Back when I was a wee child, one of the first Star Wars books I ever read was Young Jedi Knights: Darkest Knight, which takes place primarily on Kashyyyk. Ever since, I’ve though the planet was super cool. It’s a city in the trees with very natural architecture and also a killer under-forest. Only the bravest can go down to the Shadowlands and return alive. Obviously that includes us.
When you have a wookiee in your party and you go to Kashyyyk, obviously he’s going to have some family drama that you need to deal with because that’s just how this works. Zaalbar is no exception to the rule. It turns out that he was exiled from his home for attacking his brother with his claws, which is apparently super terrible amongst his society. To be fair, he did it because his brother was dealing with Czerka slavers but no one believed him. Now his brother’s in control and holds Zaalbar hostage and sends you down to the Shadowlands to deal with this other crazed wookiee… who happens to be their father. (Family drama: not just limited to Skywalkers!)
All of that is fine though and the real reason to love Kashyyyk is one Jolee Bindo. Jolee is the grumpy old uncle who tells you lots of ridiculous stories. He’ll tell you the stories to get to a very roundabout point and make you jump through hoops for him but it’s always entertaining and I love him. I take him with me as often as possible because I love his commentary. He’s good people, Brent.
Thankfully, my quest to help solve the wookiee drama also intertwines neatly with my hunt for the Star Forge. Once again, the game very loudly *wink winks* and *nod nods* at you and once again, this flew right over my head when I was younger. In my defense, the game does slip up more than once and refer to Revan as a man. You have to deal with a computer interface to get the Star Map and it tests your brain patterns. What sucks here is that I know the right answers but in order to avoid getting dark side points, I have to use the bleeding heart answers and Canderous gets real snarky at me which, y’know, fair. We had to fight some droids but it all worked out just fine and hey! Second piece of the Star Map acquired!
From there, the story moves pretty fast even with the Mandalorian side-plot. Long story short: we restore Zaalbar’s Dad to his chieftain status and kill his brother. I should probably do a better job of remembering their names but I’m also fairly sure that the writers just keyboard smashed for half of these and refused to buy a vowel. Whatever. We came, we conquered, and now we jump aboard the Ebon Hawk and fly onward to save the galaxy!
And here’s where I screwed up: I didn’t go straight to the next planet. I decided to gallivant around the galaxy.
Technically, it wasn’t a screw up and honestly, I still think this was partially the game deciding to hate me by glitching. My plan was to swing by the Yavin Space Station because I always forget about it, talk to my teammates and get them to tell me enough about their tragic backstories to unlock the side quests, and THEN go to Manaan. It was a great plan ESPECIALLY since I know what happens after Planet #3 and because the evening was still early when I finished up on Kashyyyk. I did not expect the Spanish Inquisition.
In this particular situation, the Spanish Inquisition would be the game deciding to trigger a mini space battle during every single hyperspace jump. I hate those space battles. Hate. Them. The controls suck and they are THE WORST. Whatever though. I took Bastila to Tatooine so she could go track down her mother and find out that her adventuring father had died looking for a krayt dragon. Wouldn’t you know it… I know where a krayt dragon den was! Again, I’d like to stress that this should have aaaaaaall been fine. We were just going on a walk through the desert to find his remains. Or at least we were until Malak’s apprentice Darth Bandon appeared. That’s not supposed to happen until after I get the third Star Map piece and I just. Kept. Dying. I will not admit how long I spent trying to beat him because it’s an embarrassing number but I will say it was a two-day adventure because I got so frustrated and it only ended when my character and Bastila throwing their lightsabers at him a lot. No, I am not kidding. (In retrospect, I should have just lowered the difficulty down to normal but my mama didn’t raise a daughter who likes doing things the easy way!)
IT’S ALL FINE NOW. Bastila reconciled with her mom and now I get to go to the stupid fish planet. Wait I take it back… maybe it’s not all fine. Damn.
