Peragus II is the first level of the Kotor2 game, if we do not count the skippable tutorial. As a tutorial is rather a helping handbook, a manual with a little story, and since there Exile is lying unconscious and seriously injured in a bed, we will practically start discovering the interesting world of Kotor 2 in Peragus, there we will take our first steps on our own feet, discovering our Force abilities there, we will learn the captivating storylines there that will enchants us into the world we get to know here. Here we get our first information about the world that has changed significantly since Kotor 1, here we begin to find out who we really are, and here we find out how important we are and how important we were in the current Star Wars universe. Here we will meet our first companions for our future adventures, T3, Atton, and Kreia. But we do not have time to blink at all, so concentrate, so interesting, and exciting things happen to us, that we are fatally find ourselves at the heart of the story!

Unfortunately, many players make the mistake of running through the game, hurrying and not getting deep in the situation, so he does not know Peragus, so he does not like it. He thinks it is only a first level where his character is weak, chases the XP, puts them on the combat attributes, and looks forward to what will be the end, how strong he will be, with whom he will meet, and focusing on the future losing the present. He will not be able to do some things with a poorly generated character, he will not have access to the full information, won't be able to open things, access digital information, videos, or holograms, will not be able to persuade AI characters to tell certain things, so he won't see the full picture. But this picture is astonishingly complex and interesting! It's as exciting as a crime novell or as a movie, which we're the protagonists of it! And since the level is not long, the available XP quantity is limited, so if you have not divided your skills points cleverly, you will not be able to change it later on too easily, or at all. So if you do not have abilities because of your class, you either "buy it" at a leveling up moment and start building it from zero or you will be forced to spend two points, double-paying for each level, which is slowly evolving, ie some cabinets, chests and doors will remain locked, some consoles can not be broken, some hidden messages will not open, HK-50 will not tell everything, so some of the story will remain hidden. However, as I wrote, it would worth knowing.

During the tutorial, we see that Exile is lying unconscious, T3 navigates the ship to Peragus, and HK-50 comes out of a closed door at the end of the level, and cut, it ends and the rest of the information can be retrieved afterwards we woke up. The Peragus Mining Staff members are shocked to see that almost everyone on board is dead, except an elderly unconscious woman, who they carry in the infirmary, and there is a younger woman with serious injuries, they put her in a kolto tank that is a medical device full of healing fluid like bacta. The T3 series droid was sent to do some droid work, the HK series droid was assigned for protocol and droid control service. His task would be supervising and programming the mining droids on Peragus. His immediate superior will be the Peragus Maintanance Officer whose name we do not know. This officer is responsible for maintenance, oversight, and command of some sections. HK-50 is too much for him though, he does not understand the droid motivations, he tricks out the officer and slips out of his hands. The officer does not know that HK-50 is a military droid with assassination functions, he thinks he is only a protocol droid, so he does not assume that HK is terribly abusing his powers and will be responsible for a series of tragedies in Peragus!

HK is here to capture one of the last Jedi, the Exile Jedi. This is our character. She had neither name nor gender at this time, afterwards the canon named her Meetra Surike and gave a female gender to our character. But during the game everyone calls us Exile. But at this moment we're helplessly floating in the kolto. HK starts his terrible acts. He first reprograms the mining droid to attack the human staff. There was no precedent for this so far, so Peragus's miners were unprepared for it. It is necessary to know that Peragus is the site of an unstable fuel, which is mined here, which is a potentially and highly explosive material. Therefore, the use of military weapons in the colony is forbidden. Thus, most of the miners are defenseless against the rebellion of the droids who, like in Terminator 3, begin to systematically hunt down people after their reprogramming. More and more miners get beside Exile's kolto tank with shot, blown, burned, shashed injuries, slowly filling the other kolto tanks with injured miners. Below in the mining tunnels there are explosions, so the Mining Officer orders emergency lock downs, closes mine sections, the work stops, the miners are instructed to retreat in their accommodations.

Interestingly, the administartion level computer system, which has been communicating so far between the management and the miners, as well as between the levels within the station and between the station and the outside world, well it goes wrong. It has been blocked from the network, the level is physically blocked, everyone are trapped, the turbo lifts do not operate between the levels, the dreaded miners are isolated from each other, they are in smaller groups.

The hangar console was drilled by somebody with a laser cutter, who also took out some vital parts of it. We do all know, it's all HK-50's work. This way, noone can not get into the hangar, the door is locked, escaping is impossible. Paranoia is getting bigger. The miners suspicious of each other, they are afraid, they make extemporary weapons from what they find.

HK slices the fuel storage system and simulates a leak of fuel. The system to protect the rest of the colony isolates that part by locking the section from the rest of the colony by force fields. The mechanism automatically locks all the passages in some parts, completely preventing passage between several regions of the complex. People are in a terrible situation. The miners are stranded in some parts of the Dormitory. Even though they could get out of there, they would not be able to go anywhere because the forcefield prevented them from accessing the rest of the complex. Their only hope is a ship may dock on Peragus, which is at their level, so they could go to the administration level through the docking platform. They find an old communication relay, they use it to send out an emergency message. But the equipment is old, with a short radius, with a fairly low frequency, and it is also disturbed by the asteroids drifting around Peragus. But people hope someone takes the signal and comes to help. The turbo elevator's codes are included in the message, as the elevator can not be used without the knowledge of the code. HK goes in action. He changes the elevator code, modifying the code into its inverse. After that, he turns his anger towards the group who tried to cross his plans: the Dormitory vents suddenly start pumping poison into the ventillation system, poor miners collapse suffocating, agonizing and dying on the floor. The miners, who were starnded in the emergency rooms will have the same fate, they were also poisoned the same way. But there are still others, there is still much to do.

The miners who stranded in the mining tunnels can not escape either. The droids mine the tunnels, poor miners who are not strong in awareness and disarming mines all explode and die down there. Those who survive will be hunted and killed by the droids. Slowly, some parts of the complex are depopulated, dead bodies everywhere, only droids seeking targets pacing in the ghost corridors. It is hard to find any part of the complex where you can stay alive in relative security.

HK-50 pumped the mix of the heat, steam, and gases of the fires caused by the explosions down in the mines and sent it through the ventilation system into the pipes on the side of the mining complex. The hot gas mix will flow from the pipes towards the external service sidewalk at several places. Thus, it is impossible for anyone who has not got a special space suit to walk on that sidewalk to get to other areas. Basic space suits could not resist the combined fire, steam and poison mixture, only the so-called Envirosuit, a special protective suit that is resistant to environmental influences. This is expensive and rare. One Envirosuit can be found in a hard to find place og the complex, Exile will find it, but the average miners are unable to do so, so they can not walk on the outside sidewalk.

The miners turn against each other because they perceive the sabotage between each other. They break into groups, individually joining to the group which they trust. The Maintanance Officer introduces a so-called Voice Print Code because of the paranoia and the horrible situation, after that point some doors, or some console functions can be only unlocked if his own personal instruction in his own voice, with a certain code disables the protection. This obviously brings him to a one-man supervisor, which draws a crossbow on his own forehead. HK-50 captures and records the Maintanance Officer's voice in a complete sound spectrum, and then liquidates his "boss". Then with the voice print he can lock a lot of places. The situation is becoming hopeless. Anarchic states dominate the survivors.
A guy called Coorta starts going on his own way in the confused situation, and no matterhow apocalyptic is the situation with his band he is planning to take over the power, get the injured Jedi, somehow find a way out of Peragus, sell her to the Exchange or for the Sith, and he is hoping to start a new life somewhere else from the bounty. HK-50 sends to a couple of bigger mining droids against Coorta's group, and the droids slaughter them all.
HK slowly finds himself standing alone at the station. No, there are still a couple of injured dying in the kolto tanks! They would still be worth killing, on the one hand for pleasure, and on the other hand not to heal and tell anything. HK slices the medical bay's systems to cause the kolto tanks to inject all the patients with a lethal dose of sedatives. The miners all die, but Exile (probably due to the former Jedi training) survives poisoning. The kolto, the Force, and perhaps her training helped Exile. She hears a voice, awaken. Kreia, the surviving old woman, helps her through telepathic ways. The woman is a Jedi/Sith Master of the Force. By simulating a kind of hibernation, she pretended to be between life and death, rather tending to death, so she avoided HK's attention. As a last survivor, she helps the first steps of the Exile Jedi to start her adventures, who knows nothing about of what I have written so far, and we can find out all of this controlling the Exile Jedi here on Peragus. As we roll up the threads, we gain many information that reveals our own identity and reveals the astonishing and painful destiny of this complex.
Their position is so poignant, so hopeless, so it touches our soul. They embedded in the Galactic opposition of Sith and Jedi as civilian, unarmed miners, just because Exile was led to Peragus by the Force, and that became their doom. We do not want to go anyway, just go around looking for solutions, searching for survivors, or just to find the key to the situation. Strangely enough, the fate of Peragus itself is in the hands of the Exile, too. When Sion arrives and chases the small group of Exile, T3, Kreia, Atton, who solved the puzzles, got out the complex and escaped with the Ebon Hawk, the small freighter has no chance against the Harbinger, which is a Hammerhead Class Cruiser with brutal firepower and speed. Exile must decide whether she is ordering to fire the asteroids to try to destroy the Harbinger with the explosion, or trying to navigate between them without fiing them. Ironically in that case the Harbinger, which is pursuing them, will hit an unstable asteroid that will blow up all asteroids and the planet itself as a chain reaction. That means Peragus will be destroyed whatever we decide, so maximum we will be responsible for destroying it, but we can not save it either way. So we can never return to Peragus, never again. Let's enjoy every minute of it, let's know its history, let's go every inch of it, because Peragus's unrepeatable experience is only available to us then, we can fly back and forth on the rest of the planet during the game, but Peragus is only playable at this early stage of the game.

 

Take a look at my Custom Peragus dioramas.

The Maintanance officer sends HK-50 to work