Biographies and Smuggler's Vanguard

For a long time people have speculated what other HoloNet tabs there might be, and today BioWare revealed one of them: Biographies. This gives us a bit of background information about a couple of the NPCs in the game, but more on that in a moment.

The first update today is the release of a short story by Robert Chestney named "Smuggler's Vanguard", giving a closer look at one of the characters from the Timeline. Here's the official news:

Get a closer look at one of the most popular characters from the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Timeline series. Hylo Visz, the daring Mirialan pilot who broke the Mandalorian Blockade, is the protagonist in a new short story published on StarWars.com. Written by BioWare’s Robert Chestney, ‘Smuggler’s Vanguard’ tells a story from Hylo’s past, when she was contracting on a high profile job for the Hutt crime cartel. Caught between two of the Hutts’ most brutish goons and a suspicious Corellian corporation, Hylo is forced to rely on her instincts and her luck to squirm out of a difficult situation and find a way to profit against the odds.

Check out ‘Smuggler’s Vanguard’ on StarWars.com now!

And as said the other update reveals a new section to the HoloNet and with it some background information on three characters: the imperial Grand Moff Kilran, the independent Nem'ro the Hutt, and the republic Grand Master Satele Shan. Here is the official news:

Curious about some of the characters you’ve seen in Threat of Peace™, the Developer Walkthrough, or the “Deceived” cinematic trailer? Now you can find out all about them!

We are thrilled to introduce a new expansion to our HoloNet archives: Biographies! Now you can view profiles of several of the galaxy’s most notable figures. Each entry highlights someone you may meet, travel with, or fight alongside or against as you help determine the future of the galaxy in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™!

Just like the Classes, Planets, and Timelines sections, the Biographies archives will be expanded regularly, so check back often to make sure you get the latest updates!

To commemorate the release of all this background story information I'm adding two new labels. One for blog posts reporting on official story content: story. And another for these new biographies: npcs ([UPDATE] changed label name so that it can also include news post for "inhabitants"). The intention is that the first one will contain such things as official short stories and the second one contains any new biographies they post; based on the HoloNet layout they've got room for a lot of them.

It's a bit of a gamble as there might not be any more short stories, or the number of biographies might remain very limited, but if that turns out to be the case then I'll just edit this post and roll them up into some other label.

For now, enjoy the background information.

oh, and I'm off on vacation next week (for an extended Easter vacation), so it'll take a while to report on next Friday's update, and any other news popping up next week.