Benefaction: A Combine Ck2 Quest in Star Wars Legends
- Thread starter Mantising
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Archivist Grim
Totally not AI
- Location
- The abyss
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
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Let's do this
Let's do this
- Location
- Earth
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Interlude I
BENEFACTION – A COMBINE QUEST
Interlude
He opened his eyes to harsh, dry air and blinked slowly, confused. He turned to his left, then right as that confusion mounted; he was in the arena on Geonosis. It was night, and the spires surrounding the arena cast long shadows, lit by two of the planet's moons. There were dead clones and battledroids everywhere, alongside the wreckage of a couple gunships crashed through the empty seating, dribbling fuel lines still burning.
None of the bodies had blaster burns.
Most had puncture wounds, with armor and droid casing alike shattered around the impact. Tusken rifles could do damage like that, and he scowled at the thought. But there's no way the raiders could have taken on the Droid army and won, let alone the Clones…
A few had chunks missing from them, almost as if scooped out and then the edges singed with a saber.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and he whipped around to steal a fleeting glimpse of blue eyes ducking behind a wall.
He instinctively reached for his saber, but kept it off as he started his way towards the edge of the arena, keeping to the shadows. He could hear the sound of engines running somewhere off in the distance, and footsteps much nearer, echoing around the coliseum. He trudged through the carnage slowly, exhaustion creeping up on him as he tripped over a leg.
He felt a little safer once he ducked into one of the gates at the edge of the area, out of the moonlight and away from… Whatever it was in the stands. He could hear blaster fire now too, alongside rapid cracks that could only be slugthrower shots. The moment of calm is interrupted by the familiar sound of destroyer droids approaching.
He near-instantly flicks out his lightsaber, the blue glow providing the only illumination over the carved sandstone tunnel…
As a lone droideka promptly rolls straight past him without so much as trying to run into him.
The machine unfurls some ways down a bend in the corridor, it's silhouette showing in red on the wall as it fires at an unseen target.
A low, synthetic shriek is soon followed by an offbeat charge and a loud crash of metal parts against the walls. He turns to run the other way, only to hear another creature let out a pair of yowls from that direction as it advances towards his position. A pair of monsters advance on him from both sides, three legs thumping against the stone floor, both with clammy off-white skin and deep turquoise armor plates. The one with blaster burns all over stares at him almost mockingly.
His eye dart back and forth between the two as a bead of sweat rolls down his forehead.
The one on the left moves first, whipping a tri-jointed leg at him with a yowl. His saber takes it off at the knee and it screams as he hears a series of popping sounds from it's compatriot.
The Force guides him to deflect the first two flechettes, but the one behind him lunges, smashing itself into his spine as the last one pierces his right arm.
He winces as the barbs stick through his flesh, the projectile emitting a keening sound until-
He screams now as his arm comes off at the elbow, his saber rattling to the ground.
The next few moments are hazy as one of them picks him up under the shoulders, dragging him back outside. It holds him up to the light as something descends from above. The new thing has a pair of blue eyes like the thing behind him, but smaller and offset to one side. His saber floats off of the ground, hovering just in front of the thing as it spins in space, before being crushed and tossed aside.
The thing's mask comes off and he feels himself being dragged up off the ground towards it-
Anakin screams into his mask, thrashing in the Bacta tank against the restraints. His arm was already gone.
(AN: First real attempt at writing combat, hope y'all enjoy.)
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- Location
- Canada
So Mr Chosen One has gotten a vison about what the Combine do...interesting
I so hope we at least try diplomacy
Lifeandlice
Practitioning side-character
- Location
- Usa
For the Combine diplomacy looks like "you're our servants and we do not care what you think. Also we'll genetically modify you and brainwash you whether you want to or not.".
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
That's not quite true though.
The Combine clearly has diplomatic efforts, that's why Breen was in charge. They established an entire puppet regime to make their occupation of Earth easier.
But that's about the extent of it. The Combine fundamentally isn't really set up to deal with peer powers. Diplomacy is the art of getting their subjects to best serve the whole.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
It will be interesting to see the Combine interact with political forces that can actually fight it. It's outward behavior will be moderated to keep the CIS and the Republic appeased. If only until the Combine can grab a sufficiently large rock.
Asmodemus
Subversive Element
I'm certain we'll be trying to diplomatically convince various groups into becoming useful assets for us, or if we don't manage to get a connection back home immediately, try to appease and play nice with the Hutt Cartel as a whole while searching for a way to get in connection with the greater Combine. Maybe that bunch of black holes would be good.
Given that Anakin is recovering from his lost arm and dreaming of the Combine doing it, this is just after he lost his arm at Geonosis and the galaxy is about to plunge into a very distracting war, with only unclear tugs from the Force to go deal with the thing in Hutt territory before the Combine roll in to let them know what a true menace has arrived.
We can probably take in the Hutts to the Combine one way or the other if we can get a link back to Combine dimensions with a greater response from both sides stalled.
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Another thing is that the combine will have to learn how to deal with nations stronger and equal with it.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Remember our guy has been there since the beginning. He probably remembers how to deal with stronger polities.
It's been a while since I delved into the Star Wars Prequel era lore. I'm mostly an Old Republic fan.
What are the biggest threats to us currently in this time?
What are the biggest threats to us currently in this time?
Asmodemus
Subversive Element
Right now, being discovered by the local criminal cartel rulers before we're in a position to do something about it, with our main reactor offline and no way to get reinforcements from our home dimension.
The hutts here could very likely overrun our base with sheer amounts of minion bodies and pet monsters. We'd have to hope that we can bargain our way to a more mutually supportive agreement, which could be very fruitful if we hit the right notes.
But the reaction to our probing the Force getting it to give nightmares about us to the Chosen One indicates that force users in general are gonna be an issue. Which is bad as they have high influence of both sides of the giant war between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems aka CIS, with Chancellor Palpatine aka Darth Sidious, aka the future Emperor of the Galactic Empire, being the current high chancellor invested with emergency powers to lead the Republic decisively during the war. Whose subordinate, Count Dooku, leads the rebelling CIS. Both are Sith in secret, as the war is a Sith plot to get the jedi to expend themselves in war only to be shot in the back by their trusted clone troops via mind control chips in their head.
Palps will want multiversal domination once he realizes it's on the table, jedi will want to stop the extradimensional invaders that while not as sheerly malicious in intent as Sith are more an utterly uncaring exploitative force that have no problems chopping away anything not 'useful' of a person both in body and mind to get a useful resource.
However, it will take us getting big to be noticed, right now we're on a planetary scale, minus our misroll in touching the Force getting it to give it's chosen one, Anakin Skywalker, the future Darth Vader, bad vibes about us.
Also at this point there's three beings representing the Force active who probably will dislike us. Father, Son, Daughter on the planet/plane of Mortis. But they aren't likely to leave their planet without severe reason to.
Our likely current opponents/potential diplomatic targets are the Hutts, who in canon will be kind of neutral in the big galactic war, quietly adding more slaves and black market dealings while chuckling at the foolishness of the forces in the galaxy. At least most of them, a couple will work with some CIS plots before the plots crumble.
So, we get to be a problem that hopefully nobody will see coming while we get to observe the locals go to war on a galactic scale.
I dont remember much but at the top of my head I would say CIS, Republic, Hutts, Black Sun, That group of mandalorians that wanted to kill everyone not mandalorian, Pirate enclaves that have worlds at their disposal, the ocasional jedi and/or sith and maybe one or two suposely dead super-advance alien races
I'm very cautious about trying to bargain with the Hutts. They'll undoubtedly try to leverage the power dynamic they'd have over us in diplomatic channels if a direct confrontation isn't in our favour.
Asmodemus
Subversive Element
Deathwatch want to be fascist rulers of Mandalore (the planet) and kick anyone not properly Mandalorian (conquering warriors) out of Mandalore (the system) or into slavery one assumes. Before rebuilding and going on a conquering spree down the line probably.
We're in Hutt Space so I doubt we'll have to contend with them in the short term and in the long term they are so beneath us it's not funny. We'll probably just note them as 'local insurgent group 3075' really.
The bigger long term issues are the guys who are outside the galaxy right now and some stuff in unknown regions like a goop that puppets people and those one soul devouring lizards.
Also Ewoks, their sheer power is terrifying.
Yes, that is what gangsters do.
Still, it's better than just being outright mobbed by them and our base stripped for parts.
Best hope is that they don't notice us before we got a working connection back home or a army made up of whatever 'materials' we can covertly gather to blast the local forces down/chop them up.
Definitely keeping an eye on this one. I did have some lore/resource questions though.
What sort of schematics and equipment do we have access to? is it the standard stuff we see in the game or is it more diverse, and does it include stuff like industrial equipment?
Do we have to worry about fuel for our vehicles or do they use some sort of super combine battery/mini reactor?
What's the benefits of synths over conventional vehicles? From what I understand they'd probably be harder to make but they'd have the benefit of requiring less repairs and maintenance due to the fact that they can heal and probably have greater agility and independent operability compared to drones or machines.
What sort of society can we form? Do the Combine have a standard modus operandi or does it fall down to the decisions made by the local administrator as long as they meet some guidelines and provide resources to the Combine war machine (ala the Imperium of Man). I've just been thinking all about the sort of government and society the combine can set up in such a situation after being part of a similar quest on SB and I had all these ideas about how a mixed economy or stratified society based on loyalty/brainwashing levels could work.
What sort of schematics and equipment do we have access to? is it the standard stuff we see in the game or is it more diverse, and does it include stuff like industrial equipment?
Do we have to worry about fuel for our vehicles or do they use some sort of super combine battery/mini reactor?
What's the benefits of synths over conventional vehicles? From what I understand they'd probably be harder to make but they'd have the benefit of requiring less repairs and maintenance due to the fact that they can heal and probably have greater agility and independent operability compared to drones or machines.
What sort of society can we form? Do the Combine have a standard modus operandi or does it fall down to the decisions made by the local administrator as long as they meet some guidelines and provide resources to the Combine war machine (ala the Imperium of Man). I've just been thinking all about the sort of government and society the combine can set up in such a situation after being part of a similar quest on SB and I had all these ideas about how a mixed economy or stratified society based on loyalty/brainwashing levels could work.
The thing about star wars is that the power levels can get ludicrous. Like one sith in legends could just eat planets of the force. Compared to the combine who we only see ground forces of that consist of humans and air forces that consist of basic helicopters and bio gunships. We see nothing of the combines space power. If they even have any in the first place.
The greatest advantage is the teleportation the combine have and even then that requires lots of setup.
The greatest advantage is the teleportation the combine have and even then that requires lots of setup.
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I'm assuming the Combine have fairly normal Industrial Stuff™ either off-world or off-screen besides the little Fabricators we see in in Alyx. Mining facilities, Metal Processing, apparently foodstuff manufacturing as well given the 'Gelatinated Calorie Paste' and pre-packaged headcrabs also seen in Alyx. (At least I can't imagine the resistance is running any kind of a formal butcher.) There's also Combine Workers(Shown in Alyx, mentioned in Hl2) that do something, but logistics is boring for most people so we don't get to see the inside of a Combine factory.
You already have essentially the entire canon Combine 'Tech Tree' unlocked, but you need to build up a lot to make use of most of it.
Mostly trying to avoid super in-depth resource management for the sake of my own sanity, if I think you've gone over what your infrastructure can support I'll add a project about it.
Generally the Synths we see in a given role need to be at least one of A: Better or B: Cheaper than their conventional alternative at fulfilling that role. Hunters provide quite a bit of firepower in a compact, intelligent package that is hard to replicate mechanically even with Star Wars tech, whereas Dropships are way more versatile than any comparable IRL cargo chopper given they can just grab stuff, but might have trouble adapting to spaceflight.
The canon MO seems to be 'shove the locals out of the way and suck the planet dry of resources'. 'Out of the way' might mean different things depending on the species. There's not a lot of specific information on this aside from the broad implication of a legal system of some kind(again from this sign in Hl2), but expect things to look like what little pre-conflict City-17 life we see in Hl2.
Saying that I will try to give you all society options when that time comes, but the closest you're going to get to 'redemption' will be deciding to just... not contact the Overworld. After all, why shouldn't you keep it?