Here's another episode of KOTOR for you beautiful people out there Welcome to Guub's KOTOR's series! Take a seat (if you're not seated yet that is) and get ready to read because this one has a lot of letters.
The last episode of this series ended with the party looking for their next Star Map in the planet of Kashyyyk (home planet of the hairy beasts species that Chewbacca belongs to). The group had just scared some people away from an old man's lawn, because said old man wanted to help us but asked us to clear his lawn first.
They needed said old man's help to reach the other part of the Shadowlands, where the party is supposed to find and "kill" a frenzied wookiee in order to rescue their companion Zaalbar and his people from his slaver brother Chuundar
Right now, they're just returning to talk with Mr Bindo here, who looks and sounds just as grumpy as ever.
Jolee's responses to how you dealt with the people sitting on his front lawn vary depending on how you did it: killing them makes Jolee angry at you since he asked you to get rid of them peacefully, and doing it peacefully makes him go "Interesting..." because he's old and apparently forgot he asked you to do the job without killing.
Apparently Jolee can't sense how many animals I slaughtered so far.
Jolee agrees to lead the party to the next section of the Shadowlands, which is also the most dangerous, apparently.
He comments that the Czerka people (the slavers in this case) put a "repulsor field" to stop any creature from moving too deep into the Shadowlands.
He also says that those repulsor fields could have worked if most of the population in the planet didn't know how to climb.
The repulsor field in question is just a little further away from Jolee's lawn the now unoccupied Czerka camp.
You can only go through this point if Jolee's in your party, even if you finish this world's main questline the thing won't disappear, which I find a little awkward because Jolee says the wookies wouldn't tolerate having these things here...
Shortly after proceeding through the now deactivated repulsor field Jolee is proved right, as the party can see what is clearly a wookiee fighting what is clearly a... bunch of Mandalorians?
I mean I get it that the wookiee's can get here since they're the ones who know more about this planet than anyone else, but the Mandalorians? How did they even get past that repulsor thingy?
This encounter here is inevitable, as in this cutscene will stop whatever you're doing and will put you in a fight against the Mandalorians.
After you deal with them, the wookiee will beg for your help and in order to help him you must give him one of your Mepdacs (healing items), after that he'll ask for your help in hunting down the Mandalorians who killed his hunting party.
Thus starts a sidequest that I find somewhat interesting; This wookiee, named Grrrwahrr, explains that the Mandalorians only attacked once his hunting party didn't have their own weapons on sight, thus in order to find these Mandalorians we'll have to unequip our weapons and then walk around the corpses of his hunting party.
This cutscene triggers once you walk around the wookiee corpses without any weapons.
teleports behind you "nothing personel kid"
You have to fight these guys in two/three separate places that can be easily identified by the wookiee corpses lying around. If you've built your characters properly you can even deal with them without having to equip your weapons again.
Once you defeat all of the Mandalorians hidden in the dead wookiee spots one of them will drop a "signal device", which you can use on a spot filled with speeders to summon the Mandalorian leader and his group.
Yes, this is their only trick.
This fight is only a little bit more difficult than the ones before, the only difference being the Mandalorian Commander having a lot of health and power behind his attacks, best thing is to focus all of your firepower on his goons so that they don't interfere.
Failing that...
You could just do like me and spam "Force Lightning" until everyone dies.
Remember people, it's not a cheap move if you're the one pulling it!
Once you deal with these guys you have to take a helmet off their corpses and then talk with Grrrwahrr again, who is extremely grateful for the slaughter of these people.
You might find a different thing while solving Grrrwahrr's quest, the Star Map the party is currently looking for, which sits menacingly in its little corner of the Shadowlands.
Why is it that no one has found this place yet? It's just sitting in a corner not far from where the Mandalorians are...
There's two things of interest here: The Star Map itself (which you can't access yet) and the hologram of this weird alien, which triggers the "test" to obtain the Star Map.
Every planet has "something" that has to be done before you can get the Star Map. In this case you have to answer this thing's questions in a very specific way.
See the hologram is going to ask you a bunch of questions because it needs to make sure that you (in this case Avren) fits the "behavior pattern" that it was given, so you need to answer the machine's question in that specific way, otherwise it makes you fight some droids.
Either way after three questions (It doesn't matter if you get them all right or wrong) it will allow you to access the Star Map.
Of course you can also ask it a series of questions, like how long has this thing been sitting here? or who was the last person to access this machine?
Depending on what you ask it will tell you that said information is not available or give you the answer; it will tell you how long it has been in Kashyyyk (it was here before the wookiees, terraformed the planet and makes you wonder if it was responsible for all of the wildlife here) but it can't tell you if Revan was the last person who touched the machine.
No matter what you do, answering the questions in the way that the hologram wants you to gives you "darkside points", whereas doing the opposite (trying to do good) gives you "lightside points" but makes you fight the droids.
Whatever you decide to do here, you'll get access to the Star Map.
With the Star Map in our possession one of the two objectives of the party is completed, all that remains now is to find the "frenzied" wookiee.
...Which is fair easier than you're thinking, as he's just chilling in the forest:
He is not as frenzied as Chuundar made us believe, if anything he's just gone insane for being alone here for so long.
Of course he's been alone for so long that he's practically insane now and hates all outsiders, which leaves us with no more choice than to fight him.
It's a short fight, you shouldn't have any problems since it's 3-v-1. After lowering his health enough, Freyyr talks to the player again.
This time you get to decide if you just want to take his head or if you want to do this the peaceful way.
If you don't want to kill him simply talk him down by mentioning his sons.
Freyyr regrets exiling Zaalbar and not believing him when he discovered that his brother was dealing with slavers, he also explains that's the reason he's here to begin with, he believed Chuundar was innocent but then couldn't take it once it was proven otherwise.
Avren decides to spare Freyyr and help him save his people, but Freyyr explains that it won't be easy; Chuundar has made himself look like a successful leader to the other wookiees and made his father look like nothing more than a frenzied beast, so helping Freyyr take back the village will be somewhat difficult.
He explains that there is a way most wookiees will listen to him and that is to recover the blade of "Bacca's Sword", an ancient sword which belongs to the wookiees, damaged when a rather cocky one decided to fight something he was not ready to fight.
Freyyr says that in order to find the blade of the sword and bring it back we'll have to find and defeat the creature that took it (because the thing still has the blade stuck to it's back and never thought of taking it out), so the party has to make a trap now to bait it out and then kill it.
...But that will have to wait for the next episode.
Thanks for reading!
I decided to cut it here because this is the last step to solving the main quest in Kashyyyk, so that the next episode is all about said quest reaching its conclusion.
Like always, thank you so much for your votes and reading, stay safe everyone!