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The dark side had made him its property, and now he made the dark side his.
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.
“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 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.
The Muun caught the lightsaber, but instead of bringing it to bear against Maa Kaap, he danced and twirled out of reach of the vibroblade and commenced parrying the Zabrak’s martial kicks and punches, until a side-kick to the thorax drove Maa Kaap clear across the cabin and slamming into the bulkhead. OneOne-FourDee’s audio pickups registered the snap of the Zabrak’s spine and the bursting of pulmonary arteries.
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.”
Oops lol
“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.
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?
Point meme
Damask knew, too, that the ancient Sith had once had an outpost on Tatooine, but he kept that to himself.
We Sith are an unseen opposition, Tenebrous had told his young apprentice. A phantom menace. Where the Sith once wore armor, we now wear cloaks. But the Force works through us all the more powerfully in our invisibility. For the present, the more covert we remain, the more influence we can have. Our revenge will be achieved not through subjugation but by contagion.
point meme
“I have seen the coming darkness and the beings that will visit it upon the galaxy.” She paused briefly to allow her words to be felt. “I have witnessed the collapse of the Republic, and I have beheld the Jedi Order spun into turmoil.” She aimed a finger toward distant mountains. “On the horizon looms a galaxy-spanning war—a conflict between machines of alloy and machines of flesh, and the subsequent death of tens of millions of innocents.” She paced on the slab, almost as if speaking to herself. “I see worlds subjugated and worlds destroyed, and from the chaos a new order born, buttressed by
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I have been sent to counsel you that the Force itself will become as if it had been but a passing fancy among the self-deceived—an antiquated illusion that will turn to smoke on the cleansing fires of the new age.”
A fire ignited in her eyes and her body went rigid as Plagueis began to trickle lightning into her. Her limbs trembled and her blood began to boil. Her hands grew hot and were close to being set aflame when he finally felt the light go out of her and she crumpled in his grasp.
His interest piqued, Plagueis said, “What is the name of the royal family?” “Palpatine.” “And the son?” “Just that. He goes by the cognomen alone.”
“Young human,” Plagueis said, hastening his own pace. “A moment of your time.” When Palpatine failed to acknowledge him, he lengthened his stride and called: “Palpatine.” Slowing to a reluctant halt, Palpatine looked over his shoulder. “How do you know my name?”
With help from 11-4D he had learned that Palpatine’s troubled past had seen him bounced from one private school to the next, following incidents of petty crime and offenses that would have landed a commoner in a correctional facility. Time and again his father, who shared with his son a penchant for violence, had used his influence to rescue Palpatine and avoid the specter of family scandals.
“That is Varykino,” he explained. “A prize of the Lake Country. Once owned by the poet Omar Berenko, and presently occupied by the Naberrie family.”
Palpatine raised his clawed hands. “I executed them with these! And with the power of my mind. I became a storm, Magister—a weapon strong enough to warp bulkheads and hurl bodies across cabinspaces. I was death itself!” Plagueis sat tall in the chair, in genuine astonishment. He could see Palpatine now in all his dark glory. Anger and murder had pulled down the walls he had raised perhaps since infancy to safeguard his secret.
“In your studies,” he said carefully, “have you ever learned of the Sith?” Palpatine blinked, as if preoccupied. “A Jedi sect, weren’t they? The result of a kind of family feud.”
“Where are the Sith?” Plagueis allowed a smile. “Just now there is only one. Unless, of course, it is your will to join me.” Palpatine nodded. “I do wish to join you.” “Then kneel before me and pledge that it is your will to join your destiny forever with the Order of the Sith Lords.” Palpatine stared at the floor, then genuflected, uttering, “It is my will to join my destiny forever with the Order of the Sith Lords.” Plagueis extended his left hand to touch him on the crown of the head. “Then it is done. From this day forward, the truth of you, now and forever more, will be Sidious.”
“I can’t have your will tempered by feelings of regret or compassion. You were brought into being to lead. Therefore you must see every living thing as nothing more than a tool to elevate you, to move you to your destined place. This is our galaxy, Sidious, our reality.
The ancients—the Celestials, the Rakata—didn’t pronounce judgment on their works. They moved planets, organized star systems, conjured dark side devices like the Star Forge as they saw
Point meme
Sidious watched the last of the brush fires burn out, then said, “Will I eventually be physically transformed?” “Into some aged, pale-skinned, raspy-voiced, yellow-eyed monster, you mean. Such as the one you see before you.” Plagueis gestured to himself, then lowered himself to the ground. “Surely you are acquainted with the lore: King Ommin of Onderon, Darths Sion and Nihilus. But whether it will happen to you, I can’t say. Know this, though, Sidious, that the power of the dark side does not debilitate the practitioner as much as it debilitates those who lack it.” He grinned with evil
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“Tatooine is too remote and lawless to have an impact on galactic events, in any case.
Would he one day conquer not only death but life, as well, by manipulating midi-chlorians to produce Forceful beings, even in the absence of fertilization, as Darth Tenebrous might have attempted to do with gene-splicing techniques and computers?
Palpatine laughed without merriment. “What could you possibly have to offer someone like me?” “Just this.” She opened the soft shoulder bag to reveal a humanoid infant of less than a standard year in age. The infant’s hairless head was stippled with an array of short but still pliant horns, and its entire body had been garishly and ceremonially tattooed in red and black pigments.
Palpatine regarded the newborn again. “Have you named him?” “Maul, he is called.”
“The Jedi are widely scattered, and it’s unlikely that we would be able to act quickly enough to kill all of them in the same instant. We would need to assign an individual assassin to each, and there would be no way to still the tongues of that many assassins. Our plan would be revealed. We would be betrayed and become the targeted ones.”
Sidious bowed his head in deference. “In the annals of Sith history, you will be known as Plagueis the Wise.”
Remember why the Sith are more powerful than the Jedi, Sidious: because we are not afraid to feel. We embrace the spectrum of emotions, from the heights of transcendent joy to the depths of hatred and despair. Fearless, we welcome whatever paths the dark side sets us on, and whatever destiny it lays out for us.
The small part you will play in the revenge of the Sith.
Point meme
Ronhar inclined his head in a bow. “I respect Vidar Kim all the more for bringing us together. May the Force be with you, Senator Palpatine.”
Oops
Dooku smiled lightly as the tall Jedi sauntered off. “My former apprentice does not mince words.” “Frank talk is a rarity these days,” Plagueis said. “The Senate could learn from beings like Qui-Gon Jinn.”
Mulling it over anew, Plagueis began to wonder whether he had taken the wrong approach on Kamino. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better to have the Kaminoans create an army capable of fighting alongside the Jedi rather than against them…
Only the baseness of Coruscant’s populace, the almost sheer absence of anything natural, kept the world from being as strong in the light as Korriban was in the dark.
In desperate flight from the Sith and the spreading flames, Pax Teem had backed himself to a tall window framed by floor-to-ceiling curtains. Entreaties of whatever sort tried to thrust themselves through his stricken voice box and past his square teeth, but none succeeded. Deactivating the lightsaber, Sidious beckoned the flames with his fingers, encouraging them to leap from the table to the curtains. A bleating scream finally emerged from Teem’s narrow muzzle of a mouth as the blazing fabric collapsed around him, and Sidious watched him roast to death.
For now, Sidious, know that you are the blade we will drive through the heart of the Senate, the Republic, and the Jedi Order, and I, your guide to reshaping the galaxy. Together we are the newborn stars that complete the Sith constellation.”
If the Jedi would abide by their philosophy of acting in accordance with the Force, of doing what is right, they would roll over for the dark. But they resist. Yoda and the rest of the Council members will double their meditation sessions in an effort to peer into the future, only to discover it clouded and unknowable. Only to discover that complacency has opened the door to catastrophe.
Conspicuously absent was Theed’s teenage governor, Padmé Naberrie, whose appointment had been Veruna’s compromise to an electorate that had been growing more oppositional with each passing year.
Dooku nodded. “If one more Jedi dies because of indolence on the part of the Republic and moral equivocation on the part of the Council, I will leave the Temple and refuse to look back.”
Plagueis sat in enraged disbelief. Somehow, Veruna and his cohorts—Gardulla, Black Sun, and the Bando Gora—had gotten their hands on a proscribed nuclear device. None of the Sun Guards could have survived the blast; but then they didn’t deserve to. Nuclear weapons were scarce, and the Echani had obviously neglected to check with the few black-market suppliers that had access to them.
“I hope you thanked him before you killed him,” Sidious went on, “because he taught you a valuable lesson. When you face someone strong in the Force you must remain focused—even when you’re convinced that your opponent is incapacitated. Then is not the time to bask in the glory of your victory or draw out the moment. You must deliver a killing strike and be done with it. Reserve your self-praise for after the fact, or you will suffer more than a hand wound.”
“I believe that the Kaminoans could be induced to grow and train a cloned army.” Sifo-Dyas took a long moment to reply. “You said yourself that the Republic would never sanction an army.” “The Republic needn’t know,” Damask said cautiously. “Neither would the Jedi Order have to know. It would be an army that might never have to be used, and yet be available in reserve should need ever arise.”
“Did Valorum say which Jedi were sent?” “Qui-Gon Jinn and his Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Plagueis came to an abrupt halt. “Worse news yet. I have met Qui-Gon, and he is nothing like some of the others Dooku trained.” “They are a pesky duo,” Sidious said. “The nemesis of the Nebula Front at Dorvalla, Asmeru, and on Eriadu.”
Palpatine had stopped listening. Nine years old…Conceived by the Force…Is it possible…
Damask absorbed the news in brooding silence, then muttered, “The boy’s actions already echo across the stars.”
Plagueis the Wise, who forged the most powerful Sith Lord the galaxy has ever known, and yet who forgot to leave a place for himself; whose pride never allowed him to question that he would no longer be needed.”
The idea here is not to drag you back at the last moment, but to bring you to death’s door and shove you through to the other side.” Sidious sighed. “A tragedy, really, for one so wise. One who could oversee the lives and deaths of all beings, except himself.”
“The truth is that I haven’t changed. As we have clouded the minds of the Jedi, I clouded yours. Never once did I have any intention of sharing power with you. I needed to learn from you; no more, no less. To learn all of your secrets, which I trusted you would eventually reveal. But what made you think that I would need you after that? Vanity, perhaps; your sense of self-importance. You’ve been nothing more than a pawn in a game played by a genuine Master.
“Rest easy in your grave, Plagueis. In the end, I will be proclaimed Emperor. The Sith will have had their revenge, and I will rule the galaxy.” Plagueis slid to the floor and rolled facedown. Death rattled his lungs and he died.
