Jump to content

How to make a Chiss Sith Inquisitor work?


Ylliarus

Recommended Posts

As the title says, something I have been wondering about today, is how one could make a Chiss work for the Sith Inquisitor storyline. I'm really interested into what people here - especially those that abide strictly by the lore - would think up as to a logical backstory for a Chiss Sith Inquisitor. As there are a few points that would have to be taken into account:

 

1. The Chiss Ascendancy considers Force Sensitivity a sickness and abomination. This would mean, that the Chiss who would become the Sith Inquisitor, either had to be exiled from the Ascendancy themselves or be the son/daughter of someone who was exiled.

2. The Sith Inquisitor was a slave before being sent to Korriban, which means that if they were a Chiss, they somehow had to be enslaved by the Empire. Either this could have happened because they committed some crime against the Empire or slavery was passed down upon them through their father/mother, who were convinced to slavery for some reason.

3. Kallig is the Sith Inquisitor's ancestors, which means that they would have to be Chiss too. This could work, if he too had been exiled by the Ascendancy for his Force Sensitivity, roamed the galaxy and learned of the Sith himself, joining them and making a name for himself as Aloysus Kallig.

 

So what do people think would be a good explanation/backstory for a Chiss Sith Inquisitor? Or do you simply think that a Chiss would completely fail to fit in with that class story?

Edited by Ylliarus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As the title says, something I have been wondering about today, is how one could make a Chiss work for the Sith Inquisitor storyline. I'm really interested into what people here - especially those that abide strictly by the lore - would think up as to a logical backstory for a Chiss Sith Inquisitor. As there are a few points that would have to be taken into account:

 

1. The Chiss Ascendancy considers Force Sensitivity a sickness and abomination. This would mean, that the Chiss who would become the Sith Inquisitor, either had to be exiled from the Ascendancy themselves or be the son/daughter of someone who was exiled.

2. The Sith Inquisitor was a slave before being sent to Korriban, which means that if they were a Chiss, they somehow had to be enslaved by the Empire. Either this could have happened because they committed some crime against the Empire or slavery was passed down upon them through their father/mother, who were convinced to slavery for some reason.

3. Kallig is the Sith Inquisitor's ancestors, which means that they would have to be Chiss too. This could work, if he too had been exiled by the Ascendancy for his Force Sensitivity, roamed the galaxy and learned of the Sith himself, joining them and making a name for himself as Aloysus Kallig.

 

So what do people think would be a good explanation/backstory for a Chiss Sith Inquisitor? Or do you simply think that a Chiss would completely fail to fit in with that class story?

 

I feel that they would fit in one way -and on the other way they wouldn't. My gripe is specifically with point 3 about Aloysius Kallig. Considering that he's a fairly known Sith Lord, one could assume that there would be inscriptions about his appearances that have survived, detailing how he looked. It would also mean that the Chiss would be known more widely in the Sith Empire, instead of being an entirely new species that they encounter during their expansion to Unknown Regions.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a baseline, it just doesn't. Canonically, Chiss are only supposed to be played as agent and hunter classes.

 

As for you own headcanon to make the species fit the class, I see no reason why you couldn't make up any wild story you like. The Inquisitor I currently play is a neutral alignment Miraluka, which I kinda like as a contradiction between a species that's usually not dark side and a role in society that's usually not light side.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
I feel that they would fit in one way -and on the other way they wouldn't. My gripe is specifically with point 3 about Aloysius Kallig. Considering that he's a fairly known Sith Lord, one could assume that there would be inscriptions about his appearances that have survived, detailing how he looked. It would also mean that the Chiss would be known more widely in the Sith Empire, instead of being an entirely new species that they encounter during their expansion to Unknown Regions.

 

Darth Marr is fairly well known and no one has seen his face. I think there is a fairly high likelihood that any record of Kallig's original appearance would be long gone. Not to mention that he was basically a rival to Tulak Hord and thus his record would be conveniently removed by the one victorious over him.

 

3. Kallig is the Sith Inquisitor's ancestors, which means that they would have to be Chiss too.

 

Maybe. We don't really have a complete idea of how penetrance works in the Star Wars Galaxy ... Penetrance, in genetics, refers to the percentage of people with a given mutation who display the phenotype of that mutation. We would presume that distinctive physical features, like Lekku, would have high penetrance. This is established by canon in the Clone Wars, where a clone trooper deserter has a child with a Twi'lek woman. Presumably the blue skin and red eyes of the Chiss have similar penetrance, since they appear to be a universal feature of all native Chiss, but if Kallig was truly an outcast from the Ascendancy he would have had to mate with non-Chiss, unless he also happened to find another Chiss outcast or at least one with less orthodox views. If the enslavement began soon after his excommunication from the Ascendancy, it would make it even more likely for mating to occur with non-Chiss species, which means their appearance genes would be competing with the Chiss ones for the ultimate phenotype.

 

This science offers a convenient excuse for any player to use just about any species for the SI, and the backstory is kept sufficiently vague in terms of dates such that we really don't know how many generations removed the SI is from Kallig. Tulak Hord is thought to have died well before 5600 BBY and the SI story starts up around 3643 BBY so that's 2000 years of ancestors to mix up the genes.

 

It's certainly just as likely, from a phenotypic point of view, that only the most recent ancestors of the player SI were Chiss, rather than Kallig himself having to be Chiss.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

As noted, Kallig doesn't have to be Chiss [or any alien], as his ancestors could have married aliens after he fell from power. This actually fits more with what we're told about him - he's not an alien, he's an alien-lover.

 

We don't know much about how the Chiss and the Empire got into bed with each other [or why] so there's plenty of room to headcanon. My personal rationalization is that when they made their alliance, the Empire created a treaty forcing Csilla to hand over any force sensitives to them for training. The Chiss agreed, as long as they would be treated like purebloods and baseline humans [which is how we end up with Chiss Sith Warriors]. The Empire agreed, but stipulated that in the event that Csilla is not able to handover a Chiss found to be force sensitive, if they escape or don't come voluntarily, then the Empire is permitted to enslave them.

 

You could even cut through that last part and extend it to ANY Chiss found in imperial space not affiliated with the Great Houses or the CDF. Thus the Chiss inquisitor is originally just a pleb exploring the galaxy, who gets captured by imperials, interrogated, found to be a civilian, and enslaved. They find out about his force sensitivity afterwards.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your mother and father were proud of you, your talents developed but being that you are chiss, your family couldn't hide the dirty secret that is your character and they betrayed you for themselves by handing you off to the authorities. The ascendency passed judgement that you are to be locked away and stripped of citizenship.

 

The empire discovers you and a number of other chiss prisoners, they buy you and others and turn you into slaves for their bidding. a few short weeks in the service of a sith lord, he senses your characters connection to the force and immediately contacts the Sith academy to buy your character from him so the emperors rules are followed regarding untrained force users. Since admittance on alien slaves are also waived, your charactter has a decent shot at becoming a sith.

 

easy enough to create a backstory there.

Edited by Celise
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Canon-wise, Chiss have had force sensitives. They use them as "navigators", which is how they chart through the unknown regions. Generally, they are young females who serve as navigators. There have been known kidnappings of said children who have a high demand in the underworld market in the unknown regions. Generally around the end of their teenage years they lose their "Second Sight" as it is called. They use the Force to see in the immediate future, which is how they are able to navigate Chiss warships through the unknown regions.

 

There have been rare cases of these force-sensitive children keeping their "Second Sight" past teenage years, and going on as long as possible. Truly exceptional ones, have something called "Third Sight" which is the equivalent to mind reading in the force. You could easily go further with this, but there are Force-sensitive Chiss who serve as navigators while they still have the Force.

 

It wouldn't be completely unnatural if you were, say, kidnapped by slavers or some unknown species, sold to the slave market. You decided to begin using your hate, one way or another you escaped and ended up as a Sith. Sith Inquisitor is most likely Sith-spec that suits these Chiss, as they are not warriors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Canon-wise, Chiss have had force sensitives. They use them as "navigators", which is how they chart through the unknown regions. Generally, they are young females who serve as navigators. There have been known kidnappings of said children who have a high demand in the underworld market in the unknown regions. Generally around the end of their teenage years they lose their "Second Sight" as it is called. They use the Force to see in the immediate future, which is how they are able to navigate Chiss warships through the unknown regions.

 

There have been rare cases of these force-sensitive children keeping their "Second Sight" past teenage years, and going on as long as possible. Truly exceptional ones, have something called "Third Sight" which is the equivalent to mind reading in the force. You could easily go further with this, but there are Force-sensitive Chiss who serve as navigators while they still have the Force.

 

It wouldn't be completely unnatural if you were, say, kidnapped by slavers or some unknown species, sold to the slave market. You decided to begin using your hate, one way or another you escaped and ended up as a Sith. Sith Inquisitor is most likely Sith-spec that suits these Chiss, as they are not warriors.

 

The treatment of Force-sensitive Chiss differs vastly in Canon from Legends. While in Canon they are not shunned because of their abilities, in Legends the worst thing that can happen to a Force-senstive Chiss is execution, if they are found using their abilities. Or they can be exiled from their family as a less harsh option. The mildest thing that a Force-sensitive Chiss can do to prevent their Force powers from being discovered is through medication or surgeries to try keep it hidden.

Edited by Rebamcfan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 years later...

Personally I don't give a bantha pudu. I played a Chiss just because I thought it would be interesting. It mostly doesn't matter except for a line here and there in a Planet Story where an Imperial insults non-humans then has to make an apologetic excuse to you. I get to Force Choke in response sometimes. Traitor Among The Chiss does make note if you are Chiss but accepts you as a Force User. Generally though I don't need to justify anything. I play Chiss because I want to, and I like the palette. I like the aesthetic look of my blue skin Chiss Jedi Knight wearing a white outfit. Same with all my Chiss characters. I like the color blue as it matches the various outfits of different colors depending on character.

Edited by Hadsil
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/1/2022 at 5:12 AM, TheOneWhoLives said:

It doesn't work. The Chiss didn't develop their distinct appearance until after 5000 BBY. At this point, Kallig was already dead.

Maybe "your" Chiss Force sensitive was adopted by a family from other species, descendants of Kallig, and Kallig, even if he knows you are not genetically related to him, still choses to acknowledge you as his descendant? 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You misunderstand. The Chiss as we know them hadn't actually evolved into that species when Kallig was alive. For all intents and purposes, they were still humans and the Chiss didn't exist yet. Their evolution into the Chiss occurred when Csilla's temperatures dropped and they were forced underground to survive. Which happened well after Kallig and Hord were dead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Kallig’s race is unknown, but definitely not Chiss.

I see no problem assuming Kallig was a human, as were all of his descendants, until one of the Inquisitor’s parents. Let’s say that this descendant is an enslaved human man. He meets a Chiss woman who was arrested on Dromund Kaas and sent to Imperial slavery. They have a child. This child inherits their mother’s Chiss biology and becomes the Sith Inquisitor.

 

Problem solved. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 8/2/2019 at 5:16 PM, Rebamcfan said:

Considering that he's a fairly known Sith Lord, one could assume that there would be inscriptions about his appearances that have survived, detailing how he looked.

During Inquisitor story, if you're a human/cyborg/sith Talos Drellik says "[Lord Kallig] was oddly pro-alien", but if you're an alien he says that "[Lord Kallig] was [X], and an alien, nothing less!"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/9/2023 at 4:54 PM, Quendorite said:

During Inquisitor story, if you're a human/cyborg/sith Talos Drellik says "[Lord Kallig] was oddly pro-alien", but if you're an alien he says that "[Lord Kallig] was [X], and an alien, nothing less!"

He actually names them as your species? Now that I didn't know, never in all this time taken a non-human Inquisitor that far through the story with Talos, I'll have to do it now.

Does it work for all alien species, or just the ones available to Inquisitor without Legacy unlocks (Iridonian-styled Zabrak, Ratataki, and Twi'lek only, if I remember right?)

I'd interpreted the line Kallig has about the Inquisitor not being a Sith Pureblood as "this is my shame" as implying that he was only half-Sith, half-something else. 

Although many, many Sith wear masks, for all sorts of reasons, ranging from disfigurement to obfuscation to just plain fashion statement, I had taken Kallig's skull mask, in his particular case, as being intended to conceal an alien heritage. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, RowanThursday said:

He actually names them as your species?

No, he just says "an alien" (something along the lines of what I said, I played with a Rattataki some time ago).

 

5 hours ago, RowanThursday said:

Does it work for all alien species, or just the ones available to Inquisitor without Legacy unlocks (Iridonian-styled Zabrak, Ratataki, and Twi'lek only, if I remember right?)

I have no idea, I would like to try, though

 

5 hours ago, RowanThursday said:

Although many, many Sith wear masks, for all sorts of reasons, ranging from disfigurement to obfuscation to just plain fashion statement, I had taken Kallig's skull mask, in his particular case, as being intended to conceal an alien heritage. 

It's probable, though it depends on the race of the MC. The general theory of "Lord Kallig is a human/sith, gets murdered so there's no direction to his bloodline, someone in it has children with an alien, and eventually they end up in slavery for some inconsequential reason" is still valid, and one I enjoy.

Imagine being a random Twi'lek ex-slave and suddenly the ghost of an ancient enemy of the Emperor, second in power only to Tulak Hord says "nah, you're my heir."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After reading all this, I wanna create  a Chiss inquisitor now

 

 

 

 

Truly I never thought of the Chiss being force users, so never created one

Although , it is advertise create your own story, guess anything is possible in the game. so I guess we can create your own lore

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Really, the lore's a lot more flexible than you might think. 

After all, even taking into account that the majority of Star Wars planets (with the exception of world-cities like Coruscant) are less densely populated than twenty-first century Earth, nevertheless, they are planets- there's a lot more to them than we see, and in other words and more to the point, there are a lot of people involved here. The greater the population, the more you can have atypical individuals without significantly affecting "the norm".

Let's take Sith Pureblood for instance, as the most egregious example. Now, no question, the most "lore friendly" race for them is Sith Warrior. They are, prior to Legacy and Cartel unlocks, only available to Sith Warrior and Inquisitor, since the vast majority of Sith purebloods are Force Sensitive, and understandably part of the Sith Empire; so, no choice in the matter; they go to Korriban. 

"There's no failure at the Sith Academy; those who can't cut it, die." 

Even Sith Inquisitor is a slight stretch, story-wise, on the surface, requiring a custom bit of backstory text which nobody even sees unless they happen to log out early on at the right moment, describing how their pureblood's family fell into disgrace and they were enslaved- but, statistically by far the most likely outcome for a Sith Pureblood, racially, is to be sent to the Sith Academy, privileged, a preferred student of the overseers and no doubt loathed by all the human and alien acolytes 'beneath' them, and ending up either like a Pureblood Sith Warrior, if they're lucky, proving themselves up to the challenge, or like Ffon Althe, killed off when outperformed by a 'lesser being' when it really matters, if they're unlucky.

However... "statistically by far the most likely", when you're dealing with populations of interstellar civilisations, can still leave huge numbers of individuals who fall outside that norm.

Sith Pureblood are rare, a vanishing elite- but, in a civilisation as large as the Empire, which, even given that it's geographically much smaller than the Republic, still covers a considerable number of inhabited star systems, "rare" probably means "only a few million". Sith politics are volatile and enormously tribal, and purebloods would, thanks to Imperial racism, gravitate to the more dangerous top end of the political game. If we assume, as that Sith Inquisitor Pureblood text screen implies, that 'disgrace and slavery for the family of a fallen Sith Lord' is a usual punishment, and given how often they try to rebel and fail, out of a few million, there could easily be a couple of thousand Pureblood family members enslaved, and their equally unemancipated descendants. Since seeing Purebloods out in rags as part of gangs mending the streets would probably be bad for discipline and bring the whole racial realpolitik of the Empire into disrepute, it would make sense for Pureblood slaves to be kept as a kind of prestigious class of slave- perhaps household servants to Sith Lords, who can gloat that they're important enough that they even have pureblood Sith to bow to them, or sent to places like Korriban or similar, out of the way of the media and the general public, which is why we don't see Sith as slaves grubbing away at the foot of the Colossus, and so forth. Nevertheless, that "stretch" over Sith Inquisitor now seems entirely and absolutely reasonable.

Of course, nobody ever (except me, by way of a sort of devil's advocate example above) tried to say that Sith Inquisitor did not fit the lore as a pureblood, but I'm just demonstrating that as a starting point.

Let's move forward. The vast majority of Sith Purebloods are Force Sensitive. Or, in other words, again, there are probably anywhere between several hundred to several thousand, across Imperial Space, who aren't.  We even meet a couple in the storyline. It's clearly a matter of some social and personal stigma, if you are a Pureblood, to not be able to use the Force. 

Such a Pureblood might very well do something like, for instance, seek a career in Imperial Intelligence, in order to try to regain some honour in service to the Empire via another path. Of course, the uses of a noticeably pureblood Agent might be a little restricted- deployment to some far off world where Sith Purebloods might not be immediately recognised as such, like Hutta, for example, or used as a fake double agent or similar, but, within the context of the story, it works without being too much of a strain.

Alternatively, a Force-blind Pureblood, shunned by their family and mocked by Imperial high society as an impotent failure, might very well head out to try to make their own brand of honour, rejecting the Force and the Empire's traditions in favour of trying to make their own path, say, by using the Great Hunt as a shortcut into getting in with the Mandalorians, for example. Or indeed, they go even further afield, plying their living as a free trader out among the stars, eventually leaving Imperial Space altogether and ending up as just another anonymous smuggler making their way in the Galaxy. With these last two options, we should bear in mind that anyone Force Sensitive in the Empire gets subjected to Sith training. Your Pureblood Smuggler or Hunter doesn't even have to be completely Force-blind; they may simply be someone who decided they didn't have it in them to make it as a Sith Lord, and successfully ran away rather than getting shipped to Korriban to die.

Then you have the likes of Lord Praven- or some of the Sith Lords 'redeemed' by Tol Braga, who may have been Pureblood, Sith either trained or untrained, who somehow or other got out of Imperial Space before it was too late, taken under the wing of a Jedi, and given a chance on Tython. This is difficult- the Jedi Knight's interactions with Praven are rather odd if the Knight himself were the same race, and the Consular has explicitly been in Jedi training since early childhood, and here, there would probably be only a tiny number of Purebloods in that position, but, "difficult to be plausible" doesn't mean "impossible to be plausible". By the same token, a Force-blind or Force-weak Pureblood who ran away to Republic Space might even end up enlisting to defend the Republic against the Empire, if they disliked the Empire's ways that much, making Trooper work as well.

If it can work for Pureblood, it can certainly work for Chiss. I've yet to try an alien Sith Warrior, not quite sure how that would affect Overseer Tremel's dialogues in the early stages, but, again, I'm sure it could be made work.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
On 1/23/2023 at 1:57 PM, RowanThursday said:

If it can work for Pureblood, it can certainly work for Chiss. I've yet to try an alien Sith Warrior, not quite sure how that would affect Overseer Tremel's dialogues in the early stages, but, again, I'm sure it could be made work.

I've made a couple, it's tricky because the dialogue doesn't really support it as you mention. My headcanon is that the Empire created a breeding program for certain force sensitive alien species around the era of Vaiken and segregated them to Dromund Fels, the other planet in the Dromund system. If you're force sensitive and you come from one of those species, you're given the prestige of attending the academy and being treated as Human/Cyborg/Pureblood. If not, or if you don't become Sith and survive, you're forced to stay on Dromund Fels and participate in the breeding program, although you still enjoy more rights than any other non-Sith alien in the Empire, possibly even joining the planetary imperial defense forces, as long as you don't leave.

For the Sith elite aliens, there must be some kind of official marking that lets people know at a glance about your special status, in the same way that Republic officers can immediately tell that someone is in Havoc Squad even when they aren't wearing Havoc colors or armor.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cassandra Nightmare is my Chiss Inquisitor; my story was she lived in the Chiss Ascendancy with her sister; Sonja No'va (who is my light-sided Chiss Imperial Agent) but she got kicked out for displaying force powers and she wandered around trying to find a home however she got captured by slavers and was made a slave. Though one day she was made angry, she unknowingly used her powers and was discovered by an unknown Sith looking at slaves who had the force to send Korriban.  Cass felt abandoned by her sister because she was kicked out however she didn't know that Sonja was using her agent skills to play both sides to track down Cass; this is where Cass' story interlinks with my 3 other Nightmare toons.

I might write The Nightmare story one day as fanfiction in the forum, we will see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

The Thrawn Ascendancy trilogy that just recently came out in the past couple of years deals heavily with Force Sensitivity in the Chiss. Now, of course it's 10's of thousands of years later than this game, but, I'd suggest reading it, or finding a summary of the dealings, because it makes a huge difference.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...