Smuggler’s Vanguard is an awesome short story written by Rob Chestney. A writer for the Old Republic game at Bio-ware, Chestney is also the writer of Threat of Peace, one of the other web-comics I’ll be engaging with shortly.
Smuggler’s Vanguard tells the story of a plucky and young freighter captain by the name of Hylo Visz. Visz, a former child refugee from the streets of Nar Shaddaa, she is now a smuggler working for Barrga the Hutt. Smuggling some prototype engines for Barrga, Visz, along with the muscle sent by Barrga to guard the engines, is double crossed by the Radili Corporation – the ones buying the engines. If you have time to read the story I highly recommend it. You can find it here. It’ll only take a few moments to read, and a story about a smuggler who manages to get themselves into and out-of trouble is always fun to read.
The purpose of this story is, I think, two-fold. One of its purposes is to provide some background information on the smuggler class of character one can play in the Old Republic MMO. Though really not much information is provided, I think this story indicates what smugglers might come up against in their game play while playing TOR.
That being said, the story’s primary goal was to introduce us to the character of Hylo Visz, a smuggler who plays a significant role in the second to last timeline. Hylo Visz is the Han Solo of her time: she’s smart, resourceful, and most importantly, lucky. My favorite part in the story is when she came across the Jedi. She reacted as I think a young Han Solo might react.
I love short stories about Star Wars. Smuggler’s Vanguard was a light piece of fluff that was tremendously fun to read. That is why I enjoyed the Star Wars Adventure Journal so much. I know I’ve gone on about it in the past, but I really do think there should be a more tangible medium for Star Wars short stories. By tangible I mean beyond Hyperspace, where currently the Star Wars short story medium lives, but not for long.
Starwars.com is ending Hyperspace, which makes me wonder where this particular form of Star Wars art will now reside. I’m really very concerned with where Star Wars short stories will go from here.
The reason I joined starwars.com was so that I could go back and read some old Star Wars short stories, but I also wish I owned them. What I mean to say is that I wish I had these stories collected in book or magazine form, in a tangible physical form I could place on my bookshelf and lift up and read whenever I wanted; not stored on my computer in a word file. I want to flip through a book or magazine, complete with pretty Star Wars pictures, and feel like they are a part of my collection: something like the Dark Forces books. If the Star wars short story medium goes anywhere, I hope it transforms into a monthly publication which readers of all things Star Wars can subscribe to.
Wishful musings on my part; I’m sad Hyperspace is going away.
Anyway, the point of my post today was this: Smuggler’s Vanguard was really fun to read, and I wish Star Wars short stories were put into a monthly magazine or book-type-thing publication. I apologize for the rambling nature of writing today.
For my next post I’ll be looking at the third timeline in the TOR series, The Return of the Mandalorians. Until then my friends, may the Forced be with you.
You're probably aware that a new TOR timeline entry was just released. The next time you decide to back up and hit items earlier in the chronology than where you're currently at, you might want to look at two more entries in Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force that I had forgotten about. On pages 163-4, there's a long quotation from Darth Revan's holocron and on 131-3 there's an entry from Deesra Luur Jada about Revan's redemption.
ReplyDeleteHave you given a though what are you going to do with The Old Republic when it gets released? Because it's a MMO it has hundreds of hours of content, and would actually cripple your project.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads-up on those sources from JvS. I'm going to comment on them, along with the lastest TOR timeline after my post on The Old Republic.
ReplyDeleteWith regards to that post, knowing that there will be literally thousands of storylines in that game, I'm only going to make one post on the TOR video game, which will be on my experiences with MMO's, and my general excitment for TOR's release.
I think when TOR comes out I'll be playing a bounty hunter for the Empire.