This chapter was meant as a cool down period. After a very heated, battle heavy, dialogue intensive, mystery epic in a ship, it felt like it was time to let the characters just shoot the crap with each other and talk a bit as well as set up other plot points further down the line to cause some interesting tension bits. Some will come up sooner than others. Lets go over them quickly.
The Astral Cutlass Song was actually based lyrically and tonally off one of my favorites songs from Gloryhammer's second album "Space 1992: Rise of the Chaos Wizards." The song "Legend of the Astral Hammer" struck a chord with me that it didn't for others. Many call it the weakest song on the album, but I just love it a ton for some reason. I wanted the Astral Cutlass to have that same mystique about it and having established the Jackals' love of rock music made me go for this angle. And I intentionally made the legend sound so ridiculous and stupid because it's something Jackal pirates of old probably would've made up. But there is a basis to it, seeds I'm planting for the future.
Lek himself is based off of the late great Lemmy Kilmeister. Gone but never forgotten, he lives on as a super old rockstar space pirate bird thing in the future. I think he'd be cool with that. Rock on, Lemmy!
McKay's promotion was something I was building to for a while. I wanted to give her some acual authority, something she could use. I figured an increase in rank would be just the ticket. This opens up a great sense of responsibility and purpose for McKay and starts the next half of her character development. She's going to be more active in a lot of the upcoming missions and storylines, specifically alongside the Space Pirates. That leads to some interesting stuff that I hope to further develop very soon.
The introduction of the Cutlass allowed me an opportunity to fit in some myths for other races. I decided to make up some culture specific legends for some of our alien friends, flesh out their worlds more. We hear so little of their actual mythologies and old stories, we mostly just hear scattered stuff concerning their more recent history. It's cool and all, but sometimes you just wanna dig deeper and find out how these aliens lived before they discovered ray guns and what not. Also, more character bonding and developing with Thane and Jack. I'm enjoying it more than I thought actually. Thane's not as difficult to figure out once you realize he's basically relatively normal save for the whole "I kill people and I'm going to die soon" deal. Once you understand that you can easily adjust your dialogue with him in a situation with any character.
The Chorka... you know when Star Trek the Next Generation was going through some early drafts they wanted to put whales on the damn space ship to act as navigators because new age whale and dolphin love was a thing back then. This is my attempt to take that idea and do something less stupid with it. Whales in space that make you beer! It makes total sense space pirates would cart them off to the stars with them!
In all honesty, while this is a future plot point that will come up again, the Chorka also serve as a means for Shepard to figure out an angle he can use. Zek wants to be a big shot Pirate Lord so badly he's willing to give up stuff he plundered fair and square just to get there. His negotiation skills are good, but now he's played his hand too deep. Shepard knows his game and will use it. The thing is, that might backfire too. You can never tell in the game of piracy.
Tali's lost time will play heavily into the next chapter and I don't want to spoil anything. But needless to say this is our big doozy before we get back to Reach. I know you all really want to get there, and we will, but trust me... you're going to love what comes next.
That's all for now, don't forget to check out Hellfox38's stuff in the profile page it's awesome! See you next chapter!
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