Peregrinus

OOOohhhh... That made me take another look at the top pic. Those tabs are part of the torso armor, projecting down. Am I now seeing that right? Hopefully that'll be something incorporated into ANOVOS' new version. If not, I'll go with what you did in this thread rather than scratchbuild the tabs -- I think it looks cleaner. I mean the mesh and shoulder straps and shoulder slider pieces and such. I figured you had been privy to some of the inner workings, but the way you worded things, I was never really sure what was derived from the screen suits and what was your own invention for practicality. I really liked your torso liner and the way you did your straps, so it was a pleasant surprise to see how closely yours matches these. That one I'm having trouble visualizing...

Hey, Tony... It's been posted in a few other places online, but I haven't seen it on here. Since your build thread is kinda the benchmark a lot of people work from, I was wanting to get your take on these two pics from the Stormtroopers: Beyond the Armor book. These are the only production photos I've run across of how the torso is connected to the belt. I'm pleased to see their fabric rigging inside the torso is almost exactly like yours. But as for the rest... Thoughts? Leather for those lower "tabs"? And in that second pic, the closest torso rig -- those white things along the top edge. What do you make of those?

The blaster referred to in the text as being on his hip is the small sidearm -- the SE-44C, with a red casing instead of the standard white or Phasma's chrome. He likely has his own dedicated blaster rifle, too, but he doesn't keep it in his quarters, nor carry it during his typical duty cycle. Only time in the story he has it is in flashback, while escorting Hux Senior after his promotion. Rifle color not mentioned. Like others, I am going with red casing on the blaster, buttstock version. Del said it makes sense, since Phasma's matched her armor, too, but she hadn't specifically thought about it at the time. I also recommend all-black for the power pack, which matches Phasma's. My presumption is that they come standard with either a white or black endpiece, and Phasma goes with the one that better matches her color scheme. I, too, think white would clash with the red of the blaster's casing, but it's a mass-produced thing and, for all we know, he might just grab whatever's at hand. I don't know that the CRL should specify one or the other or both -- but I stand by "not red".

Got a chance to talk to Del and have her sign my copy of Phasma at Emerald City Comic Con this past weekend. She's lovely and I dearly hope she gets invited to the next Celebration. She'd love to see some of the Phasma and Cardinal costumes in person. She loves and is shocked by just how strongly Cardinal has grabbed some of us who read the book. She said someone from the 501st has e-mailed her several times to work things out for the costume. I assume that's the LMO? And she reaffirmed pretty much what I said prior -- that Cardinal is essentially a standard First Order Stormtrooper, except for the bits she consider's Captain's accoutrements: Cape and boot armor. And, like me, she refuses to believe we've seen the end of Phasma in TLJ. She's survived and overcome too much to let something like that take her out.

Or merge it with the thread I started there, cuz it's a Sequel Trilogy/FO weapon, and it didn't occur to me there'd be a thread somewhere else.

Hasbro just unveiled this Black Series Force FX Z6 Riot Control Baton at their expo, with a "Fall 2018" release. I'm figuring probably Force Friday. No price given, but I've seen folks project it'll be in the same range as their Black series Force FX Kylo Ren lightsaber -- $150-$200. Video of many things. Action features for this at 6:55...

Pre-trimming most likely means all the end-user has to do is glue and clamp... And accurize and fit and fill, etc. What I have in my head, though, is a paraphrase of George Carlin's rant about "too much use of the prefix 'pre'"... There are exactly two states in which the armor can possibly exist: trimmed, or untrimmed. Pre-trimmed is a meaningless ****ing term!

I hadn't said above, as it's posted elsewhere, but after sitting on it for a couple days, I'll summarize it here, too. This latest delay was due to, earlier in 2017, them getting the first test pulls and discovering pieces didn't line up as well as hoped, some of the details were too soft or more inaccurate than they would accept, in addition to concerns about the longevity of the (presumably hydrocal or similar) forming bucks. So they bumped it back to Fall 2017 as they went back to the original digital files they got from Lucasfilm and redid everything for crisper detail, better accuracy and fit, and machined steel bucks that would hold the sharper detail and last longer. Given that they would have to negotiate new production slots in their factories' queues and that LFL and Disney would have to approve the new prototypes whenever they were made and arrived here in the States, I'm not surprised they didn't make their optimistic estimate. The last I knew, as of December, was that the shipping container with the new prototypes was due in the Port of Los Angeles "soon", but even if the packaging and included accessories (belt, pouches, gaskets) are all approved and ready to go, the armor kits themselves would still have to go through the approval process. Assuming that first shipment had enough for initial orders (those who ordered on day one and haven't cancelled, as well as those who have ordered more recently to fill in those slots), I expect they're stacked as out of the way as possible in their warehouse waiting to get the yes-nod or no-nod from the nitpickers who have final say. I wish I had more, but even that is pieced together from many conversations several people have had with them over a couple months to get a partial picture of behind-the-scenes logistical crap they're not supposed to be telling the public at all... Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for KB to finish getting his new workshop set up so I can maybe get my Phasma boot armor to start working on something. So it's not just ANOVOS.

I also pre-ordered a while back, via their payment plan. Since they've had so many delays on various items and ensembles, it was a way to throw my hat in as an interested party while still keeping the cost minimal. I still have a couple payments left. I'm vaguely curious if they'll have it ready to ship before I make the final payment. *heh* The scope of their product is far, far smaller than an outfit like Hasbro or WalMart, so one of the problems they've had to deal with is that they have, more than once, had their relatively small item runs bumped at one or another of the factories in China they contract with in favor of a larger production run (and thus more money) for another client. Add in problems with prototypes requiring partial or complete reworks, Lucasfilm or Disney or both being dissatisfied with packaging or safety or a multitude of other things they have to sign off on at each. incremental. step. of. the. process. and you get things several years on the side of uncomfortable for them as a company. Add to that, when they started their Star Wars products, they were still doing their old business model of announcing a product, with pictures of a prototype (usually a fan-made version), to gauge interest in the form of pre-orders. Then they'd delve into a variable period of research and development and prototyping and, finally, manufacture to demand. With the Star Wars license, they were reaching a far wider customer base than their previous Star Trek and BSG niches, and many of those people didn't understand that when an item went up for pre-order, nothing existed yet. Add in a lot of problems they've run into with the products themselves and satisfying the rights-holders, and they've had to drastically rework how they do things. They still take pre-orders, but it's further into the R&D stage, and they've already contracted for initial runs with the factories, based on what they estimate demand will be. And the most irritating par tof all this for us, the potential and actual customers, is that their normal transparency is hindered by order of the rights-holders. Disney told them to stop telling us about the problems they ran into. Apparently, they feel it's better if we are just left waiting and wondering when something gets bumped later for a fifth or sixth or tenth time. So, as was stated upthread, try not to concern yourself with when your ANOVOS order will arrive. Just know that you'll get it at some point and work on other projects in the meantime. For the First Order Stormtrooper, there's still the undersuit and gloves and neckseal and boots and weapons and all the various glues and fillers and paints and other assembly/accurizing/finishing materials to buy. That alone is plenty to keep a body busy for a while. For those of us who either want the consistency and (theoretical) accuracy of the commercial product, or lack the ability to do that scale of fabrication at home, or both, that loss of control is the price paid for having someone else do that work for us. I'm hopeful they'll make their current estimate... But not hanging all my future happiness on it.

Since I'm ramping up R&D on my Cardinal build while I wait rather impatiently for my KB boot armor and ANOVOS kit and helmet, I undertook a draft CRL, mashing up the relevant bits of the FOTK and Phasma ones. Ran across a couple things in the FOTK CRL that probably ought to be re-examined, now that the film is available for high-res scrutiny. Mostly L2/L3 stuff. A few typos. For the helmet, I think there should be at least a passing mention of the "ear indents". Typos are "grove" where it should say "groove", and the use of "circumvent" (to evade by going around) where the proper term is "circumscribe". Also, some nice, brightly-lit shots (thank you, Abu Dhabi) showing the color and bubble-ness of the lenses: ...and of how much of one's head is (not) visible, even from a low angle, if the helmet is fitted properly: For the "O" on the backplate... I know one of the most difficult aspects of writing CRLs is finding an actually useful and helpful way of saying "make it look like the pictures". So I don't know how is best to specify particular colors or degrees of reflectivity. The "O" is black, yes, but I feel an L2/L3 callout specifying satin black wouldn't go amiss. Since it's something the film makes explicit: And one detail I see ANOVOS got wrong on their earlier armor kits (we don't know about the new version yet) is the deep indents at the top of the yoke, directly behind the wearer's neck. On the ANOVOS kit they're oval, which I don't know how they got wrong, as they're very, very obviously not: ...with the outer corners ending about even with the neckseal width: Gonna break things here, and do arms in my next post. Give folks a chance to respond to this one. --Jonah

I sent your pics to Del. Half the time, I don't get a response from her 'cause she's, y'know, a busy writer. I don't know if she'll contact you directly, but we'll see.

Yup. China. Several factories, actually. Different materials, different methods... means different factories. One of the issues has been that a single costume can involve several factories, and their production schedules don't always favor the comparatively modest orders ANOVOS wants of them.

This thread is pretty much the clearing house of all that is known of him. I've been in sporadic contact with Del about specific details and clarifications (I don't want to be a pest, after all). Some things she's answered clearly, some less so. But she had the TFA Visual Dictionary handy as she was writing, and did a bit of flipping back and forth between the FOTK and Phasma pages. She hasn't noted all the differences in Phasma's armor that folks on here (Ingrid chief among them) have, but she did catch a lot, and it was at least in the back of her head as she was writing, even if she didn't call it out specifically. The text of the novel is the primary reference, that the artists for the back cover and the Barnes & Noble poster had to follow. She confirmed the cover art had to get her okay before it was locked. Less clear on the poster. So that's how I view them, in order of reference-ability. I'll admit I haven't gotten as clear of answers as I had hoped, but she's busy and I know it's easy to miss clauses on the fly. For instance, I had specifically asked about the stripe that is red on Phasma's cape, gray on Cardinal's on the book cover, and absent on the poster. She confirmed there's supposed to be a stripe, but didn't specify color (which had been included in my question). Since I had her other commentary to help guide me, though, I am proceeding from "has stripe" and "book cover required her approval", thus gray rather than red. For the boots... In the book, Vi is roughed up and spits blood on his boot. In her dazed state, her mind randomly focuses on the fact that her blood is a slightly different color of red from the "flawless plastoid" it landed on. So his boots are red, check. Some people interpret the flawless plastoid part as indicating that's what Stormtrooper boots (or at least the FOTK boots) are made of, along with the rest of their armor. I personally don't subscribe to this, as we have never seen plastoid to be flexible enough to make boots out of. I read that as indicating boot armor, probably at least somewhat like Phasma's. Del confirmed that, yes, she had Phasma's boot armor in mind when she wrote that. Under that armor, though... *sigh* Phasma's Visual Dictionary boots don't look much like the D23 exhibit boots. The shadow makes it hard to see whether there's a separate heel, but the sole toward the toe looks a lot thicker on the dictionary boots -- more like the soles of the regular FOTK boots. There isn't enough info as to how the exhibit got put together, and we know the long history of stuff put together for promotional purposes (such as a photoshoot for the Visual Dictionary) that doesn't match what was on set, so the matter of what's "really" under Phasma's boot armor is something I feel might be an eternal conundrum. Heck, we already know she had at least two different capes. But Cardinal is established throughout the book as being clean-cut, regulation-toeing, doctrine-adherent, straight-laced by-the-book. He has standard kit except where he was presented with something specifically authorized in deviating from it by General Hux, Senior. He would not have gone for the red armor, except that it was what Hux presented him with, etc. Hence, standard helmet, where Phasma ignored Hux and went with a prototype design she preferred and he had vetoed. Standard armor, where Phasma had her own unique chest armor, used the groin armor from the Flametrooper armor set, and ditched the normal spats at the ends of the greaves for a custom extention to accommodate her height. So I'd go with standard FOTK boots over the off-black suede numbers Phasma had in the D23 costume. And I specifically went with black versions over white, as it fits the rest of the look better. White boots would be a single glaring disparity among all the black and red. Sadly, I can't show what this would look like yet. I've got the boots, but I'm still waiting on KB to send me the Phasma boot armor set, and I'm still waiting on the ANOVOS FOTK armor kit, to show how it looks paired with the standard greaves and spats versus Phasma's extensions. I've been itching ot go to town on this since September. *frustrated flounce*

I took a whack at it, copy/pasting the standard TFA FOTK CRL (whew -- that was a lot of TLAs and ETLAs!) and tweaking it to match what we know from the two extant images, the text of the novel, and the author's comments. I haven't seen anyone who's working on the costume (including me) near enough to done for pictures, so I hadn't offered to send it off to our esteemed DL yet.

Welp. 1) Still waiting on my gloves. The tracking shows they've shipped, but no indication of when they'll arrive. 2) Having now seen TLJ I am less hopeful "DJ" is Cardinal.

Unfortunately, one factor is how much of their production process they're allowed by LFL and Disney to disclose. My own feedback to them has been to just have a "coming soon" page for things that are planned or in-development, that doesn't go to live "pre-sale" status until everything is in their LA warehouse and has passed QA checks and is ready to get divvied up, packaged, and shipped. From there, it'd be a fairly predictable glide-slope, and they'd have an easier time making projections, and the consumers would have less frustration at delays that would have all happeened behind-the-scenes. I also suggested a "friends of ANOVOS" private list that would get e-mail alerts when they were ready to begin the development of this item or that costume, and those folks could -- with all the caveats and warnings -- do the tiered pre-ordering and such... Just being cognizant that the shipping date when they pay is "someday". That would also cut down the number of casual purchasers who don't realize what a long potential wait they're letting themselves in for.

Awesome. Hopefully that means mine will show up in the next day or so.

I hadn't banked too heavily on the previous estimates. This one seems more reasonable given what their previous one said they were tackling, but even then I wouldn't be surprised if it gets pushed back to Spring 2018 (March to June window) or more. I took the payment plan option, spread out as far as I could. I have no problem making micropayments each month. It's also paid down far enough now that if I suddenly got the notification it was ready to ship, I could pay off the balance without any real difficulty. At this rate, though, it'll be paid off before the end of their current projected window, and then all I have to do is wait. Not like I don't have a bunch of other stuff to work on. That's never been a problem.

I do understand frustration and impatience. At the same time, I don't expect Hasbro-like volume and scope from them. At teh end of it all, this is playing dress-up. Yeah, we have self-imposed deadlines, but if one will die or lose one's job or someone will shoot one's dog if one don't get one's plastic soldier armor by X date, something has gone seriously awry with one's life. Could they handle things better? Absolutely. Are they learning and adjusting as they go? Most definitely. Was it worse before? Yup. Have they done better than Master Replicas or Icons or eFX in this niche arena? Yes and no. Master Replicas started off stronger, then choked. eFX was able to ride MR's existing moulds at first, but their original items have been mostly vaporware. I'm not sure if anyone even remembers Icons... And what was that other prop company in the UK that was making TFA stuff that fell on its face hard and is gone so drastically, there was a gravitational pull? So yeah. I'll pick up my Black Series helmets from Hasbro, and more of Rubies' surprisingly awesome Boba Fett lid, and I will keep ordering here and there from ANOVOS as they have something I want after due consideration. Their Star Trek and BSG stuff has been ticking along just fine. They just have had to do repeated re-evaluations and readjustments of how they do things as applies to their Star Wars license. The consumer end and the license-holder end both were things they were unprepared for, and they're very much caught in the middle. I think they're doing a better job of getting out of that sticky spot than others would have (or have done in the past).

So the most recent news from ANOVOS-land is that the container is on the way from China, and they expect to be shipping out the Standard Line First Order Stormtrooper kits before December 22nd. Not in time for the TLJ premiere, by a long shot (I mean, build time and everything, what?). I'm hopeful, but cautiously so. We'll see...

There are several people working on builds. None of us are anywhere near finished yet. One of us (realistically, one of them, as I'm still waiting on ANOVOS -- I'll have everything but the armor and helmet by the time TLJ opens...) will the CRL exemplar. Head over the the FOTK Builds subforum and check out Tee-Bowls' WIP to see how the RustOleum "Cardinal Red" paint I recommended looks. I think it's spot-on.

I may or may not have spent too much time thinking about this over the years... Some things are fairly easy to solve, like "black uniform means Stormtrooper (generally)" or "so-called 'Rebel Fleet Troopers' are Imperial Senate Guards' garrison uniforms", etc. Other things resist easy solutions, like the Imperial rank badges in ROTJ, or George's fondness for the word "group" making a hash of any attempt to figure things out: "Red Group, this is Red Leader"... "Keep half your group out of range"... "Groups seven and ten" will stay behind to fly the airspeeders of "Rogue Group"... "All groups assume attack coordinates"... "Green Group, stick close to holding sector"... "Red Group, Gold Group -- all fighters follow me"... To say nothing of how many times the word appears in George's narrative slugs in the scripts.

I go for the "pleased psychic" (happy medium) approach. Once you've got a subassembly finished, fitted, and rigged, then paint. I don't think you have to wait until the end-end, but definitely be mindful. Handplates and knees are conveniently isolated parts. Biceps and forearms once you've got them fitted to your body and over gaskets and gloves... I presume y'all have gone through ukswrath's build thread at least twice. *heh* Since you're not taking it to be professionally painted in an auto shop, I'd just recommend noting where in the building/finishing sequence he painted the various assembled bits and following that lead -- albeit in whatever staggered timeline works for you. In his case, he was ready to paint because he had made sure everything worked on his body and with each other. I think this is achievable in stages, but stay aware of what needs to work with what. Arms as I mentioned above, shoulders once you've got them assembled, legs like the arms (knees can be done on their own, as I said -- just make sure of the spacing), boot armor can be done on its own (though I admit I'll be experimenting a bit with the heel to see what works best)... The torso, however, is all based on the ab/kidney piece. The belt and its pouches and boxes have to be fitted and shaped to it once it's assembled to the right size, the ab boxes need it assembled to trim them to the right edge shapes (remember they're bolted on separately, after painting), and the chest and back need to be trimmed to fit over it just so. But as he showed, if you've done it right up to that point, all the rigging mounts and such can be done after painting without screwing up the paint. Note where he masked stuff off prior to being painted, too, to give a raw-plastic surface for the glue to bond with.

It's one of those annoying Heisenbergian things from the EU -- not canon until it is, but everything in the EU prior to ROTJ is still tacitly "in" unless and until it's overwritten. Just don't put too much stock in anything. Back in the early '90s, Decipher had to come up with a bunch of stuff for the card game. That's where we get a whole lot of the names and ranks of various Rebels and Imperials and denizens. Everything had to be approved by Lucasfilm (for what that's worth, then and now), and most got propagated down through the later EU. Wizards of the Coast continued this when they got the RPG/CCG license in 2000. Between those we got (chronologically within the films) the following (non-TK) troopers: ANH DV-523 -- one of the first through the Tantive IV's breached airlock. DV-692 -- "Mr. No Stripes", aka "Inform Lord Vader we have a prisoner." ...And the following pilots/craft: ANH DS-73-3 -- The patrol ship the Falcon ran into. DS-3-12 -- The TIE chasing Luke that Wedge took out. DS-29-4 DS-55-2 DS-55-6 DS-61-2 -- Black 2. "Mauler Mithel". Vader's left wingman in the trench run. DS-61-3 -- Black 3. "Backstabber". Vader's right wingman. DS-61-4 -- Black 4. "Dark Curse". DS-61-9 DS-73-5 TESB [Stationed on the Executor] EX-1-2 (Bomber) EX-1-8 (Bomber) EX-4-9 [Rotational squadron stationed on the Thunderflare during Empire] OS-72-1 -- Obsidian 1. OS-72-2 -- Obsidian 2. OS-72-8 OS-72-10 -- Obsidian 10. ROTJ DS-181-3 -- Saber 3. Baron Fel's wingman. (Interceptor) DS-181-4 -- Major Phennir's wingman. (Interceptor) Brace for a mini-essay... I try to base as much of my informed conjecture on first sources as possible. The original, non-SE film is the baseline from which everything else is either derived, or deviated from. I've reached some conclusions that clash with more recent official assumptions, but better fit the observed phenomena. Like... The difference in rank insignia between ANH and TESB. Motti is listed in the credits as General Motti. Not sure when and where "Admiral" first got hung on him (I can run that down easily enough, but not right now), but General fits better, for many reasons. The Prequels establish the clonetroopers have commissioned officers, but no higher than the apparently-granular "Commander". Their Generals are non-clone officers. This supports what we first saw in TESB with Veers. The Imperial military is a combined service (though in ANH we only see the inside of an Imperial Army installation), with identical uniforms between the ship and ground forces, and the observed evidence of the rank insignia gives us a nice distinguishing feature to separate the two. Motti is the facility commandant (answering to Tarkin). Bast is seen directing Stormtroopers and gunnery crews, so is likely some flavor of General, like Veers. He sits with Tagge at the briefing, the two of them as far across the table from Motti as they can. All three are probably Generals, but Motti sneers at Tagge's concerns, referring to "your Starfleet". So Tagge was probably the General commanding the Stormtroopers embarked aboard the Devastator and, like Veers, Navy-style rank insignia while aboard ship, for ease of identification by Naval officers. Army rank insignia are a single row of some permutation of one through six blue, red, and/or amber chips. There's potentially a lot of information being conveyed by color, number, and placement. The Navy ranks, on the other hand, are geared for ease and speed of comprehension in the often-entirely-too-chaotic atmosphere of ship combat. Two rows, red over blue, and one can tell at a glance if one is encountering someone recently graduated (one pair), in the Lieutenant grades (two pairs), command grades (three pairs), or low, medium, or high level flag ranks (four, five, and six pairs, respectively). When you have a second to think, you can determine more finely who is senior to whom within that block. I theorize that four pairs is specifically for embarked Stormtrooper Generals, the Stormtrooper Corps being roughly analogous to the real-world Marines, being tacitly part of the naval forces. They serve the same role -- embarked troops and military base security (in both battle armor and garrison uniform -- a whole other can of worms I won't get into now). So, based on the unit sizes in the Grand Army shown on the mustering yard at the end of AOTC, and presuming unit sizes remain at least roughly the same over the next couple decades... 13-man squads, 2 squads per platoon (26). This is each file shown above. 6 platoons per company (156), 4 companies per battalion (624). This is each discrete block of troops, 24 files across. 5 battalions per legion (3,120), 3 legions per division (9,360). This is the larger array bordered by the access lanes. 3 divisions per corps (28,080), because that's a unit size given in the ancillary materials. Bigger than that, though, the Prequel stuff didn't give us. All that number crunching to surmise limits. Do we presume three-digit numbers where only three digits are given? We have four-digit TK Stormtroopers elsewhere in the newer material. Did TK-421 just omit the initial zero? That would give us up to ten thousand potential within a given prefix. Conveniently, a division -- at these numbers -- is enough shy of that mark to make things non-problematic. On the other hand, five digits gives us potentially up to a hundred thousand under a single prefix, so it could be a corps designator. Or it could be a flexible thing, applied to whatever discrete unit is posted to a particular ship or facility. Tarkin could just have a legion. Or each prefix could be presumed to have as big a block of numbers available as needed, that are unique to each trooper assigned to that posting over the years, the numbers getting higher as older troopers die or retire. Maybe there's another number hyphenated between the prefix and the individual identifier, like with the pilots, that gets left out for most day-to-day address. That would be the legion number (up to 9 legions in a corps, and legions just sound like a convenient "biggest standard unit"). In the case of the pilots, the prefix is the group identifier, the number in the middle is the wing number, the last number is the individual identifier. The EU gave us a structure where they follow the British/Commonwealth model of 3 squadrons per wing. The squadrons just have names, where applicable, for the pilots' callsigns. Where no squadron is designated, they go by the group name (see Obsidian, above). Me, I'm doing a Bridge Crew uniform just to get the IC tag, because the persona I've created for my non-face-character Stormtrooper costuming is posted to Imperial Center. Even in armor or Stormtrooper garrison uniform or Royal Guard robes, I'll refer to myself as "IC-whatever-whatever". This is a case where there is conveniently a club costume identifier tag that works for what I want. YMMV. --Jonah

Club designation and in-universe usage are separate things, as Paul said. As far as in-universe reasoning goes, the preponderance of material indicated the prefix is an indicator of posting. The troops boarding the Tantive IV in ANH have a DV prefix for the ship they're posted to -- Devastator. The pilots flanking Vader in repelling the Rebel fighters' runs on the exhaust port had DS prefixes, for Death Star. TK-421 is likely part of Tarkin's personal garrison, brought with him when he transferred his flag to the station. And in TFA, the FN prefix indicates troopers assigned to the Finalizer. I would go so far as to assert the other prefixes in that film and in the Phasma novel are an indicator of other garrison/shipboard postings those trainees are intended for. I like the idea that there's another Resurgent-class star destroyer named Tarkin out there in First Order space, and that's where those couple TK troopers were deployed from. Not sure if the Starkiller had its own garrison yet, or if those mustered troops were down from the Finalizer (Phasma was up there on the podium, after all). But one's Legion ID number has nothing to do with any of this -- unless one feels like being creative.