The next creature to be featured in my Pets of the Old Republic project is the tiny and hungry Flirron. Flirrons are native to the planet Onderon where players may encounter them in the wild and ride them as taxis to and from the jungle world’s questing areas during the Onslaught expansion of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Players whose characters are high enough level to survive the dangerous jungles of Onderon may acquire the Flirron as a pet. The Flirron won’t cost you a single cartel coin or credit, nor does it have any reputation requirement. The Flirron pet is automatically awarded via an achievement which has you locate morsels of food to feed the tiny Flirron fry found in the zone. Like many a lost kitten, feed it enough and it will follow you home and assume you’re its momma.
While researching this entry, I consulted several guides for unlocking this achievement and discovered when I had unlocked the Flirron, I had done it wrong, or least extremely inefficiently. I had thought you had to feed twenty-five Flirrons one morsel each, but it turns out you can instead stuff one Flirron to the gills twenty-five times. My approach took just a little longer!
Onderon is a world rich in history from across Star Wars lore, from the Old Republic comic books of the 1990s to the animated and live action shows and movies of today. Despite this, everything we know about Flirrons comes from a single codex entry players receive when they first encounter one. There isn’t much information to go on, but I think I can fairly draw some further conclusions from the Flirron’s physiognomy and similarities to other similar creatures we encounter in SWTOR.
Suspended by the warm air currents generated by Belsavis’ tropical geothermal rifts, a four-winged, Marlin-like Baspoor soars along the edge of a small lake.
Despite what it says on Wookieepedia, Flirrons do not have feathers and I would not characterize them as Avians. As with nearly every other critter we’ve looked at for this project, the Flirron is instead a hybrid of many types of creatures. At first glance, it’d be easy to simply describe them as literal flying fish. Upon closer examination, we can see that they are part crustacean, part cephalopod and only a small part fish. Starting at the front, a Flirron has the face of a shrimp, a double pair of wings like a Baspoor from Belsavis, the body of a cuttlefish and the dorsal and tail fins of a ray-finned fish.
Flirron seem to share the most properties with cuttlefish perhaps starting with how they move through their respective environments of air and water. Cuttlefish suck in and expel water as a means of propulsion, so I think we can conclude that Flirron’s move through the air in a similar, albeit scientifically nonsensical, manner. Like the Thrantas we encounter on Alderaan, I imagine that Flirrons maintain natural “buoyancy” in the air through chambers that contain lighter than air gasses in their bodies or wings.
A Thranta dives into the Glarus River Valley. As long as you’re not in a hurry, the sky-sharks of Alderaan are a stylish way to travel.
Am I saying that Flirrons are filled with explosive hydrogen gas and can maneuver like a jet fighter? Let’s just say I’m NOT not saying it. But it could go a long way to explain how a creature that is said to be so gentle thrives among the fierce fauna that stalks the jungles of Onderon.
Flirrons are notable for their colorful, iridescent skin which is filled with billions of chromatophores. Flirrons may change color as a form of communication, but this property also makes them a wonder to behold. Flirron watching is a pastime for both locals and tourists on Onderon. I suspect this aspect of Flirron lore may have been inspired by a similar popular activity of watching thousands of bats emerge from the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, home of much of SWTOR’s development team. I’ve seen this amazing swarm take flight myself and I imagine the spectacle of a school of color-shifting Flirrons caught in the shimmering light of a hazy Onderon sunset would be breathtaking to behold.
I’ve often said that exploration is one of my favorite parts of the MMO-RPG experience, and the achievement to adopt a Flirron is a great way to simply exist in the game’s world for a while and also come away with one of the most distinctive pets in the game.