Chapters 1-6, 10 and 17 form the original version of The Return of Darth Plagueis. The other chapters form what was Dark Nest 4: Slave Nest. So if you're just interested in one of the original fics, you can read just the chapters relating to that fic.

Chapter 1: Death

32 BBY: Coruscant: Senate Building

The blue skinned Twi'lek Senator Orn Free Ta had just announced his nomination of Senator Palpatine. But while that was, of course, a step in the right direction, it was no guarantee that Darth Plagueis' apprentice Darth Sidious would be elected as Supreme Chancellor. And until Palpatine's chancellorship was ensured the Muun Sith Lord could not, would not allow himself to rest.

Darth Sidious radiated a calm sense of confidence into the Force. Plagueis reached out to him, and was slightly concerned by just how confident his apprentice seemed. With extreme care, as to not alert Palpatine to what he was doing, Plagueis probed just a tiny bit deeper. Of course there was a certain darkness there; they were both powerful Sith Lords. But there was something else there. Just the smallest of flickers. But enough for Plagueis to pull away. And to force him to suppress a shudder.

Darth Plagueis reached out toward his apprentice a second time, hoping that he'd somehow made some sort of mistake. That he had not read Sidious correctly. But no. It was still there. That same subtle darkness he'd felt within himself, nearly fifty years earlier, mere days before he'd killed his own master, Darth Tenebrous at that mine on Bal'demnic. Hego Damask had had no inkling of its significance at the time. Had not known that he'd already decided to take the life of his master.

Palpatine certainly would not know the he'd already made a very similar decision. Though he knew it not, Sidious' mind had been made up. And would not be changed. The fool! Palpatine did not understand the Grand Plan as Darth Plagueis did. He had failed to truly comprehend the Sith imperative. All the Muun Sith Lord's planning could be for naught. Darth Plagueis could not allow this.

Plagueis could simply kill his apprentice. Search out a replacement. Start the whole sordid process over again. And undo decades of careful, meticulous work. No. While Darth Sidious may have been a fool for what he'd purposed to do, he was still vital to the Grand Plan. Without Palpatine the plan to save the galaxy from itself, from the Jedi would surely fail. Would crumble as many of Coruscant's countless ancient buildings currently did.

Nor could Darth Plagueis just disappear. Palpatine would be constantly looking over his shoulder, fearing that his former master was planning his death. Darth Sidious needed to devote his full attention to his part in the Grand Plan. Palpatine needed to know that his master, Darth Plagueis was dead. Or at least he needs to believe I'm dead. Yes, his only hope was to deceive his apprentice. His body would have to die, but his spirit would have to live.

But for his spirit to remain in this profane realm, Hego Damask would need some sort of physical anchorage point. Essence transference. Many Sith Lords had been able to do this. Most remained as disembodied spirits, only able to affect the physical realm by influencing the actions of others who happened to pass by. In rare cases these Sith had managed to inhabit another, perhaps an apprentice or a cloned body. But that often meant having another mind to contend with. And that other mind was not always cooperative.

What Hego Damask desired was true immortality. Of both body and soul. Not existence as a mere facsimile, a mere mockery of life. But Darth Plagueis might not even be able to manage that much. Palpatine would be making his move very soon, and Hego Damask had devoted very little study to essence transfer. Tens of thousands of ancient texts had been destroyed during the attack on his former dwelling on the moon of Sojourn. The key to his success may have lay in one of those many scrolls.

Time was short, indeed.

As preoccupied as he was by all this, Hego Damask had been paying virtually no attention to the rest of the assembly. After what seemed like days the assembly had finally concluded.

"You seemed… distracted, Master," Darth Sidious commented as the two Sith Lords turned to leave the mobile platform representing his home world of Naboo.

Darth Plagueis let out a sigh. "I was experiencing a very vivid Force vision," he lied. "There were so many images and whispers, and I will need some time alone with the Force to sort it all out."

"Well, then," Palpatine said with a nod, "I shall leave you to it. I have plenty of things myself that need attending."

#

Kaldani Spires

"You seem quite stressed, Master," the droid 11-4D told Hego Damask as he just about ran through the doorway and into his penthouse.

"Palpatine plans to kill me," the Muun responded. He began explaining his dilemma to the droid, but stopped when he glimpsed a ray of light from the setting sun glinting off of a data storage crystal. Yes, crystals were known for the astonishing amount of information they could hold. And, in the case of the crystalline tsils of the little known world of Nam Chorios, they even host a consciousness. Could Darth Plagueis store his consciousness in a data storage crystal?

He'd read of experiments in which this had been attempted. There had been some success, though the scientists had yet to determine whether the consciousness had actually been transferred or if it had simply been duplicated. But these scientists had not had the Force as Plagueis did.

Darth Plagueis picked up the data crystal and frowned. He remembered, as a young boy, watching a data crystal fall to the floor and shatter. Far too fragile. Hego Damask needed something more...

He unclipped the lightsaber from his belt, and examined it a moment. Within the metal cylinder was a red focusing crystal. Hego Damask had spent long hours shaping that crystal with a small laser cutter. The precision required had been painstaking and beyond tedious. After being baked for several hours before hand, the crystal had become incredibly strong. He still remembered the pride he'd felt when he'd finished.

Plagueis quickly disassembled the lightsaber and stared at its crimson focusing crystal. He reached outward toward the Force, that great reservoir, and took hold of that dark power it offered. As Hego Damask channeled that power toward the crystal, he was able to peer into it. Able to see its molecular bonds. He grasped the focusing crystal with his mind and started to pull himself over to it. The Sith Lord could feel himself stepping out of his own body.

And then the entire universe was suddenly submerged in a great sea of crystalline crimson. Cold, but not unpleasantly so. Darth Plagueis just floated there. For seconds, or perhaps hours. He was not quite sure. The Sith Lord gazed down into depths of such deep red that they were nearly black. He would have to swim down deeper, much deeper, to get to the heart of the crystal. But once there, would he be able to make it back to the surface? If not, he would likely be stuck inside the focusing crystal.

His apprentice Darth Sidious was powerful in the Force; he would certainly sense that something was amiss and then, with little effort, divine what had happened. And he would surely destroy the focusing crystal.

And so Hego Damask turned his gaze upward, toward the surface, where this great crimson sea lightened to a pinkish hue. Plagueis allowed himself to float upward and, some time later, he broke the surface... The Sith Lord found himself, once again, inside his own body, sitting behind his desk. He sat up, as his head had been slumped forward.

Yes, Darth Plagueis could do this. But the crystal would have to be somewhere Palpatine would be unable to find it. The Muun Sith Lord thought about it a couple moments, and then recalled a short news segment relating to a housing complex to be built partially over an ancient bomb shelter. Such was the way of the counterfeit sparkling jewel that was Coruscant, to build the new upon the old. Many ancient tribal peoples had done similarly, constructing new, larger temples over those of extinct or conquered peoples.

Of course Hego Damask could not count on Darth Sidious killing his body anywhere near this ancient bunker. Which meant that Plagueis' spirit would have to be transported a considerable distance in order to get to the focusing crystal. Darth Plagueis would need a sort of conduit along which to travel. He immediately dismissed the idea of using wires. Even if there were adequately intact wires leading from the bomb shelter, they were unlikely to lead to where he would be murdered. Hego Damask would need a conduit that was not fixed, one he could direct by his own will. He glanced briefly at his comlink. With two of them he could establish such a conduit.

#

Darth Plagueis could see countless bursts of red orange light coming to life against a sparkling backdrop. Needles of light silently screamed back and forth, crashing into shimmering bubbles of energy, within which resided enormous grayish shapes. Many of the these shapes were wedge like, while others had a more organic, almost aquatic look. Other shapes, mere specks in comparison flitted about like swarms of hornets. Plagueis realized that he was seeing a savage space battle, perhaps multiple ones,

And then there was a man lying on the ground, horribly burned and moaning in agony. The image soon changed to that of a caped black clad cyborg accompanied by a sound of labored breathing, with a peculiar mechanical quality. And Plagueis had the strange feeling that he'd met this man before.

The waking dream soon faded, allowing Darth Plagueis to bring his attention back to the landing platform, on which he'd been spying, to see the ship which had been resting there taking for the sky. The Muun Sith Lord and 11-4D had taken a detour to a nearby public observatory where Plagueis could observe a meeting involving Qui Gon Jinn, his apprentice Obi-wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and the young Senator Padme Amidala.

"They are on the ship, master," 11-4D provided helpfully.

#

500 Republica

Given Darth Plagueis' profound state of intoxication, in which the old Muun could scarcely lift his wine glass, it was apparent that he'd been drugged. Most likely by some unseen substance Sidious had put in his glass. As this poison began to take effect, the Muun Sith Lord could feel his hearts' rate decreasing. It also started becoming hard to breathe; his respirator began to make clicking sounds as it was forced to work just a wee bit harder.

But Darth Plagueis could not allow himself to die just yet. He drew subtly on the dark side of the Force, so that Palpatine could not detect it, and slowed down the effects of this poison. Some sort of neurotoxin, perhaps.

Darth Plagueis began to feel Sidious drawing on the dark side. And less than a second later Plagueis could feel an arc of Force lightning grounding itself on his respirator. The Muun Sith Lord fed upon it and began gathering a massive amount of Force energy. But he needed more.

And so Darth Plagueis opened his eyes and stared at Sidious a moment. Issuing a challenge to his apprentice and allowing a sense of confidence to bleed into the Force. Sidious responded with a brief sense of confusion, which quickly grew to rage and disgust. Yes, you fool, you know exactly what to do. Palpatine again drew on the dark side, much more deeply this time, perhaps more deeply than he'd ever done previously, and launched mighty arcs of Force lightning at his former master. Darth Plagueis fed off these dark energies even as they destroyed his already failing body.

Darth Plagueis brought his attention to 11-4D. To the data crystal and comlink concealed within. The Muun Sith Lord focused the Force energy he'd gathered into a tiny point and suddenly jumped out of his own body, into a sea of sparkling silver white diamond. He could feel himself sinking and being ripped from his body as the comlink transported his spirit to a second one hidden miles away, in that old bomb shelter. The diamond sea darkened to pink and then red as that second comlink beamed his spirit through the nearby lightsaber's emitter nozzle, and into the crimson focusing crystal. And Darth Plagueis continued to sink. Down into an endless void. For an eternity. But also, for an instant. For time had utterly ceased to exist.

Behind him Palpatine could hear strange hissing and popping sounds, and he could smell an acrid smoke. He turned and saw that Plagueis' droid was billowing grayish smoke. The machine had suddenly shorted out. Had bloody near exploded. Darth Sidious glanced back at the dead Muun in slight confusion. Why had he gathered up all that Force energy? And why had the old man seemed so confident?

Palpatine turned back to the droid and could not help but laugh. The old nutter had apparently tried to transfer his consciousness to his droid, and had succeeded only in causing a catastrophic overload. "Plagueis the Wise, indeed," Sidious said sarcastically. He reached out to the droid, but could not feel his former master's presence. He would, nonetheless, have the droid incinerated, just to be safe.

Author's note: Plagueis lacked the skill to directly transfer his consciousness to the comlink, hence his use of the data crystal/the sea of silver white diamond.