I am back!
No, really, no-one has hijacked my account, I'm back.
Kids, if you're reading this, I must warn you against playing games. While it might be fun to have a character of each class and advanced class at max level, it turns you into quite the couch potato. Rather, a useless couch potato, as evidenced by my abandoment of pretty-much all my hobbies. Including, to my everlasting regret, writing.
I got back to it on a whim today, and it is quite a relief. As engrossing as the level grind is, and the new expansion for SWTOR, I think they can survive without me for a month...or two, or a year while I get my life back on track.
To start of with, here's a little parody, aimed at my usual target, Darth Hedious. Beware though, I've gotten rusty, so my style my have declined someonewhat.
Mistype
The time had come.
Oh yes it had. The little green lifeform was at a tea party with big hairy ones, General Grievous had– finally – suffered a case of heartburn, and the Chosen One was duly distressed.
All had proceeded as he had foreseen.
Well, almost.
The Jedi were late.
Of all the days in the year to hold a smashball grand final, it just had to be the one he had slated for total galactic domination.
The skyways of Coruscant, congested at the best of times, were now flooded by enough vehicles to form a near-solid surface. One that could easily be traversed on foot, as the Jedi party soon discovered. To both Palpatine's and Master Windu's distress though, they were not the only ones. Crowds of enthusiastic adolescents from all corners of the Galaxy had forsaken their repulsorcraft in favour of streaming toward the Grand Stadium which, as luck would have it, was located in the exact opposite direction from the Senate Building.
It was thus that a millennium of planning came to naught. Swept by the current, Jedi Kit Fisto, Saesee Tiin, Agen Kolar and Mace Windu never arrived for their arrest of the Supreme Chancellor.
There was no grandstanding, no Dun Möch, no swordplay or Sith Lightning. Just a frustrated Sith gazing out onto the ecumanopolis as his schemes collapsed.
In the morning, the war would all be over. The competent leadership of the Confederacy of Independent Systems was eliminated, and the surprise upset of the Raxus Rontos by the Tython Stars would, inescapably, reduce the remainder of the Council to blithering idiots. Drunk blithering idiots, if Palpatine knew Nute Gunray any.
The Jedi would return from the battlefields, amassing into a truly impressive force, once again, and with his true nature now revealed, it would surely be his downfall.
Unless….
He still had the clones, and he still had time before news of the Grand Final reached the Outer Rim Sieges. He could still execute that part of his plan. True, it would eliminate his Chosen One, but there was always Number Two, and Three, and Four. Really, with the Rule of Two, potential apprentices were a dime a dozen. All clamouring for black robes and gold contact lenses, not realizing that standard life expectancy was seldom more than a handful of decades.
His spirits once again up, Palpatine shambled over to the comm terminal. 'dit dah-dah dit-dah-dah-dit dit-dah-dit, dah-dit-dah-dit dit-dah dit-dah-dit-dit dit-dah-dit-dit dit-dit dah-dit dah-dah-dit, dah-dit-dah-dit dit-dah-dit-dit dah-dit dit-dit-dit…' he signalled, "EMPR calling CLNS."
He repeated the tap code, again and again.
Finally, a response.
"1119 calling EMPR." Palpatine copied. Good, Appo was on the line. Commanding the 501st, he was in the perfect place to cause the most harm to the Jedi Order. While the assault on the Temple would have gone a lot better with a Sith at its head, some things could not be helped.
Gleefully, Palpatine hammered in his command. "EMPR calling 1119. Execute Order 66."
With many masters and knights at the smashball finals, things might have ended grimly for the Jedi Order, but physical disorders were beyond the Dark Side's power to foresee or remedy, concerned as it's users were with the Grand Scheme, while the Light Side actually focused on healing.
An untimely spasm caused Palpatine's finger to jerk on the key. What should have been a dah, turned into a dit. What should have been a six turned into a five.
Only as Commander Appo's confirmation came across the speaker did Palpatine realise his mistake. The Sith's great triumph had come screeching down in a string of tap code.
"1119 calling EMPR. Acknowledged, Order 65."
In the darker corner of the vastness that was the Force, Darth Bane slammed his head against a wall.
Or tried to, anyway. Being ethereal wreaked havoc with one's ability to express frustration.
Darth Zannah, albeit equally crestfallen, found it in herself to offer her master a hug. After all, having killed the master, the apprentice had no reason not to restart speaking terms.
Darth Profoundius looked on in sympathy as the scene unfolded before her eyes. Though being Sith, sympathy did not stop her from saying, "Bane, for all that your Rule Of Two eliminated idiots, it did nothing for clumsy, eighty-year-old oafs."
Bane, showing some humour even at this darkest of times, replied, "In that, I cannot but agree. It's a wonder he did not fall down a reactor shaft by accident."
Actually pertenant Author's Notes:
Dit's and Dah's are the vocalizations used when referring to dots and dashes in Morse Code, at least, in English.
Sports, in Star Wars, have never been a gigantic feature - for which I am glad - until the dreaded Rebels continuity came about. Suffice it to say that Smashball dates back to before Legends becaue legendary, hence why I used it in particular.
Though few details have been issued as to the details of the game, it is probably a variant of rugby/National Rules/American football, whatever the current name. This conjecture is made on the facts that Corellia, while part of the Republic and the Core Worlds had a team - the Dreadnaughts - (so it was not entirely barbaric) and that violence was mentioned as one of the key adjectives.
That, I believe, covers it, wit that, I must thank everyone for reading, welcome everyone back, and fall gracelessly asleep.
Clean Word Count: 748 | Published : 24/10/14,1258 GMT.