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Hello and welcome to the first installment of my weekly article, "The Lore of TOR" where we look at the Old Republic game and how its events fit into and affect the Star Wars canon. For our first foray into the realm of story, we look at an event called The Great Hunt. So sit back, relax, get some mountain dew and lets step into the Lore of TOR!

In the recent game footage and demos of The Old Republic we saw our first look at the Bounty Hunter starting dialogue. From the footage we can tell that you are entering an event called The Great Hunt. Now, for those of us who played the original Knights of the Old Republic game, we may remember hearing about a similar event called The Great Hunt started by the Jedi Order shortly after the war with Exar Kun, otherwise known as the Great Sith War. It was designed to eradicate any Sith members and the creatures they created, most notably the Tarentatek, a creature that fed on the blood of any Force-sensitive person. These hunts were never completely successful, for the tarentatek always slowly came back. The Great Hunt, considered far too dangerous, ended shortly before the events of KOTOR. For the final Great Hunt event, three Jedi were chosen due to their powerful Force Bonds with each other, Duron Qel-Droma, Shaela Nuur, and Guun Han Saresh. This trio eventually succumbed to the dark side and the tarentateks inside one of the tombs of Korriban where the player in KOTOR could find the body of Nuur.

So where does this leave us with the Great Hunt mentioned in the TOR footage? The previous Great Hunts had nothing to do with bounty hunters at all! As mentioned in the footage, this Great Hunt event is organized by the Mandalorians to find the greatest bounty hunter of all. The character in the footage only mentions three or four names as winners, so we can conclude that this is a fairly new event.  We still don't know where the journey takes our bounty hunter character, so we don't know exactly what happens. It's not a terrible stretch to think that the Mandalorians adopted this concept. Consider that Canderous Ordo was with Revan when Deesra talked about the Great Hunt and the fact that after the events of KOTOR II, Ordo as the current Mandalore reunited the clans of the Mandalorians. Over 300 years it is certainly possible that the current Great Hunt has its roots tied into the original Hunt organized by the Jedi Order, and may even have similar creatures hunted.

As I sign off, I pose this question to you, the Star Wars universe: What do you think about the direction that Bioware has taken the Great Hunt and what are your thoughts about the possible connections between the two events? If you have a topic you'd like covered for next week, go ahead and ask and maybe you'll see it next time! As for the picture....well, that's not how the Great Hunt works. /facepalm.

Written by :

Brandon Chen