Darth Plagueis

by James Luceno

Yellow eyes lifted to the night sky, he saw the trembling stars flare, and in the depth of his being he felt the power of the dark side anoint him.

Also sprawled there, Plagueis: his slender limbs splayed and elongated head turned to one side. Dressed in finery, as for a night on the town. And now dead. Or was he? Uncertainty rippled through Sidious, rage returning to his eyes. A tremor of his own making, or one of forewarning?

engineering, his own foibles? If he hadn’t been concerned for his own safety, Sidious might have pitied him.

The Muun might have lived another hundred years unchanged. He might have lived forever had he succeeded fully in his quest. But in the end—though he could save others from death—he had failed to save himself.

Two beings in a galaxy of countless trillions, but what had transpired in the suite would affect the lives of all of them. Already the galaxy had been shaped by the birth of one, and henceforth would be reshaped by the death of the other. But had the change been felt and recognized elsewhere? Were his sworn enemies aware that the Force had shifted irrevocably? Would it be enough to rouse them from self-righteousness? He hoped not. For now the work of vengeance could begin in earnest.

But in fact the heavens had been perturbed, tugged by dark matter into novel alignments. In his mouth, Sidious tasted the tang of blood; in his chest, he felt the monster rising, emerging from shadowy depths and contorting his aspect into something fearsome just short of revealing itself to the world. The dark side had made him its property, and now he made the dark side his.

Sidious had never learned how Plagueis’s own Master had met his end. Had he died at Plagueis’s hand? Had Plagueis, too, experienced a similar exultation on becoming a sole Sith Lord? Had the beast of the end time risen then to peek at the world it was to inhabit, knowing its release was imminent?

Forty-seven standard years before the harrowing reign of Emperor Palpatine, Bal’demnic was nothing more than an embryonic world in the Outer Rim’s Auril sector, populated by reptilian sentients who expressed as little tolerance for outsiders as they did for one another.

Bal’demnic was of interest only to xenobiologists and cartographers. It might even have escaped the notice of Darth Plagueis, for whom remote worlds held a special allure, had his Master, Tenebrous, not discovered something special about the planet. “Darth Bane would appreciate our efforts,” the Sith Master was telling his apprentice as they stood side by side in the crystalline cave that had drawn them across the stars.

“Darth Bane’s early

Plagueis kept his thoughts to himself. The aptly named Darth Bane, who had redefined the Sith by limiting their number and operating from concealment, had mined cortosis as a youth on Apatros long before embracing the tenets of the dark side. In the thousand years since his death, Bane had become deified; the powers attributed to him, legendary.

restrict mining and refinement of the ore. If not the bane of the Order’s existence, cortosis was a kind of irritant, a challenge to their weapon’s reputation for fearsome invincibility. It was to Tenebrous’s credit that the Sith had learned of Bal’demnic’s rich lodes before the Jedi, who by means of an agreement with the Republic Senate had first claim to all discoveries, as they had with Adegan crystals and Force-sensitive younglings of all species.

managing somehow to remain on his feet, Tenebrous conjured a Force shield with his waving arms that met the fireball and contained it, thousands of flaming hawk-bats spiraling within the tumult like windblown embers.

And in that instant Plagueis perceived the danger Tenebrous had foreseen earlier: his death. His death at Plagueis’s hands. While Tenebrous was preoccupied holding aloft the slabs that threatened to crush the ship, Plagueis quickly reoriented himself, aiming his raised hands at the plummeting slabs above his Master and, with a downward motion of both arms, brought them down so quickly and with so much momentum that Tenebrous was buried almost before he understood what had hit him. Stone dust eddying around him, Plagueis stood rooted in place as slabs interred the starship, as well. But he gave it no thought. His success in bringing the ceiling down on Tenebrous was proof enough that the Bith had grown sluggish and expendable. Otherwise, he would have divined the true source of the danger he had sensed, and Plagueis would be the one pressed to the floor of the grotto, head cracked open like an egg and chest cavity pierced by the pointed end of a fallen stalactite. His race to Tenebrous’s side was informed as much by excitement as charade. “Master,” he said, genuflecting and removing his and Tenebrous’s respirators. His hands pawed at the stones, removing some of the crushing weight. But Tenebrous’s single lung was pierced, and blood gurgled in his throat. Ragged tears in the sleeves of the envirosuit revealed esoteric body markings and tattoos.

“To be strong in the Force is one thing. But to believe oneself to be all-powerful is to invite catastrophe. Remember, that even in the ethereal realm we inhabit, the unforeseen can occur.” A stuttering cough silenced him for a moment. “Better this way, perhaps, than to perish at your hand.”

If the Bith was convinced, he kept it to himself, and said instead: “You are fated to bring the Sith imperative to fruition, Plagueis. It falls to you to bring the Jedi Order to its knees and to save the rest of the galaxy’s sentients from themselves.” At long last, Plagueis told himself, the mantle is conferred.

“Warn me about what, Master?” Tenebrous’s black eyes shone with yellow light and his free hand clutched at the ring collar of Plagueis’s enviro-suit. “You!” Plagueis pried the Bith’s thin hand from the fabric and grinned faintly. “Yes, Master, your death comes at my bidding. You said yourself that perpetuation with purpose is the way to victory, and so it is.

“Because we were fated to.” Tenebrous paused, then spoke with renewed urgency: “But wait! The ship—” “Crushed, as you are.” Tenebrous’s anger stabbed at Plagueis. “You’ve risked everything to undo me! The entire future of the Sith! My instincts about you prove correct, after all!”

Tenebrous was paralyzed and unconscious but not yet dead. Plagueis had no interest in saving him—even if it were possible—but he was interested in observing the behavior of the Bith’s midi-chlorians as life ebbed. The Jedi thought of the cellular organelles as symbionts, but to Plagueis midi-chlorians were interlopers, running interference for the Force and standing in the way of a being’s ability to contact the Force directly. Through years of experimentation and directed meditation, Plagueis had honed an ability to perceive the actions of midi-chlorians, though not yet the ability to manipulate them. Manipulate them, say, to prolong Tenebrous’s life.

common misconception held that midi-chlorians were Force-carrying particles, when in fact they functioned more as translators, interlocutors of the will of the Force.

He wondered if the Jedi were subsumed in similar fashion. Even in life, did midi-chlorians behave in a Jedi as they did in a devotee of the dark side? Were the organelles invigorated by different impulses, prompted into action by different desires? He had encountered many Jedi during his long life, but he had never made an attempt to study one in the same way he appraised Tenebrous now, out of concern for revealing the power of his alliance with the dark side. That, too, might have to change. Tenebrous died while Plagueis observed. In Bane’s age a Sith might have had to guard against an attempt at essence transfer by the deceased—a leap into the consciousness of the Sith who survived—but those times were long past and of no relevance; not since the teachings had been sabotaged, the technique lost. The last Sith possessed of the knowledge had been inexplicably drawn to the light side and killed, taking the secret process with him …

efficient as it was luxurious, the skyhook, known affectionately as the Financial Funnel, linked the orbital city of High Port with the planetary capital, Harnaidan, which functioned as the nerve center of the InterGalactic Banking Clan. While

Muuns’ high regard for aesthetics and ecology, its true purpose was to keep visitors from setting foot on Muunilinst, thereby safeguarding the planet’s wealth of resources and keeping secret the lavish lifestyles of those who had ascended to the top of the food chain.

the galaxy’s nearest satellite star cluster. Dating back to the founding of the Republic, the Banking Clan had funded governments, supported settlements, and bankrolled countless commerce guilds, trade corporations, and shipping cartels. In a very real sense, the IBC dictated the ebb and flow of wealth from the Core to the Outer Rim. Scarcely a building was raised on Coruscant without the Banking Clan’s approval; scarcely a starship left the yards at Kuat or Bilbringi or Fondor without the IBC having brokered the deal; and

what one saw most, in overwhelming numbers, were members of the Banking Clan—financiers, accountants, lawyers—dressed in their signatory Palo fiduciary garb: formfitting green trousers and boots, round-collared green tunics, and flare-shouldered green cloaks. Some were accompanied by retinues of squat, dark-skinned, flat-nosed soldiers from the planet Iotra, sporting garish body armor and carrying ceremonial weapons.

the leading edge of the wedge marched an elder Muun with a whiskered chin and stooped shoulders, who was making directly for High Port’s customs control station, where Hego Damask—as Plagueis was known to everyone but the late Darth Tenebrous—and 11-4D were waiting, amid a contingent of security personnel.

“No one seems to believe that I’m capable of finding my own way home,” Damask said. Hill’s long

Despite what I understand were considerable efforts on your part to the contrary, the shipping cartels face the danger of being broken, and even if not, will certainly have to deal with fierce competition from start-up companies. Both Core and Outer Rim worlds should benefit greatly from the arrangement, wouldn’t you agree?” Damask inclined his head in a bow of acknowledgment. “I hadn’t heard, Magister. Whom can we thank for swaying the liberals to adopt the amendment?” “Among others, the Jedi Order lobbied successfully.” “Then it must be for the best.” “One would think,” Tonith said slowly. “Save for the fact that, in exchange, the Trade Federation will now enjoy full voting privileges in the Senate.”

“Directly to the island. The droid will accompany me.” “I’ll make the necessary arrangements.” Damask lowered his voice to ask, “Are we secure in here?” “Completely.” Damask turned to face the taller, elder Muun. “Rugess Nome is dead.” “The Bith?” Hill said in astonishment. “How? Where?” “Of no relevance,” Damask said, remembering. “Eventually Nome’s estate will pass to us, but that won’t be for some time to come, since it’s unlikely that his body will ever be found.”

Damask nodded. “Ultimately we’ll be liquidating most of the estate. But there are several … antiques of a curious sort I plan to retain. I’ll prepare an inventory. In the meantime I want you to familiarize yourself with a world called Bal’demnic. Once you have, you’re to acquire mining rights for the entire northeast peninsula of the principal landmass. Purchase as much property as you can, from the shoreline to the central highlands. I’ll provide you with specific coordinates.” Uncertainty tugged at Hill’s strong features. “Are we venturing into the mining business now?” “When the time is right. Use intermediaries who can’t be traced to us.

studded with Neo-Classical structures as towering as the volcanic spires that ringed it, and home to fifty million Muuns, living in an urbanscape that was an orderly masterpiece of art and design. To some, it was the antithesis of most planetary capitals: the anti-Coruscant; the anti-Denon.

“Members of the Trade Federation and the Gran Protectorate will also be attending.” Damask snorted. “There’s no pleasing any of them.” He grew pensive, then said: “There’s another small matter we need to settle. Extend a personal invitation to the owners of Subtext Mining.” Hill rubbed his whiskered chin.

Unlike so many worlds that had been surveyed and settled by species from the Core, Muunilinst had given rise to its own brand of sentients. Farmers and fisherfolk, the ancient Muuns hadn’t known how favored their planet was until interstellar travel had become commonplace, and precious metals the backbone of the galactic economy. Had those early millennia of expansion not been a time of peace, the Muuns might have lost what they had to military might; but as it happened they had resisted all attempts at exploitation and become masters of their fate. Still, what was an economic blessing eventually became a burden. Once the Muuns understood the value of what they had previously taken for granted, they held on to their riches with a ferocious tenacity, and developed an almost agoraphobic attachment to their homeworld. In the midst of Muunilinst’s shallow oceans, the same volcanic activity that had fertilized the vast plains belched new seabed and precious metals enough to fuel the growth of empires. Mountains heaped up through vents in the planetary crust were found to be repositories of extraordinary wealth. Lapped by warm waters teeming with shellfish, tubeworms, and bioluminescent flora, such “smokers,” as they were known, became both the source and the financial vaults of Muunilinst’s most powerful and prosperous clans.

Conveyed by speeder to Aborah’s north tower complex, Plagueis escorted 11-4D on a tour of the corridors and caverns that constituted his place of sacrosanct solitude. Motioning to the many droids that were on hand to welcome the pair to Aborah, Plagueis said: “You will come to find yourself at home here, as I have.” “I’m certain I will, Magister Damask,” 11-4D said, its photoreceptors registering a dozen different types of droids in a single glance. Memo droids, GNK power droids, even a prototype Ubrikkian surgical droid. “In time we’ll see to having your original appendages restored so that you can earn your keep.”

But Plagueis was neither as acquisitive as a Neimoidian nor as ostentatious as a Hutt; and so the ornamented chambers quickly gave way to data-gathering rooms crowded with audio-vid receivers and HoloNet projectors; and then to galleries filled to overflowing with ancient documents and tomes, recorded on media ranging from tree trunk parchment through flimsiplast to storage crystal and holocron. The Muuns were said to abhor literature and to loathe keeping records of anything other than loan notices, actuarial tables, and legal writs, and yet Plagueis was guardian of one of the finest libraries to be found anywhere outside Obroa-skai or the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Here, neatly arranged and cataloged and stored in climate-controlled cases, was a collection of treatises and commentaries accumulated over centuries by the Sith and their often unwitting agents. Ancient histories of the Rakata and the Vjun; texts devoted to the Followers of Palawa, the Chatos Academy, and the Order of Dai Bendu; archives that had once belonged to House Malreaux; annals of the Sorcerers of Tund and of Queen Amanoa of Onderon; biological studies of the ysalimiri and vornskrs of Myrkr, and of the taozin of Va’art. Certain long-lived species, like the Wookiees, Hutts, Falleen, and Toydarians, were afforded galleries of their own.

wish me to assimilate first?” From the breast pocket of his cloak, Plagueis withdrew a storage crystal. “Start with this. It is a history of the Sith.” OneOne-FourDee took a moment to search its memory. “I have multiple listings under that heading. One defines the Sith as an ancient sect devoted to the study of the Force. Similar to the Jedi, but guided by different principles.” “That’s close enough for now,” Plagueis said. “Magister Damask, if I may be so bold as to inquire: what is our eventual goal?” “The goal is to extend my life indefinitely. To conquer death.” The droid fixed Plagueis in its photoreceptors. “I have access to data on alleged ‘elixirs of life’ and ‘fountains of youth,’ Magister. But all living things ultimately die, do they not?” “At present, OneOne-FourDee.” The droid thought harder about it. “I have experience in organ replacement surgery, telomere genotherapy, and carbonite suspension. But nothing beyond that.” Plagueis’s smooth upper lip curled. “Then you’ve merely scratched the surface.”

Despite the recent amplification of his powers he sensed that his midi-chlorian count had not increased since the events on Bal’demnic, and the analysis of the blood sample confirmed his suspicions. Research had long ago established that blood transfusions from Force-sensitive individuals did not confer Force powers to recipients, though blood with a high midi-chlorian count could grant temporary strength and resiliency. Experiments in absolute transfusion had gone horribly awry for recipients, suggesting to some that the Force exacted a toll on those who attempted to tamper with it. An individual’s midi-chlorians seemed to know to whom they belonged and become unresponsive outside their dedicated vessel.

Perhaps that explained why it was often easier to call on the Force to heal someone other than oneself. Extending life, then, could hinge on something as simple as being able to induce midi-chlorians to create new cells; to subdivide at will, increasing their numbers into the tens of thousands to heal or replace damaged, aging, or metastatic cells. Midi-chlorians had to be compelled to serve the needs of the body; to bestow strength when needed; to overcome physical insult, or prevent cells from reaching senescence.

one accepted the tales handed down in accounts and holocrons, the ancient Sith had known how to accomplish this. But had Sith like Naga Sadow and Exar Kun genuinely been more powerful, or had they benefited from the fact that the dark side had been more prominent in those bygone eras?

that the use of such practices actually predated the arrival of the Dark Jedi exiles on Korriban. But sorcery had been employed less to extend life than to create illusions, fashion beasts, and resurrect the dead. Powerful adepts were said to have been able to saturate the atmosphere of planets with dark side energy, compel stars to explode, or induce paralysis in crowds, as Exar Kun apparently did to select members of the Republic Senate.

Darth Bane had referred to sorcery as one of the purest expressions of the dark side of the Force, and yet he hadn’t been able to harness those energies with near the skill as had his onetime apprentice Zannah. Bane’s disciples, however, believed that he had experimented with a technique of even greater significance: that of essence transfer, which he had learned after acquiring and plundering the holocron of Darth Andeddu, and which involved the relocation of an individual’s consciousness into another body or, in some cases, a talisman, temple, or sarcophagus. Thus had the most powerful of the ancient Sith Lords survived death to haunt and harass those who would infiltrate their tombs. But none of this amounted to corporeal survival. Plagueis had no interest in being a lingering, disembodied presence, trapped between worlds and powerless to affect the material realm except through the actions of weak-minded beings he could goad, coax, or will into action. Nor did he seek to shunt his mind into the body of another, whether an apprentice, as Bane was thought to have attempted, or some vat-grown clone. Nothing less than the immortality of his body and mind would suffice. Everlasting life.

library. Crucial knowledge had been lost during the brief mastery of Darth Gravid, and many of the most important elements of Sith training since had been passed from Masters to apprentices in sessions that had been left unrecorded. More to the point, Darth Tenebrous had had very little to say regarding death. Alone in one of the test centers, surrounded by his experiments—these things Plagueis could say he loved—the enormity of what had occurred on Bal’demnic suddenly rose up before him like a monolith of immeasurable proportions. For the first time he could feel the Force of the dark side not as a mere supporting wind, fluffing the sails of a pleasure boat, but as a hurricane eager to loose a storm of destruction on the crumbling Republic and the indolent Jedi Order. A scouring storm that would lay waste to everything antiquated and corrupt, and pave the way for a new order in which the Sith would be returned to their rightful place as the stewards of the galaxy, and before whom all the diverse species would bow, not only in obeisance and fear, but in gratitude for having been drawn back from the brink.

Sith imperative—the Grand Plan; those who had enlivened the hurricane with their breath and lives: Darths Bane and Zannah, and on down through the generations that had included Cognus, Vectivus, Ramage, and Tenebrous. One hundred years earlier, Tenebrous’s Twi’lek Master had opened a small rend in the fabric of the Force, allowing the dark side to be felt by the Jedi Order for the first time in more than eight hundred years. That had been the inauguration, the commencement of the revenge of the Sith. And now the time had come to enlarge that rend into a gaping hole, a gaping wound,

Shrieks of agony and death pierced tendrils of mist snagged by the gnarled branches of greel trees. The reports of weapons—old and new, projectile and energy—reverberated from the escarpment that walled the ancient fortress to the west, behind which the system’s primary was just now disappearing. As if some fantastic statuary perched atop a place of worship, Magister Hego Damask stood on the uppermost rampart, his black cloak fluttering, attuned to the sounds of slaughter.

decipher the data that revealed its location. Here, once every standard year, Damask and the dozen Muuns who made up Damask Holdings hosted a gathering of influential beings from across the galaxy. Their names might be known to a few, but they were largely invisible to the masses and could move among them unrecognized, though they were responsible—in no small measure—for events that shaped galactic history. They were conveyed to Sojourn in secret, aboard ships designed by Rugess Nome and owned by Hego Damask. None came without an invitation, for to do so was to risk immediate destruction. What they shared, to a being, was Damask’s belief that financial profit mattered more than notoriety, politics, or vulgar morality.

Later, under the management of the elder Damask—Hego’s biological father—on his retirement from chairmanship of the IBC, the moon had become something else: a place where only the most important players were brought together to exchange ideas. It was on Sojourn that the galactic credit standard had been established; the chancellorship of Eixes Valorum first proposed; the makeup of the Trade Federation Directorate reorganized. Then, under Hego Damask, Sojourn became something else again. No longer a resort or think tank, but an experiment in bolder thinking, in social alchemy. A place to plot and strategize and wrench the course of galactic history from the hands of happenstance.

Unaccustomed to straight talk, the Hutt frowned, then said, “I plan to make a grab for Tatooine, Magister, and I’ve come to solicit your support.” “An arid world in the Arkanis sector of the Outer Rim,” Hill supplied quietly from behind the armchair. “By support, I presume we are talking about credits,” Damask said. Gardulla repositioned herself on the litter. “I’m aware that you disapprove of spice and slavery, but there are profits to be made on Tatooine by other means.”

Damask motioned negligently. “I tease you, Gardulla. I know little about Tatooine, other than that the planet was heir to an ecological catastrophe in the dim past, and that its vast deserts now support a population of ne’er-do-wells, scoundrels, and hapless spacers of all species. I’ve heard it said that nothing pans out on Tatooine, and that beings who reside there age prematurely.”

Damask knew, too, that the ancient Sith had once had an outpost on Tatooine, but he kept that to himself.

“They are precisely the reason I wish to remove myself from Nal Hutta—and from the likes of Jabba Desilijic Tiure and the rest. With