TIME FOR BACKSTORY
Sep. 28th, 2018 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
orrenWhat follows is a rambling recap of the tabletop game this poor bastard was created for and all the major twists and turns that it took. It's not a clean, concise, wiki-ready summary, but I feel like it's the best way to tell the story.
Spoilers for KotOR and KotOR 2 are included in here, so be wary.
Orren came about because a friend of mine wanted to run a tabletop game set in the Mandalorian Wars, and I really loved the idea of playing a Revanchist Jedi. I'd initially conceived him as kind of a political officer - a talker who could advocate for the cause, help debate the council, etc .... And as I'm bouncing ideas off of him, the DM suggests, "Hey, instead of one of the rank and file ... would you want him to be someone who trained with Revan and co. on Dantooine."
It's the sort of idea I don't normally go for because I don't want to shoe-horn a character into a narratively significant role - that shit's tacky ... but an idea occurred to me
Me: "... that makes the ending of the war really, really fucking horrifying for him."
DM: "I know, right?
The conversation just kept going in that direction, and like ... I didn't want to make a Mary Sue or take over the plot, but we kept realizing that the bigger of a deal we made him, the harder his life was gonna crash and burn when this shit was over. There was a lot of pathos to mine there, watching his friends fall to the dark side by inches as they slowly come to justify war crimes as necessary to win the fight. So, the further we got into the character creation process, the more and more screwed he wound up being. This built to the point that one of us joked that the only way his life could get worse is if he was from Alderaan and had his homeworld blown up by the empire down the line ... and that's how he became Orren Organa.
At a certain point, he wanted an idea of how Orren would interact with Revan, Malak, and the Exile, so he wrote a couple pages, and asked me to rewrite it in Orren's voice. So ... I did that, and he read it and was like, "Orren and Meetra sound like they kind of have a thing going on." I hadn't written it with that intent or anything, but going back and re-reading it ... yeah, i could definitely see it coming off that way.
And we're fucking evil, so we roll with it.
For those of you who don't know, Meetra Surik - the Jedi Exile from KotOR 2 - was the one who ended the Mandalorian Wars by deploying a superweapon called the Mass Shadow Generator on Revan's orders.
This weapon destroyed the world of Malachor V and killed millions - everyone on the planet and a ton of Jedi, Republic Soldiers, and Mandalorians still fighting. Only making this worse is the fact that not only did his best friends and the love of his life fall far enough over the course of the war that they were willing to do this at the end ... but the fuckers didn't even tell him.
They love him like a brother, but he's not on the front lines as much as the rest of them, not even close. he hears about stuff, sees after-action reports, and has fought in some battles ... but he doesn't get it, in their eyes. Not really.
Putting all this simply: The game starts off with him joining a cause he passionately believes, helps to convince a ton of Jedi to join through the speeches he gives and the debates he has with the Council on the floor of the Senate, and then slowly watches his friends get turned to the dark side over the course of the war. He sees the writing on the wall and tries to warn them and steer them back to the light, but they don't listen. To them, his views are a result of naivete. By the point the Mass Shadow Generator was being built, they were so far gone that Meetra was the only one who was probably really upset about it.
And hey, fortunately they didn't have to lie to his face much about the Mass Shadow Generator? He'd been on a mission for Revan investigating some arms being smuggled to the Mandalorians (The main plot hook of the campaign). A mission, by the way, that saw him going from the weakest of the big four Revanchists in terms of combat ability to being able to hang with anyone not named Revan because he wound up fighting a LOT of mandalorians and had to make sure that his newfound padawan and all their non-jedi friends stayed alive throughout.
However, the whole time he was on this months long mission, he was having visions. Not the Mass Shadow generator specifically, but some horrible thing his friends would do and then be lost forever. These visions persisted for months of sessions, and this impending feeling of dread just kept building as the war inexorably moved towards the final battle at Malachor. When the party was recalled after completing their mission, that's when Orren finally found out about the Mass Shadow Generator.
The second he saw the thing, he instantly knew that it was it - that this monstrosity was the point of no return. This realization was coupled with another: that they'd kept this thing secret from him.
Now, Orren wasn't getting all of this information in the best of mental states. He was exhausted after going through a series of battles on Onderon with the party. He was sleep deprived, battered half to hell, and had that hit him in the face like a ton of bricks along with finding out that Meetra was gonna push the button. Suddenly, the sky was falling and everything he'd been dreading for months and been trying to avoid for years before that was coming true.
So he confronts Meetra, and comes completely clean. He tells her everything that he'd been seeing in his visions, all the fears he'd had about the three of them for years in a much more direct manner than he'd ever voiced them before. He empties his soul and begins to break down. Hits rock fucking bottom, and I got so into the moment that I started crying my eyes out at the table, acting the scene through in-character tears.
And somehow the moment only gets sadder.
Seeing him fall apart, Meetra held him, and asked him how long it's been since he had any sleep. When he said it'd been like two days, she told him to just get some rest. Sleep, and they'll talk about it when he wakes up.
While the doctors get him something to help him sleep, she went to the party - particularly Hiram, the guy who was Orren's best friend and the second-in-command - and said "Look, Orren is ... he's not okay. I'm really worried about him."
She convinces them to take him to Dantooine, so he could rest, recover ... get the bit of fresh air and room that he needs to be himself again. And the party agrees, because he's been getting really run down, and they're kinda worrying about it too ... and the Mandalorians are already on their way for the final battle.
So, we enter hyperspace, and we're two sectors away when the Mass Shadow Generator is activated. The ripple in the force is enough that everyone on the ship feels it. The non-jedi feel an unexplainable anxiety. Orren's padawan, Lelia, falls to the ground clutching her head.
Orren wakes up screaming.
When the council's recall order goes out, Orren and Meetra both go back. They're both shell-shocked when they meet on the shuttle down from orbit. They don't say much, they just kind of lean against each other while they wait because they know this is it for them. They take whatever solace they can in each other's company until Meetra is called into the council chamber, and before she leaves, Orren stops her.
"I love you."
"I know."
And shortly after that, she's tried. She stands up for what she had to do, and is subsequently exiled.
Orren, for his part, expresses regret. Not that he stood up and fought in the first place - because he still thinks that was necessary - but for what became of them. For what they did, how they were changed, and what they did at the end of it all. That he regrets. That, he'd give anything to change.
Orren is reaccepted into the Jedi Order, but he's regarded with a lot of mistrust for his part in everything that had happened - particularly by Masters Vrook and Atris. Despite the fact that his world had fallen apart, life went on. He spends the next year or two in a long-ass major depressive cycle. He just sort of plugs along, doing whatever he can to make things better for people, but he's lost. He's on autopilot and doesn't know what else to do besides keep moving forward no matter how empty he is inside.
He's broken, and despite the fact he's still a fairly active Jedi, he's pretty much waiting to die.
And then Revan and Malak return as the Dark Lords of the Sith, heading up a new Sith Empire populated by the soldiers that fought under them during the war, and the Jedi who followed them into battle - many as a result of Orren's oratory skills.
Orren finds out about this while completing a mission on the planet of Telos IV ... the planet upon which Revan and Malak enact the first surprise strike of their war against the Republic. Orren's on the ground as the bombs begin to fall, and he scrambles into action. He can't fight the Sith Armada, but he can help people get to the evacuation shuttles - and he does right up until the starport roof collapses on top of him and crushes his right arm. The evacuees he'd saved turned right around and save him in turn, dragging his unconscious, bleeding body onto a departing shuttle.
Orren awakes, and once the shock has worn off, he's got a purpose for the first time in two years. He needs to stop Revan and Malak and start to make things right. He has to try and fix what he helped to break. And, if we're being completely honest ...
He's angry. He's angry that so many people suffered and died and Revan, Malak, and the rest just turn around and spit on everything they stood for, and he didn't lose everything he ever cared about for this. Orren is fucking PISSED.
The campaign now sees the party fighting Revan, Malak, and the Sith -- pretty successfully, I might add. We have some good ol' Star Wars adventures for a while. Orren's even promoted to Jedi Master at the exceptionally young age of 30. This would continue until we hit the other defining moment of the game:
Basically, the hook for the adventure we were on was a Sith artifact called the Mask of the Betrayer - something created by an ancient Sith Lord (i forget which) that could be used to dramatically increase one's mental powers. Very powerful dark side artifact, corrupting presence, can be used to turn people against each other ... so it's very clear why everyone immediately agreed that Revan should not be allowed access to this thing.
The PCs got the artifact, brought it back to the temple, and handed it off to the relevant Jedi Masters so that they could figure out how to destroy it ... and that's where shit started to get weird.
The various PCs started to notice suspicious shit that led them to believe that the mask was either corrupting one or two members of the council, or they were already on the dark side. PCs didn't know how far shit went, so we got paranoid, recorded all our interactions with these Jedi, basically looking for any evidence. We didn't know who might be in on it, so we didn't know who to turn to, and just decided that we needed to get this thing out of their hands and destroy it.
So - queue heist music - we tried to steal it back.
Predictably, shit went sideways, and Orren was the only one who actually got to the mask. As he was turning to leave, four members of the Jedi Council (Vrook, Kavar, Atris, and Orren's former master Zez Kai-Ell) come in.
Then comes the dramatic reveal that all the PCs have been under the mask's influence. One of Revan's agents got to it before we did, attuned with the thing, and has been making us see and hear what they wanted. The Jedi Masters figured out something was awry when it's powers seemed to be fluctuating with activity, and this kinda made it obvious what was happening.
They tried to talk Orren down, help him break free of it's control ... but the DM is shit at balancing, so the roll to actually do that was mathematically impossible for all but one character in the party.
W h O o P s
End result, Orren thought they were trying to bullshit him into handing over the mask.
He believed to the core of his being that he needed to get this thing away from them, otherwise Revan was going to have access to an artifact that would let her pretty much destroy the Jedi. The rest of the PCs were down and out, and he was literally the only thing standing between the galaxy and Sith control - at least as far as he saw it.
So he squared up with half the Jedi council.
And Orren ... Orren was someone who would have been considered a prodigy if it weren't for Revan killing the curve in a way that was totally insurmountable until some asshole named Skywalker showed up. Orren grew up in that shadow, and while he was never resentful, he kinda came to believe he was never anything special.
When the Mandalorian Wars ended and all of his friends turned evil despite his best efforts to prevent that and help them, it shattered whatever faith he had in himself.
He was never strong enough, never fast enough, never there in the right moment, never had the right words when it really counted ...
He was just never enough.
But in this moment, he would have to be.
And, in this moment where he had no more room for self doubt, I had the best run of dice in my life.
With no room for self doubt, he beat Vrook unconscious in the first round of combat.
Kavar, the foremost lighsaber duelist of the era went down two rounds later. Zez Kai-Ell, Orren's own master, one round after that.
Orren was untouchable and I was rolling better than I have in my fucking life, critting left right and center while the Jedi Masters couldn't do much more than graze him. He only went down to Atris at the very end because he burned through all of his stamina DPS-ing down the other three, and he was just exhausted and battered to hell.
When his back was to the wall, he showed what he was truly capable of, and it was more than damn near anyone could handle ...
But it happened because he'd been manipulated to assualt four members of the Jedi council, and nearly hand the artifact back to Revan, and that broke him even further.
Once again, he wasn't enough. And this time he'd put three Jedi masters in the hospital.
As he recovered he talked to the rest of the party, he questioned whether he should even be a Jedi anymore. He just ... he always made things worse.
What really scared him though, was that in that moment, the thing he wanted more than anything else was to kill Revan.
I don't think that he would have, but we never got to find out because that's kinda where that game ended. The group fell apart and we never really got the resolution we were hoping for - up to and including getting into the plot of KotOR 1 and 2 and having our characters on the Ebon Hawk to see how that shakes out.
Spoilers for KotOR and KotOR 2 are included in here, so be wary.
Orren came about because a friend of mine wanted to run a tabletop game set in the Mandalorian Wars, and I really loved the idea of playing a Revanchist Jedi. I'd initially conceived him as kind of a political officer - a talker who could advocate for the cause, help debate the council, etc .... And as I'm bouncing ideas off of him, the DM suggests, "Hey, instead of one of the rank and file ... would you want him to be someone who trained with Revan and co. on Dantooine."
It's the sort of idea I don't normally go for because I don't want to shoe-horn a character into a narratively significant role - that shit's tacky ... but an idea occurred to me
Me: "... that makes the ending of the war really, really fucking horrifying for him."
DM: "I know, right?
The conversation just kept going in that direction, and like ... I didn't want to make a Mary Sue or take over the plot, but we kept realizing that the bigger of a deal we made him, the harder his life was gonna crash and burn when this shit was over. There was a lot of pathos to mine there, watching his friends fall to the dark side by inches as they slowly come to justify war crimes as necessary to win the fight. So, the further we got into the character creation process, the more and more screwed he wound up being. This built to the point that one of us joked that the only way his life could get worse is if he was from Alderaan and had his homeworld blown up by the empire down the line ... and that's how he became Orren Organa.
At a certain point, he wanted an idea of how Orren would interact with Revan, Malak, and the Exile, so he wrote a couple pages, and asked me to rewrite it in Orren's voice. So ... I did that, and he read it and was like, "Orren and Meetra sound like they kind of have a thing going on." I hadn't written it with that intent or anything, but going back and re-reading it ... yeah, i could definitely see it coming off that way.
And we're fucking evil, so we roll with it.
For those of you who don't know, Meetra Surik - the Jedi Exile from KotOR 2 - was the one who ended the Mandalorian Wars by deploying a superweapon called the Mass Shadow Generator on Revan's orders.
This weapon destroyed the world of Malachor V and killed millions - everyone on the planet and a ton of Jedi, Republic Soldiers, and Mandalorians still fighting. Only making this worse is the fact that not only did his best friends and the love of his life fall far enough over the course of the war that they were willing to do this at the end ... but the fuckers didn't even tell him.
They love him like a brother, but he's not on the front lines as much as the rest of them, not even close. he hears about stuff, sees after-action reports, and has fought in some battles ... but he doesn't get it, in their eyes. Not really.
Putting all this simply: The game starts off with him joining a cause he passionately believes, helps to convince a ton of Jedi to join through the speeches he gives and the debates he has with the Council on the floor of the Senate, and then slowly watches his friends get turned to the dark side over the course of the war. He sees the writing on the wall and tries to warn them and steer them back to the light, but they don't listen. To them, his views are a result of naivete. By the point the Mass Shadow Generator was being built, they were so far gone that Meetra was the only one who was probably really upset about it.
And hey, fortunately they didn't have to lie to his face much about the Mass Shadow Generator? He'd been on a mission for Revan investigating some arms being smuggled to the Mandalorians (The main plot hook of the campaign). A mission, by the way, that saw him going from the weakest of the big four Revanchists in terms of combat ability to being able to hang with anyone not named Revan because he wound up fighting a LOT of mandalorians and had to make sure that his newfound padawan and all their non-jedi friends stayed alive throughout.
However, the whole time he was on this months long mission, he was having visions. Not the Mass Shadow generator specifically, but some horrible thing his friends would do and then be lost forever. These visions persisted for months of sessions, and this impending feeling of dread just kept building as the war inexorably moved towards the final battle at Malachor. When the party was recalled after completing their mission, that's when Orren finally found out about the Mass Shadow Generator.
The second he saw the thing, he instantly knew that it was it - that this monstrosity was the point of no return. This realization was coupled with another: that they'd kept this thing secret from him.
Now, Orren wasn't getting all of this information in the best of mental states. He was exhausted after going through a series of battles on Onderon with the party. He was sleep deprived, battered half to hell, and had that hit him in the face like a ton of bricks along with finding out that Meetra was gonna push the button. Suddenly, the sky was falling and everything he'd been dreading for months and been trying to avoid for years before that was coming true.
So he confronts Meetra, and comes completely clean. He tells her everything that he'd been seeing in his visions, all the fears he'd had about the three of them for years in a much more direct manner than he'd ever voiced them before. He empties his soul and begins to break down. Hits rock fucking bottom, and I got so into the moment that I started crying my eyes out at the table, acting the scene through in-character tears.
And somehow the moment only gets sadder.
Seeing him fall apart, Meetra held him, and asked him how long it's been since he had any sleep. When he said it'd been like two days, she told him to just get some rest. Sleep, and they'll talk about it when he wakes up.
While the doctors get him something to help him sleep, she went to the party - particularly Hiram, the guy who was Orren's best friend and the second-in-command - and said "Look, Orren is ... he's not okay. I'm really worried about him."
She convinces them to take him to Dantooine, so he could rest, recover ... get the bit of fresh air and room that he needs to be himself again. And the party agrees, because he's been getting really run down, and they're kinda worrying about it too ... and the Mandalorians are already on their way for the final battle.
So, we enter hyperspace, and we're two sectors away when the Mass Shadow Generator is activated. The ripple in the force is enough that everyone on the ship feels it. The non-jedi feel an unexplainable anxiety. Orren's padawan, Lelia, falls to the ground clutching her head.
Orren wakes up screaming.
When the council's recall order goes out, Orren and Meetra both go back. They're both shell-shocked when they meet on the shuttle down from orbit. They don't say much, they just kind of lean against each other while they wait because they know this is it for them. They take whatever solace they can in each other's company until Meetra is called into the council chamber, and before she leaves, Orren stops her.
"I love you."
"I know."
And shortly after that, she's tried. She stands up for what she had to do, and is subsequently exiled.
Orren, for his part, expresses regret. Not that he stood up and fought in the first place - because he still thinks that was necessary - but for what became of them. For what they did, how they were changed, and what they did at the end of it all. That he regrets. That, he'd give anything to change.
Orren is reaccepted into the Jedi Order, but he's regarded with a lot of mistrust for his part in everything that had happened - particularly by Masters Vrook and Atris. Despite the fact that his world had fallen apart, life went on. He spends the next year or two in a long-ass major depressive cycle. He just sort of plugs along, doing whatever he can to make things better for people, but he's lost. He's on autopilot and doesn't know what else to do besides keep moving forward no matter how empty he is inside.
He's broken, and despite the fact he's still a fairly active Jedi, he's pretty much waiting to die.
And then Revan and Malak return as the Dark Lords of the Sith, heading up a new Sith Empire populated by the soldiers that fought under them during the war, and the Jedi who followed them into battle - many as a result of Orren's oratory skills.
Orren finds out about this while completing a mission on the planet of Telos IV ... the planet upon which Revan and Malak enact the first surprise strike of their war against the Republic. Orren's on the ground as the bombs begin to fall, and he scrambles into action. He can't fight the Sith Armada, but he can help people get to the evacuation shuttles - and he does right up until the starport roof collapses on top of him and crushes his right arm. The evacuees he'd saved turned right around and save him in turn, dragging his unconscious, bleeding body onto a departing shuttle.
Orren awakes, and once the shock has worn off, he's got a purpose for the first time in two years. He needs to stop Revan and Malak and start to make things right. He has to try and fix what he helped to break. And, if we're being completely honest ...
He's angry. He's angry that so many people suffered and died and Revan, Malak, and the rest just turn around and spit on everything they stood for, and he didn't lose everything he ever cared about for this. Orren is fucking PISSED.
The campaign now sees the party fighting Revan, Malak, and the Sith -- pretty successfully, I might add. We have some good ol' Star Wars adventures for a while. Orren's even promoted to Jedi Master at the exceptionally young age of 30. This would continue until we hit the other defining moment of the game:
Basically, the hook for the adventure we were on was a Sith artifact called the Mask of the Betrayer - something created by an ancient Sith Lord (i forget which) that could be used to dramatically increase one's mental powers. Very powerful dark side artifact, corrupting presence, can be used to turn people against each other ... so it's very clear why everyone immediately agreed that Revan should not be allowed access to this thing.
The PCs got the artifact, brought it back to the temple, and handed it off to the relevant Jedi Masters so that they could figure out how to destroy it ... and that's where shit started to get weird.
The various PCs started to notice suspicious shit that led them to believe that the mask was either corrupting one or two members of the council, or they were already on the dark side. PCs didn't know how far shit went, so we got paranoid, recorded all our interactions with these Jedi, basically looking for any evidence. We didn't know who might be in on it, so we didn't know who to turn to, and just decided that we needed to get this thing out of their hands and destroy it.
So - queue heist music - we tried to steal it back.
Predictably, shit went sideways, and Orren was the only one who actually got to the mask. As he was turning to leave, four members of the Jedi Council (Vrook, Kavar, Atris, and Orren's former master Zez Kai-Ell) come in.
Then comes the dramatic reveal that all the PCs have been under the mask's influence. One of Revan's agents got to it before we did, attuned with the thing, and has been making us see and hear what they wanted. The Jedi Masters figured out something was awry when it's powers seemed to be fluctuating with activity, and this kinda made it obvious what was happening.
They tried to talk Orren down, help him break free of it's control ... but the DM is shit at balancing, so the roll to actually do that was mathematically impossible for all but one character in the party.
W h O o P s
End result, Orren thought they were trying to bullshit him into handing over the mask.
He believed to the core of his being that he needed to get this thing away from them, otherwise Revan was going to have access to an artifact that would let her pretty much destroy the Jedi. The rest of the PCs were down and out, and he was literally the only thing standing between the galaxy and Sith control - at least as far as he saw it.
So he squared up with half the Jedi council.
And Orren ... Orren was someone who would have been considered a prodigy if it weren't for Revan killing the curve in a way that was totally insurmountable until some asshole named Skywalker showed up. Orren grew up in that shadow, and while he was never resentful, he kinda came to believe he was never anything special.
When the Mandalorian Wars ended and all of his friends turned evil despite his best efforts to prevent that and help them, it shattered whatever faith he had in himself.
He was never strong enough, never fast enough, never there in the right moment, never had the right words when it really counted ...
He was just never enough.
But in this moment, he would have to be.
And, in this moment where he had no more room for self doubt, I had the best run of dice in my life.
With no room for self doubt, he beat Vrook unconscious in the first round of combat.
Kavar, the foremost lighsaber duelist of the era went down two rounds later. Zez Kai-Ell, Orren's own master, one round after that.
Orren was untouchable and I was rolling better than I have in my fucking life, critting left right and center while the Jedi Masters couldn't do much more than graze him. He only went down to Atris at the very end because he burned through all of his stamina DPS-ing down the other three, and he was just exhausted and battered to hell.
When his back was to the wall, he showed what he was truly capable of, and it was more than damn near anyone could handle ...
But it happened because he'd been manipulated to assualt four members of the Jedi council, and nearly hand the artifact back to Revan, and that broke him even further.
Once again, he wasn't enough. And this time he'd put three Jedi masters in the hospital.
As he recovered he talked to the rest of the party, he questioned whether he should even be a Jedi anymore. He just ... he always made things worse.
What really scared him though, was that in that moment, the thing he wanted more than anything else was to kill Revan.
I don't think that he would have, but we never got to find out because that's kinda where that game ended. The group fell apart and we never really got the resolution we were hoping for - up to and including getting into the plot of KotOR 1 and 2 and having our characters on the Ebon Hawk to see how that shakes out.
