Darth Plagueis

by James Luceno

Palpatine’s eyes sparkled in sadistic delight. Valorum was getting everything he deserved. He had demonstrated some diplomatic skill during the Stark Hyperspace War, but his election to the chancellorship had more to do with a pedigree that included three Supreme Chancellors and deals he had cut with influential families like the Kalpanas and the Tarkins of Eriadu. His adulation of the Jedi Order was well known; less so his hypocrisy—much of his family wealth derived from lucrative contracts his ancestors had entered into with the Trade Federation. His election seven years earlier had been one of the signs Plagueis had been waiting for—the return to power of a Valorum—and had followed on the heels of a remarkable breakthrough Plagueis and Sidious had engineered in manipulating midi-chlorians. A breakthrough the Muun had described as “galactonic.” Both of them suspected that the Jedi had sensed it as well, light-years distant on Coruscant.