Prologue
Yavin IV
Pre-Empire

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Thoma looked around, confused. How did she get here? The four-year-old's head hurt as if she had been run over by a rampaging gundark…

She sat up slowly, tears starting to form in her large green eyes. Scrapes covered her arms and legs, and her clothing was torn and burned. Where were Mommy and Daddy? All around her debris was slowly burning, and the smell of cindered cloth and vegetation permeated the air.

She scrambled to her feet, breathing hard. Turning around, she saw the wreckage of the ship that had carried her. An early-model Corellian freighter, it was about avareage-sized with a matte-black hull. It had left a large swath of the jungle around her burned, trees crushed and splintered in its path when it had crashed down into the ground and scraped along the jungle floor.

She attempted to walk towards the ship, but her legs were wobbly and she had a hard time even standing. Thoma managed to find her balance after a few minutes of standing in one place, and then she gingerly tried to take a few steps; she managed three before she fell back down on her face, causing a fresh wave of tears to fill her eyes. In front of her, one last explosion rocked the remains of the ship, sending a wave of heat that scorched her hair.

She crawled forward slowly, careful not to hurt her already-damaged arms and legs any further. One arm felt like it was fractured, and threatened to give out on her as she moved towards the ship, but she was strong. She though about it not hurting, getting better, and the pain eased a bit, however little. She had almost reached the hull when she heard another ship land nearby. The ion engines made a distinctive whining sound that echoed through the forest canopy.

Frightened, she crawled as fast as she could to a jumble of fallen tree branches and hid herself from view in the large leaves. A few minutes later, she heard men's voices coming toward the ship. Careful not to be seen, she peeked out through a hole in the twigs.

Four men were around the ship; two humans, a Rodian, and what she thought was called an Aqualish. She wasn't sure. They were laughing and congratulating each other, looking at the ship and the contents. They started pulling away the debris and searching through whatever was left, excavating jewelry and other items that they found valuable.

Then they pulled out something larger, and a second thing of roughly the same size. Thoma squinted through her tears and the dark leaves surrounding her. What was it they had pulled out? She didn't remember any cargo that size…

Then they threw whatever they were aside, and she let out a cry. Her parents' faces stared back at her, eyes wide and dull. Suddenly one of the Rodians stopped and motioned towards the branches she was hiding in, and the others glanced her direction. The Aqualish started to move towards her, but the human motioned otherwise. This was time to investigate cargo, not investigate every noise that might only be a lone sintrail wandering through the brush.

Thoma turned away and crawled deeper into the brush, tears pouring from her eyes. She was alone, now, on this jungle planet. She would have to be strong. She would have been without her parents anyway, she reminded herself; she was on her way to Coruscant. Her parents, and someone in a robe that had come to her home, had explained something that she hadn't thought possible. She was to become a Jedi.

She had been overjoyed, until she had learned she had to leave her parents. This trip was the last they were to take together. Thoma stopped and huddled on the jungle floor, her arms wrapped around her legs and her knees pressed into her eyes. This wasn't fair. Why did this happen? Why? Why!

Angrily, she pounded her fist on the forest floor and once again scrambled to her feet. She walked a few steps, determined that she would be strong, before she collapsed again in utter despair. She cried, and cried…

An immeasurable amount of time later, she had run out of tears. She was dehydrated and hungry. Her stomach rumbled despite the fact that she didn't feel like eating anything at all; though it might need food, her stomach was still twisted into knots. What was she supposed to eat here, anyway? Everything she looked at had thorns or an oily outer coating. She might have been only four, but she was smart for her age and knew that most plants weren't edible.

She sighed and moved onward through the jungle. She would probably come to water soon. For hours she walked, until night had fallen. All around her she could hear creatures awakening, or going back to their nests for the night. She flinched and cried out as a whisper bird flew over hear head. Somewhere to her left, a woolamander called.

Frightened, she ran blindly as fast as she could. Adrenaline pumping through her system, she ran until her legs collapsed from beneath her. But them, looking at the ground in front of her, she noticed a change. That wasn't grass, or even rich, loamy jungle soil. It reflected the night sky. Water!

Unrestrained, Thoma drank as much of the water as her stomach could hold. She felt slightly ill afterwards, the water sloshing around in her stomach. She decided to drink one more handful when, as she reached her hands in, they scraped something beneath the surface. She snatched her hands back, afraid that it might be some creature, but when nothing happened she reached back and quickly brushed her hand through the water. Sure enough, it touched something that looked felt like stone. Carved, flat stone, like a stepping stone.

Curious, she put her weight on the hand, and when nothing happened she put her other hand on the same stone. Repeating this with her feet, she was soon sitting on a stone that must have been only millimeters under the water. A thought occurred to her, and she reached out into the water to feel for another stone. As she reached out her hand, she once again felt stone underneath the water. She moved to this stone, then continued the pattern until she felt she must have been almost to the middle of the lake. Then, as she was reaching out for another stone, she instead felt dirt.

She clambered onto the shore, and tried to see in the near-complete darkness. As her eyes adjusted to the starlight, what she saw before her amazed her. A large statue of a man in robes stood before her. A tattoo of a sun was emblazoned on his forehead. And then, behind, him, she saw a huge black stone temple, almost invisible in the night. She cautiously walked forward.

As she took a few steps, she felt a sudden cold breeze and shivered. Up until now it had been almost unbearably hot and humid. Almost as soon as she felt the breeze, it was gone, leaving only what sounded like a whisper in its wake. She hesitated, but then some large beast roared deep in the jungle and she dashed inside. It was empty, and her footsteps echoed in the silence.

A faint luminescence seemed to light the place, and in the dim light she could just make out ancient writing carved into the stone walls. The floor was dusty, but as she stepped and the dust came off, she could see that it was a shiny black, like obsidian. Nevertheless, it seemed a safer place to stay the night than the jungle outside. Curling up against the wall, she fell into a fitful sleep.

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Her dreams were about her parents, the way the shuttle crashed down through the jungle before the impact and her being blown away, out of the ship, to land on the jungle floor already unconscious.

She dreamed of her mother, on their home world of Kessel. It wasn't the most pleasant place, but they managed and had a happy life. She dreamed of her mother reading her stories at night, keeping her safe from the monsters under her sleeping mattress, and preparing warm bubble baths, always letting Thoma add the bubble sphere herself.

She dreamed of going to work one day with her father, him showing her how the generators kept up the shields that gave them breathable air. Of him taking her on long walks, and always making her laugh.

And then she dreamed of something different, unfamiliar. She dreamed of herself years from now, long black hair streaming. She was wearing a black cloak and robe, and on her hip she wore a belt on which hung what she knew to be a lightsaber. She was standing with an awful smile on her face, and in her hands she held purple lightning…

The image then transformed into the man of the statue she had seen outside the temple, the man with the long dark hair streaming behind him, the blazing sun tattooed on his forehead. He was standing in front of a large group of massed aliens, working laboriously to build great temples on the jungle moon.

She woke in a sweat, trembling. Someone else was in here.

"Who's there?" she called into the dark. Her voice reverberated through the temple, echoing in the dark corners. A small laugh answered.

"Nothing to be afraid of, child," a voice answered. It was a man's. "Don't be frightened."

"Who are you?" Thoma asked, more confused than frightened. She couldn't see anyone in the temple.

"If you want to know," the voice replied, "Then I will answer. I am Exar Kun."

With that statement, a shadow appeared at the far end of the temple. It grew in size and formed into a shape- a tall man, long black hair… and a tattoo of a black sun on his forehead. The statue! Thoma thought, entranced. She was no longer frightened, just curious.

"Where did you come from?" She asked, looking curiously up at Exar Kun.

The figure chuckled again, "That is unimportant. What is important is that you learn how to survive on this world. But first, I must ask you something."

"What?" Thoma asked, looking up at the tattoo.

"You have a certain… power." Kun started, but then Thoma jumped in.

"I know!" she said, "A Jedi told me. I was going to go to Coruscant and train…" but with that, she couldn't hold the tears in again. "The… the smugglers… the bad men… I… I… I hate them all! Why did they do this?"

"There is no way to know," Kun said, mimicking sympathy, intrigued. This might be easier than he thought. "But you don't want to join the Jedi. They're as bad as those smugglers, little one. I can teach you greater things than they can, if you are willing to learn. I may no longer have a body, but I can still teach. I can teach you how to get back at those smugglers, and all the others that have ever caused you pain or suffering."

Thoma's eyes lit up with intrigue and she stopped crying. "How?" she asked.

Kun smiled, pleased. "Simple. You join me. You learn all you can, not from the restrained and self-important Jedi, but from a much more reliable source… teachings where you are not limited in your emotions, where you are allowed vengeance on those who have harmed you. You must learn the teachings of the Sith."

"Sith…" Thoma tried out the word on her tongue. It sounded interesting, and she wanted to get back at those men. She wanted them dead. "Teach me," she said, looking up at Exar Kun's face.

Kun grinned, "Then you will learn, Darth Taegous."

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To be continued...

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars, and all Star Wars content except for my OC Darth Taegous (me!) is (c) Lucasfilm Ltd. George Lucas owns everything.

Author's note: I have finally started my character's story! Yay! It only took me four months to decide to do it...heh. I'll be working on this along with my Jumanji story, so it may take a while between chapters, especially since school's started. Any comments or criticisms are always appreciated!