Big Game Hunt Drakensang

[Cary Polachek]

Somy litte huntress will soon stand in front of the Mandalore and get an offer to join. This would entail wearing clunky armor, learning a new language very few people speak, an obligation to drop anything and run to help him if he decides to start another war, an obligation to accept challenges from every cocky kid with a gun and all this without even getting paid for it.

She get's lots of new friends to quaff ale with and brag about killing difficult opponents? My shadow would ask if he takes Qyzen instead. He would fit right in. But my huntress is human and ...uhm... bounty hunting is her job. It pays the ammo and fuel and Mako's outrageous communication bills and implementing Gault's ideas about interior decoration. It isn't her hobby.

Mandalorian clans are more than drinking buddies. One clan member's issues is the same as having your brother have issues. If a Mandalorian is slain in non-honorable manners, the whole clan mobilizes to take revenge. It's a giant network of allies that are as close as family.

And in this time period Mandalorians are BIG. And very, very important. They have some of the best armor, weapons, training, and basically anything else related to battle. If your character only cares about money and literally nothing else then it's probably worthless, but mandalorians are not 'drinking buddies to brag with'.

Becoming a Mandalorian, especially one of the current Mandalore's clan, would be a Big Thing. All of the toughest mother****ers in the galaxy will either be like 'hey friend, lets drink and then go shoot giant monsters' or 'yeah... I aint messing with that, I'm not paid enough.'

Mandalorians are like a college fraternity - you join them either by birth or a very difficult initiation and then bam, you're set for life. Members of this 'fraternity' can set you up with jobs, information, and deals. Except in this case, the fraternity is made up of Jedi Killers and warrior spirit.

Yes well. Public relations was the whole point of trying to win the great hunt. There are plenty of mandos camping out on dozen of planets but only a few grand champions. I doubt that 'I am in Mandalore's clan' beats 'I won the great hunt' as far as references go.

Mandalorians are like a college fraternity - you join them either by birth or a very difficult initiation and then bam, you're set for life. Members of this 'fraternity' can set you up with jobs, information, and deals.

She plans to retire some time in the future and live from her investments. For most people that is purpose enough, and the Manda as a purpose doesn't sound that much more plausible than impressing the Scorekeeper to her.

Well, that kind of, like all things, depends. Mandalorians don't really respect the winner of the Great Hunt all that highly - they pay some respect, but they aren't 'yeah we're best buds'. The scary part of 'messing with a mandalorian' isn't only that they're tough, which the Great Hunt proves, but the fact that if it comes out that you messed with one of their clan, a whole clan will descend upon you.

It's a huge fear factor thing that just winning the Great Hunt doesn't provide. Mandalorians have information specialists, star destroyer sized ships, orbital cannons, connections to every part of the underworld. Even if the winner of the Great Hunt could fight a whole clan on their own, they wouldn't be capable of surviving some mandalorians bombarding the planets like Malak did Taris.

Yes, but the other reasons are more in line with her character. She simply doesn't go for the purpose and legacy thing. I guess she will have some differences with Torian, from what I read about him.

She might join, keep a set of beskar'gam around for official occassions, smile silently if the 'honor-before-reason'-talk starts, enjoy the connections and try to be incommunicado at the other side of the known galaxy if the clan chief tries to rally people for one of those 'proud warrior'-things.

Yeah, I was super appreciative of the strongly worded email Mandalore sent during chapter three which literally constituted the entirity of the mandalorians assistance with everything that goes down during that part of the story.

In all fairness to Mandalore, I don't think he has much choice in the matter. Recall that, in an early conversation with Torian, he mentions the Treaty of Coruscant has made real fighting scarce. It also makes both sides walk on eggshells when dealing directly with each other (hence all the behind-the-back maneuvers), lest one little slip-up breaks the treaty and ignites open war*. Given the alliance between the Mandalorians and the Empire, Mandalore might see sending a cadre of warriors to aid the hunter as being both a drain on front-line resources (a smaller pool of warriors to send into real battle) and a risk (potential for accusing the Empire of breaking the treaty). Also, Mandalore knows the hunter didn't just suddenly ascend to the rank of Champion on a wing and a prayer. He knows the hunter is a capable individual who can take care of business and handle him/herself. So why risk spreading resources thin by sending aid to an individual who likely will not need it?

*On a side-tangent, does the Empire really want to break the Treaty? It seems to vary depending on whom on their side you ask. Some try to abide by it, others couldn't care less. My readings about the treaty tell a conflicting story as well.

The very first Imperial flashpoint depicts a space battle that would rank as a major engagement if it happened during a declared war. No, not talking about the battle between the Brentaal Star and the Black Talon, but the fleet battle in which Master Satele Shan claims to have crippled three Imperial dreadnoughts. "Behind-the-back maneuvers"? "One little slip-up"? Seriously?

NPCs in the game that claim that the Treaty of Coruscant resulted in a peaceful era with not a whole lot of opportunities for fighting are either deluded (and bloodthirsty, as in Torian's case) or lying.

On a real-world scale, that's a major battle. On a galactic scale, that's still a minor skirmish. The vast majority of space during the Cold War didn't see any battles or skirmishes. The vast majority of soldiers on both sides wouldn't see combat with each other until the actual war broke out. Even if skirmishes like that are frequent the Cold War would still be very peaceful for most of the population.

On a real-world scale, this doesn't even register because we don't have space dreadnoughts. Damaging three would result in casualties of infinity percent. But yes, a battle in which multiple capital ships were damaged would count as a significant engagement for almost any navy in human history. That's not the issue here, though.

For a vague idea of what dreadnoughts mean to the Imperial Navy, note the Battle of the Foundry. Moff Phennir massed thirty Terminus-class destroyers and one dreadnought (White Nova) for his attack on the Nanth'ri system. This was a major fleet battle to which Darth Malgus committed a very large portion of his Expeditionary Fleet. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a battle during which the Empire's military leadership, such as it was, felt their state's existence was at stake.

Indeed, the game's Codex notes that a single Harrower is a humongous expenditure, and compares the cost of one dreadnought to the entire output of a major (!) mining colony for ten years. Crippling three of them is no bagatelle.

It's improbable that those three encompassed the entire Imperial force involved in the battle, although this draws us out of the realm of 'pure' fact and into inference. Engagements in which the entire enemy force is rendered hors de combat are fantastically rare in any sort of history, fictional or otherwise. (For a Star Wars comparison: at the Battle of Endor, the defeated Imperial forces suffered approximately twenty to thirty percent casualties in capital ships, about half destroyed and half captured/damaged. This is, of course, not counting the destruction of the second Death Star. This left approximately two-thirds of the remaining capital ships in fighting shape for the retreat to Annaj. And this was one of the most cataclysmic defeats in galactic naval history, so.) These three crippled dreadnoughts would almost certainly have had support ships of various kinds, including, probably, several Terminus-class destroyers. Perhaps there were even other dreadnoughts there.

At any rate, it seems plainly obvious that the fleet battle that took place at the same time as the raid on the Brentaal Star was a significant space-naval engagement. Certainly, a battle of this scale might have been unusual for the Cold War period. But it still happened, and frankly it's astounding that it was not seized on as an act of war. (Because that's what it was.) The Empire and Republic both violated the treaty an embarrassing number of times before the actual declaration of war. One wonders what the colonists of Taris or the citizens of Balmorra would have thought of somebody claiming that the war had not yet broken out. What a joke.

Which leads me back to what Bleeters said. Say you don't accept that the Treaty of Coruscant was a joke, and think that the Black Talon/Brentaal Star convoy battle isn't enough to change your mind. Okay: how about the two Republic invasions of Balmorra? How about the Empire's destruction of Taris? How about the battles over Taral V, in the Maelstrom, and at the Foundry? Chapter 2 is chock-full of actual war, declared or not. Mandalore himself opens the chapter by stating that he is in fact going to war, like Bleeters said. That chapter also happens to be the exact time when Republic pressure starts to ramp up on the Champion, first on Quesh and then culminating in the raid on Nar Shaddaa. Put baldly, if Mandalore's reason for wussing out on his clansperson is that he's worried about breaking the treaty, he is a liar.

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