Monthly Archives: April 2017

This week, let’s examine a pair of posters that regular visitors to the Republic’s Carrick Station or any player of Huttball will surely recognize.

The orange banner is another travel poster, this time for an interstellar transport firm called DGB. The meaning of the initials and the numbers along side them are unknown to me. The second poster with its delightfully Eighties contrasting blue and pink color scheme advertises a galactic marketplace.

I can only speculate on the meaning of the large letter Besh: Balmorra? Bespin? Buy n Large? The Mern or M letter, however, is a common element on some other marketplace posters. I’ve speculated on its specific meaning before, and see no reason to stop now. The double Ms could very well stand for the Migrant Merchants Guild, which seized control of Coruscant’s Old Galactic Marketplace.

Both posters use design elements seen elsewhere in the game. The triangular “triforce” symbol and the connected hexagons are often seen on their own in any neon-soaked location from the Huttball arena to Nar Shaddaa’s Promendade.

It seems that even in a galaxy far, far away corporate branding is as inescapable, as it is in our own.

One of my favorite flashpoints is Kaon Under Siege. From its slow build to its crazy mutant-space-zombie apocalyptic climax, it’s an effective and thrilling bit of storytelling. One of Kaon’s most distinctive environments is the abandoned auditorium. Players often race through the theater quickly. pausing only to deal with a pair of rogue security droids patrolling the area. However, passing through an area that would normally be bustling but is currently devoid of life adds to the flashpoint’s mounting sense of unease. Prior to the arrival of the Rakghoul plague, I’m sure it was a lovely place to catch a holovid.

The auditorium’s screen features a large display that, as far as I can tell, appears no where else in the game. It has three sections of scrolling Aurebesh, several inset portraits of aliens and animated graphics of maps and geometric shapes.

The Aurebesh itself is non-specific and draws from SWTOR’s often used pool of mostly random text that can be seen around the galaxy, from the scrolling text that the bottom on the holonet newsfeed in the cut scene that introduces players to the Rakghoul Resurgence event to the Eternal Empire’s Zakuulan language monitors.

This translation includes all four repeating lines that are shared in the two side boxes as well as the crawl atop the screen. To add some visual variety to the repeating letters, the Aurebesh at the top of the graphic is mirrored, and the text in the side boxes is upside down. This technique is common both in SWTOR and in the Aurebesh seen in the Star Wars prequels.

There are items of interest in the content of the Aurebesh. First is the word “slothfurnace” which seems to be a reference to a real company that makes replica Star Wars props such as lightsabers and blasters. I suspect this secret bit of buzz marketing slipped by without official notice. Finally there is a long series of numbers in the first line of the side boxes. I can’t say for sure, but these digits look like a pair of dates to me: June 28, 1976 and November 16, 1977. A couple of birthdays perhaps?