Where to go? And RP's! (Probably)

[Asemir]

So, I'd like to request some discussion on this character, Asemir Lor'kora, and then talk about possible RPs for him.

Basically, I'm at a loss of where to take him. In many ways, I believe I've developed him as much as I possibly can and his story is done. However, I don't want to give up on Asemir because I genuinely like him. He's got a lot of me and I've got a lot of him. My writing style is Asemir. But, I just cannot think about where to go. I don't want to retire Asemir. I want his story to continue.

So, what do you guys think? Where should Asemir head next? He's a combat specialist. That's his niche. His mastery of the Force is all focused on buffing his martial prowess and demoralizing his foes. His skill with the "magical" and arcane side of the Force is lacking, but he's still an innately powerful Force user. His non-Force related skills are also highly refined.

Asemir's fought and won against very powerful Sith lords. He's fought beside said Sith lords (and ladies, aka [member="Ashin Varanin"]). He's stopped the destruction of the galaxy. He's killed thousands. He's lost friends and loved ones. He's protected the innocent. He's gone from commando to spy to Dark Knight to Dark Lord to bounty hunter. He's done all this stuff, but now it feels like he's done.

Where can I take this character? He's currently taken on an apprentice but because of RL commitments, that endeavor is very slow. That's not a bad thing, to be honest, with my posting availability.

But, I'd like to do something more consistent. Should he take on another apprentice? Should he try to find love? Should he chuck it all and become a farmer? What do you all think?

So that's part one of the question. Part two is, who'd be up for some RP to begin the next step of Asemir's story? This is more of a general question that I hope will lead to some specific RPs and/or ideas. I've learned that I need to be specific in what I hope to accomplish.

What say you?

 

[Tiland Kortun]

I guess my first question would be that after everything that's happened to him, what does he want? Does he want to become a hermit? Retire as a farmer? Start home-brewing? Rest for a while? Take a long and luxurious cruise? How do you picture his mental and emotional state at this point?

 

[TWD-73]

Have an RP thread where you have him go find someone willing to be a Padawan(s), and train them, since you are a Jedi master. I have a Jedi Padawan character.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]

Dream bigger. Not rule-the-galaxy bigger, just...bigger. Carve out a new path. Scale things up, dig into obscure bits of canon or make something entirely new.

 

[Nyx]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]
I have found that one of the best ways to breathe new life into a character is to lose everything.
Adversity and loss breed good stories. A character at the top that loses everything and has to start over is an excellent story.

But regardless if you want to go with that idea, I'd be up to thread with you either way.

 

[Onrai]

I'd be interested in getting him involved with my company, if you'd be willing. Would definitely hope you'd stick around though and not go inactive like everyone else

 

[Asemir]

[member="Tiland Kortun"]

Good question. At this point, he's pretty much just eh about life, I guess. He's seen too much. He's lost a lover to the vagaries of war, another to politics. He's killed women and children, seen hundreds butchered. He's killed dictators and child abusers. He's saved innocent people. He's definitely just burnt out. Which is why he's a bounty hunter: He's trying to do some good by going after criminals mostly, and it's something to keep him busy.

The stereotype of an old grizzled veteran living in the forest, alone, with a white beard and hunting game to survive, comes to mind. Except, in this case, he's travelling the galaxy hunting pirates and criminals.

I don't think Asemir really knows (or cares) what he wants at this point, which is what makes it so hard. His life is directionless, and it makes sense for it to be directionless. If he were a drinker or gambler, he'd be drowning his life in R-OH.

[member=TWD-73]

Yeah, I had considered this. (Asemir does have an apprentice.) I may look into this possibly again. I'm just always a bit unsure how to actually RP training that isn't explicitly a training thread. It's very difficult to make a training-focused thread fun and exciting. Meditate on the Force. Read this tome. Move that rock. It's a bit dull. Something organic, where the training is not the purpose of the thread but happens as the thread continues, is more preferable.

I'll have to consider this avenue some more.

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Maybe it's because I'm officially old now (I've lived three decades!), but my creativity seems to have been destroyed. Or perhaps it's because a baby tends to sap all life out of you. Either way, I cannot for the life of me think of anything "new" or exciting. It's different than it was on The Other Site, where ideas and thread plots came so easily.

Do you have any suggestions? Or random musings that you might share, that may become the seed to a vast adventure?

I miss Nargletch.

[member=Nyx]

Losing everything. That got me thinking last night. It's intriguing. What would Asemir lose? He's already lost a lot, given his childhood (child solder, in a sense) and the loss of his home, his family, and everything else. He's a loner now. While he's technically wealthy, it's theoretical and mostly assumed from IC-held positions; it wouldn't hurt to lose it, in other words.

What do you suggest? What else could he lose? Losing his connection with the Force came to mind, but that seems so extreme. It scares me to consider this path.

Intriguing.

Very intriguing.

Tempted.

Hrm.

[member="Vitor Imperieuse"]

What's your company?

Also, I won't be going inactive. I don't think it's possible to become more inactive without completely leaving the site. About 98.645% (real statistics!) of my posts have been OOC and/or Staff related.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]

Good ol' Narglatch.

All I can really offer is what I've done to combat level 50 syndrome with my own characters.

• With Ashin, I tossed her in public threads and rolled with the punches until something big happened. In this case, it was Odium derailing a redemption story arc a few years in the making. At one point I also had her get Force-severed and work her way back to Master, which was quite a bit of fun. Then along came Spencer's kidnapping and torture by the One Sith, which I didn't see coming, and Ashin went even farther off the deep end. Private Dark Jedi army, raids on the Sith, etc.
• With Jorus, my perspective on him changed as his daughter Mara grew up and he spent year after year hiding holocrons. I think his perspective on himself changed. He started asking the big questions.
• With Ember, I had him acquire the mindset of 'It's no longer about me, it's about making a future for my family.' So Clan Rekali is now Tier Five, and a minor faction with a handful of active writers, and Ember's become as much a touchstone for all my other Clan characters as a character unto himself. Central, but not immensely active unless high-level things are called for.
• With Rave -- well, that's a very long story. In the end, she decided that the only decent challenge left, the only enemy worth the fight, was herself, and went off to try and become a Lightsider just to see if she could do it.
• With Velok...Velok's permadead; his soul's trapped in a necklace that [member="Aleidis Zrgaat"] keeps monitored and locked up. But I had Selka Ventus be one of the Emperor's Children to Velok, so she had a buried imprint of his personality. Human horcrux. She spent a long story arc incorporating the different sides of her identity into one, at which point circumstances Force-severed her, so now she's half Velok and all NFU. And that's led to some interesting stuff.

Hope there's something in there that might give you an idea of how it's worked for me.

 

[Asemir]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

Why is it that I think you're on the West Coast (in Canada)? You're probably on East Coast, or near-abouts, right?

You've given me some ideas, yes, which I definitely appreciate. The idea of losing connection with the Force is very curious. I need to really consider this. I think there's some merit there. It's almost scary, in a sense, because I'm not sure I can pull it off.

To become Light Side, that's also another option. Asemir is fundamentally a Dark Sider, I think, but is really amoral in terms of Force-side now. But he'd laugh at the theoretical ideas of the Light Side, which would present some interesting challenges and plot points should someone try to convince him to go Light Side. It could be fun.

Hopping into public threads and seeing where it all goes sounds fun, and does remind me of The Past. I think joining Factions would also help, but therein lies my major problem. My inability to commit higher levels of activity because of RL is probably the biggest hindrance in developing Asemir. I have to stick to smaller threads, which means things take so long, and most threads die after a while. (The sole exception is that apprentice-training thread, which has survived for over 1.5 RL years and yet has progressed perhaps only 5 IC hours. Shout out to [member="Beowoof"] for longest slow thread!).

Man, even as I write this post, the gears are turning about being severed from the Force. The more I think about it, the more attractive it sounds.

How rare (or common) is the ability to break someone's bond with the Force? Do we have a lot of Masters who can do that, or is it really just a handful? If you know the answer, of course.

 

[Onrai]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]

My company's Emeritus Industries. We have exotic technologies and whatnot.

 

[Nyx]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]
Does he have anything left that he cares about? Something his existence revolves around? Something that he holds near and dear to his heart?
Rip it away. Tear it from his grip, turn his entire existence upside down, light it on fire, and make him watch it burn.
Loss more than anything drives a character, motivates them, gets them to do things. Perhaps it's revenge that makes him recover, or the desire to regain what he lost, or even to simply get away from it all. Force him to go out of his comfort zone, do things he wouldn't normally do; not just to do them, but because he has no other choice.

Losing his Force ability is a good option, but it should definitely be thought out first. It's kind of a big step for a character.
As for how to actually do it, I'm not completely sure on that one. The first thing that comes to mind for me is cybernetics; in my mind, it would seem like too much of it would extremely limit one's Force connection, if not severing it, as the Force can't inhabit non-organic material. (to my knowledge, anyway.)
Other than that, I have little knowledge on the subject.
Hope that helps.

 

[GhostOfProtocol]

A simple life of retirement, it's about time. Last time I checked, you'd been through a lot my friend. Go build a house out on some remote planet and be done with it.

If you are against that, just continue the hunt of a bounty hunter, see where it leads you.

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]

 

[Asemir]

[member="Vitor Imperieuse"]

How would you see a former commando/terrorist/Sith Lord/etc. fit in your company? I'm not sure he's the type of person a business would want to be associated with.

[member="Nyx"]

Honestly, probably not. Asemir really doesn't have a whole lot left in life that he really cares super deeply for. He had all of that taken away a long time ago. His beloved was killed by a deranged otter (no joke, it's a long story), and her death and the subsequent callous response from her father drove him mad. It was the whole reason why he went to the Dark Side and all that. (Incidentally, it was a good thing because it allowed him to play a significant role in saving the galaxy. Funny, that.)

I think the most valuable thing left to him right now is his apprentice, but that's only from a hypothetical point of view. The apprenticeship thread has lasted for more than 1.5 RL years and nearly a hundred posts, but it's only progressed less than a single IC day. So, the strength of his relationship with his apprentice is assumed but not proven via IC means.

I think that's why I'm liking the idea of severing him from the Force. It really shakes up his view of the universe. While Asemir is trained to operate without the Force (to combat the ysalamari equivalents of his nation), it would still be a very significant change to his life. It also opens up a whole host of challenges to me as his writer.

I just need to figure out how to accomplish the Force separation. I'm leaning away from cybernetics for the moment because I don't want to go that route just yet. I know there are canon examples of Force Masters severing others from the Force, so I'll probably have to do some research and concoct a scheme.

Yes, all of this discussion helps.

[member="Jardo Snow"]

It's very tempting. He'd be lonely though. No one to settle down with.

 

[Onrai]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]

Would just need to be given an alias. Would be good then - so far as Vitor goes, anyways.