Aldera was without contest the most beautiful example of natural and technological harmony in known space. Small for a planetary capital, it housed approximately two hundred million civilians and tourists in immaculate apartments overlooking the Aldera University campus, the giant lake on whose perimeter the city held its foundations, or the immense canyon which materialized mere metres from the city limits, opening onto brisk, empty air which allowed the last failing rays of the setting sun to pass freely through the distant mountain range and caress the metropolitan skyline in a bath of red and golden light and dramatic, sweeping shadows. This evening was like any other in the Alderaani capital; a Bith jazz band could be heard from a dimly lit restaurant, along with the merry babble of subdued patrons in varying stages of sedate relaxation; the buzz of faraway spacecraft in the takeoff and landing lanes overhead had entered a slow decrescendo as the hubbub of the marketing thoroughfare in the merchant's square below came to a close; and many a contented couple leaned casually against the banister of the elevated balcony from which Naq Söthn surveyed the glorious panorama.
Naq set himself apart from the others on the terrace in that he was alone, alone in every sense of the word. He raised his right hand in front of his face and flexed it experimentally- something he had done quite often during his exile from the order he had failed so long ago. The faint clicking of his prosthetic carpals ground on his ears, and he cringed, lowering it back onto the railing and letting the wide, brown sleeve of his homespun robe fall over it, temporarily concealing from himself at least one unfortunate aspect of what he had become in the rise of the Galactic Empire. An isolated center of apathetic regret, he quarantined his soul from those around him, refusing to spoil their unreserved merriment with the ripples of his own melancholy through the Force. He refused likewise, however, to take any solace himself in the unguarded gladness and essential love which surrounded him here; he deserved none of it. He had let the Republic fall into the deepest darkness it had seen in all its twenty-five thousand years.
The old jedi merged the sleeves of his robe, turning on his heel. He turned his face away from the warm, dulcet rays of the fading sunset and strode back toward the restaurant. The lighting was ample here, and the faces around him were uniformly relaxed and cheerful, but both were too artificial, too tried for, to quell the foreboding which had built in the catacombs of Naq's sorrow-wizened mind. He felt no panic- he could clearly recall the last time he had felt panic, nineteen years ago in a hangar on Coruscant, when a young hero (what an ironic word "hero" was) had given him the worst news of his life. No, since then, he simply could not muster the energy for panic. Instead, he allowed the gradual, accepting sadness to envelope his consciousness without jolting his perfect, serene equilibrium in the sea of joyous lives which he could not touch. He was the only one in this room with the faintest inkling of what was even now being endorsed by high-ranking stylus and screen back on "Imperial Centre". He looked actively around him for the first time that evening, memorizing the faces of the people sitting nearest to him. Soon, far sooner than any one of them deserved, their paradise would be rocked by the most disastrous and merciless act ever committed in the galaxy's million years of recorded history.
Alderaan- not its people, nor its government, nor its long and rich historical culture, but Alderaan in its utter entirety- was nearing its end.