Frostwolf clan through the hardships they faced leading up to their entrance into Azeroth was both heartbreaking and inspiring.

Changes and retcons, both intentional and unintentional, are common in the Warcraft universe, and Durotan is no exception. For exampe, the "bromance" of Orgrim Doomhammer and Durotar is given a different backstory. I noticed a few people doing Amazon reviews were critical of the changes made the "their" story. But the story changes a little with each retelling, and this not necessarily a bad thing.

Draenor (the world of the Orcs) is dying, and the spirits guiding the five elements are in pain. Life has always been tough for the proud Frostwolf clan of Frostfire Ridge, and it's only getting tougher. A Warlock named Gul'dan comes with promises of a land where fruit and grain is plentiful, and wild prey practically throws itself at Orcish arrows. But the promises come with a price. Are the Frostwolves prepared to pay it?

I listened to Durotan as an audiobook featuring Toby Longworth. His crisp narration helped whisk the story along, and I don't remember it dragging anywhere. A few of the accents he used seemed out of place to this amateur linguist, but served the goal of distinguishing the dialogue of multiple characters. Having recently listened to two Star Wars audiobooks, I had become accustomed to sound effects and music accompanying the narration, of which there was none here. However, through Mr. Longworth's delivery of Ms. Golden's words, I thrilled at the Frostwolves' proud moments and shared their heartbreaks. I grew to care about Durotan and his proud followers.

I had been anticipating the upcoming Warcraft movie already, being a lover of lore and history. But listening to this book has excited me for the potential of this story on the big screen, and even tempts me to return to Azeroth myself, which is Blizzard's hope, I am sure. Well done.
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Creative Commons License
This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

ARPil Badge

Another busy week, with me taking a class at work and my daughter preparing to move back home from the college dorm tomorrow (I helped her move a bunch of crap today). So I haven't had a chance to feature the ARPil badge that Pizza Maid and Ravanel Griffon prepared for those of us that participated in PM's 30 Days project. I only got about halfway through the the questions, but I feel like I got a decent mix of superficial and deeper ones out of the way.
I've said it before, but while I have been enjoying my return stint in SWTOR—now going on more than a year—I don't feel as much attachment to my characters as I have with other MMOs. There's just less opportunity to develop a unique story when I am running through BioWare's. I think of SWTOR as a slightly more interactive movie. I mean I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I am not attached to Captain America or Iron Man either. Not the way I am to Samantha Hawthorn or Rowanblaze. This ARPil helped me think a little bit more about Morrenia and her background and motivations, but I still feel like she is more BioWare's character than my own.
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Creative Commons License
This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.