BISEXUAL'S FOLLY

@rinskiroo adding your ask here too :D

Even if it is cheating, I'm cool with that! lmfaooo Thank you both for the ask <3

They are very similar fics and deal with the same concept, except the first one is serious and the second one is silly. They're set years apart, and if I decide on one, I will probably drop the other just so I don't have plot points that are too similar.

The first is the bane of my existence--an idea I had months ago and wanted to make work but I'm really struggling to get it to any point I'm satisfied with. It's a fic where my double agent Dravim is tasked by Moff Regus to assassinate Jace Malcolm. Long story short, Dravim is a double agent for the Republic, and he got himself into a position where he could basically hand victory over Malgus to the Republic. My Darth Occlus took a hit over this, but so did Regus. He's in hot water for such a colossal public failure, not only losing the stealth fleet to Malgus but failing to actually stop him. So he's a bit desperate for a huge strategic and symbolic victory, and taking out his counterpart in the Republic seems very necessary to appease the angry Dark Council, especially considering Malcolm is the one credited with leading the ambush that destroyed the Empire's prototype warship, the Ascendant Spear, so recently.

This is set shortly after Annihilation. Dravim has no idea who Theron is, let alone that Malcolm is someone important to him. He just sees the Republic Supreme Commander, and he goes, "Yeah, no way is the SIS ever going to be okay with this. Time to subvert it." Dravim also sees an opportunity to put the final nail in Regus's coffin, so the Empire takes the blow of losing its military leader rather than the Republic, reducing the effectiveness of its fleet. And while some of Malgus's ideals have been adopted throughout the Empire after Ilum according to the Codex, Regus is a firm traditionalist and firmly anti-alien, which I don't think changes after Ilum. So to have him fall on his face would also quiet those still holding Regus up as a symbol of the way things should return to. So the only downside is that it has a high risk of blowing up in Dravim's face if he's not careful.

Theron gets involved when he catches wind of the plot against his father. Not sure how much Theron learns about Dravim's loyalties here. On the one hand, it's meant to explore Dravim dealing with Imperial politics, his status as a double agent, and his evolving relationship with the Empire and Republic. But it's also my self-indulgent version of them meeting pre-Shadow of Revan.

Obviously, Malcolm never gets assassinated. But beyond that, my original idea for it fell apart, so I'm still trying to rebuild a plot from the pieces that actually work. Which is why there's no accompanying snippet

Aaaaand my silly one. "Meeting Malcolm?" is set in Onslaught-era, also when Dravim is playing double agent for the Republic. This time, he of course knows who Malcolm is, and when he's on a mission where the Sith attack Malcolm's flagship and board the ship, Dravim subverts an attempt to kill him. But Malcolm still takes him prisoner, and Dravim doesn't fight it because he's not confident he can get away without one of them getting killed. It's got a question mark because I'm not sure I'm keeping it; I'm just still too attached to parts of it to totally scrap it. It doesn't really move the plot forward or have much of a plot yet beyond Dravim showing up and being taken prisoner by his future father-in-law, who thinks he's a loyal Imperial.

Only snippet I'm happy with at the moment:

Theron shows up as the Alliance representative to claim their "traitor" and transport him back to Odessen, where they figure out how to proceed. Because I found the concept funny:

i ❤ drawing gorgeous girls ! Was so fun to work on this com YAY 💫

12. Be honest, how many outfit tabs do they have?

13. Let’s see those outfits!

i LOVE encouragement. and Ven. so have Ven and her plethora of outfits! I did not spend a lot of time initially doing major space barbie shenanigans, so a lot of her stuff is world drop kind of things that i like the vibes of. let's get into it under the cut! (I recommend clicking on the images because the formatting I did cut some things off but also it would be so long if I didn't do that)

I’m laughing so much, I can see him XD You really mollified him with your little jig though, and he’s impressed by the moonwalk <3

[swtor oc ask game]

7. are they loyal to their faction?

Starting with a whammy of a question right there fkdjf

Qyrhu is too focused on succeeding within the system he knows, he isn’t looking outside of it much. If he is honest with himself (which he isn’t) he has to admit that he feels trapped in that system. But that doesn’t mean that he won’t be loyal to the Empire. At the end of the day, it is what he knows. It takes years and the experiences made to bring him to the point where he is quietly admitting to himself that…. That he isn’t happy, with the Empire, with his position. Which is distressing because he sees no solution to it. Thank the stars there’s the emperor threatening to eat the entire galaxy, he can focus on that instead of dealing with these uncomfortable questions. The entirety of kofete is also him just surviving, he doesn’t need to think on it further. Though he does make his experiences with living outside of the Empire during that time, and it is like tasting something that he might not want to relinquish again.

And then, he eventually has to think about it, and concludes that he doesn’t want to go back to the Empire. He doesn’t want to be a part of it anymore. It’s not good for him, it just drags him back into his paranoia-infested and strength-obsessed self that he is trying to grow out of. And he’s tired of waging an endless war, and the Empire can’t stop doing that, because of their acute resource crisis, because they have built their empire like this, they need to keep conquering to feed themselves. They’ve been bred for war, over centuries, he doesn’t think they know anything else, can be anything else. He includes himself in that, he also doesn’t know what else he could do, but he’s tired of it.

Unfortunately, the Empire is not actually something he can avoid, it comes knocking soon after, and the Alliance is not in a position to refuse them. He didn’t really believe that he could, even though there was short time when he indulged himself in that pipe dream. So he plays the game anew, and looks to himself and his own people in the Alliance, keeps as much independence as is possible, without irking their ire too much.

I wonder what the future will bring in that respect. Complete assimilation or complete break off. I hope for him it’s the latter, but… idk.

14. Who is their favorite companion?

Vette. Blatantly so. It took two to three years to get to an actual friendship on semi-equal footing (as much as that’s even possible when they’re in the Empire; she wasn’t his slave anymore, but still considered non-imperial therefore having little to no rights by the society they were in, were it not for her Sith employer), but he liked her from early on, her energy, her spite, her ability to make the best of a shitty situation. Where it not for everything that separated them, they would have clicked very fast, and they both still feel that a bit in the other. Qyrhu thinks she’s one of the strongest-spirited people in the galaxy and admires her for it. And of course, there are reasons for some of these traits, the way they are born from necessity, to survive, to cope with a galaxy hell-bent on abusing her, and he will eventually see that too, just as Vette will learn to see through his own ways of coping and pretending. That will bring them closer together, strengthened by the fact that their less cool/palatable core doesn’t make the other turn away from them. Qyrhu never had an actual friend before, not one like Vette, one outside of the imperial echo chamber, one not embroiled in trying to one-up each other, and that does him a ton of good.

Qyrhu is a bit in love with her in every universe, but they don’t always go in that direction, and in this iteration of the story, they are aware of it and talk about it but decide to not do the romance side of things, they like being friends, that’s what they want to be above all. Also it’s nobody’s business if they are a bit weird about it at times. Seasoning this with a pinch of qpr.

15. Who is their least favorite companion?

Here’s where I have to admit that Pierce and Broonmark aren’t even his companions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ so that would be the answer. Here’s what I headcanon:

Qyrhu doesn’t have Pierce as a personal crewmember. Lieutenant Pierce is a valuable resource that is at his disposal to use if he needs him and his squad. Qyrhu acts as his Sith patron, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, Qyrhu uses him when he needs more firepower or the support of a secondary squad or to make use of his military contacts, and Pierce is all too happy to use his support for his own projects. Personally, Qyrhu quickly gets the impression that Pierce is all too adept and willing to sniff out other people’s dirty laundry, and to then pressure them with it to gain advantages for himself. A good skill to have, undisputably, Qyrhu profits from it himself, but he does not want Pierce around him and his inner circle. Especially not around Jaesa. So he never takes his offer of a full-time personal black ops soldier, it’s more of an on-call arrangement.

And Broonmark did not survive prolonged exposure with Qyrhu back on Hoth. Qyrhu did not see the need for another killer. So those two ended this potential in brutal single combat. Broonmark did not make it easy for him, he was tough, fought smartly and completely unhinged at the same time. Qyrhu retains a permanent scar from that fight. (sorry, Mark, you could have been good if you were good. I like his tech skill and that he’s a psychopath but the game just didn’t let me connect Qyrhu and Broonmark in a way that made sense for them so. Instead of changing that, I fridged him. sorryyyyy I am terrible. It just wasn’t the right time for those two. But hey, they looked really good killing each other. Once again adding a lot more blood into this than star wars usually goes for. For u, broonmark, godspeed.)

33. In KotFE which companion(s) from another class are you most looking forward to them recruiting?

Answered here Short answer is Kira, Blizz and Guss, but I'm sure I'm forgetting people. And also. I am forever sad that Qyrhu cannot work with Tau and Arn, teasing and coming to respect some Jedi would be so fun for him. Why does only Lana get to antagonize Tau *kicks dust* Oh well, I need to poke one of my pubs awake to take over the Alliance or smth, even though none of them want to...

43. The Outlander is destined to take the throne according to Valkorion, Satele, and Marr. How do they feel about that?

Deeply unimpressed. Fakest thing he’s ever heard. He is very wary of their actual motives, especially Valkorion’s. Satele and Marr just seem a bit lost to him. They should come back to civilization and do something real instead of sitting in the woods building castles in the air. Well… Satele should, and Marr should just move on (Qyrhu doesn’t like Marr much and that’s mutual).

He allows entertaining the notion that it’s his task to take down the current disaster leaders because that’s what he plans to do in any case, but it definitely doesn’t have to be him being the next disaster leader. He knows himself enough to know that he prefers throwing his support behind decisions than doing any actual ruling longterm. Ah well, he’ll worry about it when he gets there...

56. Should Vette get them a giant droid for life day?

No. He’s not into big and slow tank vehicles or whatever. Fast and break-neck is more his style. He is destined to die young btw if you haven’t noticed.

Besides, he would wreak that thing so fast, it’s a waste of credits (well, okay, knowing Vette, buying is probably not what she would do to get it).

68. What were their feelings and reactions finding out that Theron was the “traitor”?

HAH! Ogod I rambled so much here and I’m too tired to clean it up… Apologies

There was a cocktail of feelings involved. Guilt, confusion, anger, guilt, guilt, guilt.

I’ve mentioned this somewhere already but Qyrhu is almost waiting for and dreading Theron finally having enough of him because of how lacking his performance was (because he is failing at powering through a burn-out smh). So Theron telling him that he’s dissatisfied with him and his leadership feels like the sword of Damocles finally falling. And it’s even worse than he thought! Qyrhu really didn’t expect Theron to pull a gun on him, forsake the Alliance and derail a train over that. Aren’t dreaded things supposed to be less terrible than you imagined them?? Hello???

The severity of Theron’s reaction does give Qyrhu pause, and some of his reasonings still don’t make much sense. He doesn’t understand why he never said anything about them before. That might have cued him in that something was not as it seems, but Qyrhu gets distracted by the realization that Theron might have tried to tell him, but he hadn’t listened, being so preoccupied with his own ego-centric self. He still thinks Theron could have gone to someone else, it’s not like Qyrhu is the sole person having a say in the Alliance. But he hadn’t been there for him, he hadn’t seen this coming in that radicality, whatever happened within Theron to push him this far, he hadn’t paid attention. That guts him.

Qyrhu tries to reason at first, makes a valiant try to separate their private affair from the professional, appeals to Theron to not make the people of the Alliance pay for it. He tries to rebuke most of Theron’s arguments, until Theron takes out the big guns and accuses him more directly and more personally, and that hits home. However, Qyrhu is not showing this in front of Theron. He is threatened (in several ways) and he will not give Theron the satisfaction of seeing how all this is affecting him. Theron can see the exact moment the bargaining expression changes into a sneering mask, and that is Theron’s cue that he has made it, Qyrhu believes him and sees him as a threat now. Done fucked achieved.

Qyrhu does not let him walk away, no matter what he’s personally feeling, as a commander, he can’t let him leave like that, with all his sensitive information and the considerable threat he poses to the Alliance. So he holds him in place with the Force (without choking him, just immobilizing him), and Theron has to drop a sneaky pulse bomb between them that hurls both of them in opposite directions of the wagon. Qyrhu having a much shorter distance to the next surface gets nearly folded back in half over the console then slams into the floor, while Theron flies and rolls down the long hallway, and then immediately books it to the speeder and hauls ass while Qyrhu screams after him to “better run fast, Theron! I’m going to HUNT you DOWN!!!”. Most of this gets lost in the wind as Theron is already flying away.

(I bet Atrius was shoveling popcorn in his mouth while watching that recording that Theron was putting on a show for) (idk if there was a recording, the thought just makes me laugh).

Qyrhu is angry, of course he doesn’t like being treated like this, but it’s also an easy façade to put on, to hide the other things behind it. Mostly he feels guilty, and terribly fucking sad. He does not actually want to hurt or kill Theron. Not that he has any idea what he would do with him should he catch up to him, but not that.