Star Wars: The Mask of Fear (Reign of the Empire) (Star Wars: Reign of the Empire Book 1)

by Alexander Freed

Someone cried, “The Jedi! The Jedi are gone!” As if it were news. As if they’d vanished from inside their temples that morning and not been slaughtered weeks before in an act of violence and betrayal and cruel vanity.

Royal Consort to the Queen of Alderaan,

consort always kills me even tho i know its an official term like ok bail queen's side piece...

“Master Tiin!” someone called,

saesee :( living force made me like him a lot his bestieship with plo </3

If he called out, his ghosts would hear, and the haunting would resume.

“Here on Jedha we appear to be many. A million, perhaps, all visitors to this holy world. But scattered across the galaxy, returned to our home planets, we who remember the Jedi with fondness will be so very few.”

But no single truth seemed sufficient. He could say he’d had Jedi friends, but that seemed trite; say he’d come to honor a woman who’d loved the Jedi dearly and who was now gone; or say it was a way of spitting in the face of the new regime. What he couldn’t do was admit the horror of what he knew—the secrets that had driven him from home and wife and daughter.

padme 💔💔💔

He wished he could tap into the power of the stone and feel what the mourners around him seemed to feel, instead of aching and groaning and pitying himself, along with the whole damned galaxy.

All he could do to exorcise his ghosts was clear the names of the dead and hope for a better tomorrow. Perhaps then he could look at his wife and daughter and believe he had done his duty. Even if he had failed to do enough.

He felt unworthy of his daughter—the last gift of another dead friend. The gift of a woman who’d died along with the Jedi, and who’d known a Jedi’s love. He felt unworthy of the Jedi. Their burden was nonetheless his. It had to be, lest it become Leia’s. He was her father, not her mentor or guardian, and he would do anything to carry that weight himself.

What surprised Soujen most was how quickly the war had ended. That and the Jedi, but the Jedi had never been important in the grand scheme of things.

damn ok

Thus wounded, the Republic, too, had died, and from its ashes now rose a Galactic Empire. Soujen saw that the war was well and truly over and that nothing could ever be set right. That it happened at all wasn’t surprising. But no one—not Soujen Vak-Nhalis and not his makers—had expected it to happen so fast.

taking a left at the Museum of Contemporary Music (closed until further notice),

heheh

“Which policies? The kleptocratic economics or the populist scaremongering?”

For three years, they’d all lived in existential fear. Now Palpatine was Emperor and the galaxy was changing and it was all so ordinary. Except when it wasn’t.

Grand Vizier Amedda’s “true Imperial citizens” speech Relief shipments to Cato Neimoidia held up Replacement of Republic credits with Imperial credits (now with unspecified “safeguards”) Renaming of Parnarosis 3 Chief justice administrator fired after eight days on the job

sooo difficult not to be the "omg just like current america" guy but COME ONNN WHAT

What did it matter if ruined sectors of Cato Neimoidia were denied water and medicine because one of Palpatine’s rivals publicly mocked the new regime? What did it matter if the memory of the dead Jedi Master Parnarosis was wiped from the galaxy and replaced by a dead warlord?

Most of it, she imagined, wasn’t even Palpatine. It was his damned supporters, imperialist true believers and power-hungry sycophants alike, who were running wild. Who knew what Palpatine wanted—besides loyalty and control—when he’d given his beasts free rein?

great critique of centrist thinking here tbh

The end of the war was a miracle, but the price of peace was growing. They’d been an Empire for less than a month. How long would they be tallying the cost?

reiterating the need to improve medical support for clone veterans

:((((

Breha’s voice came through and immediately his muscles relaxed. He became more aware of his breathing and his pace and his body. His wife, as always, was his salvation.

aw :) cute... leia had such good parents <3

“Is it possible,” Breha asked, “that you’re overestimating the number of people who are silent and scared? Not everyone loved the Jedi like you—for most people they’ve always been distant—and Palpatine is very popular.”

all he’d had to do to secure his release had been to pledge his loyalty to the new regime—to treat the whole affair like politics instead of like the atrocity it was and assure everyone that the Emperor was legitimate. He’d agreed—for his own sake, for the sake of his family, for the sake of the galaxy—and he’d kept within the boundaries of political dialogue since then. He’d kept words like tyrant and massacre out of his speeches, even when the implication was there.

“Clones are like battle droids. They’re not the enemy—they’re weapons of the enemy, and the enemy can always manufacture more.”

“Not many people see it yet, but they will. The Empire fired the first shot—we did not ask for this war. It is the Empire who chased us when we simply tried to survive.”