LordDarthYoda - Ahsoka was stupidly annoying for a while in the Clone Wars. Thankfully they toned that done and we are left with a very good character. Don't worry I have everyone's death planned out (as morbid as that is)

SpeechBubbleMe- Yeah, Nara's grown a lot since when we've first met her, and she'll continue to grow rather nicely. No, Anakin does not play well with others. I figure he learns how not to be a jerk in a while, but Anakin is a fundamentally selfish character (who turns selfless at the end).

Nuada Silverhand - That was pretty ruthless. I liked it :P. Prime Vader basically wrecks basically everyone, so if they do run into them, say defending the Jedi Temple..uh...good luck!

Cold One Paul- Nara's last thought : Crud, I guess the Chosen one was important.

A/N - Bit of a shorter chapter, but you might get a hint as to where this one is going...

As always, Please enjoy the next chapter.

Chapter 21: The Lords

Count Dooku of Serenno was home.

Unlike most children that the Jedi Order had stolen from their parents, Dooku had always known that his home was not Coruscant, but Serenno, a wealthy planet in the Outer Rim. Maybe that was what had driven him down this path, he mused as he walked slowly down the carpeted hallways of his recently renovated palace. Maybe that first betrayal, that first lie that had been taught to him, had been the one that had ultimately driven him from the Jedi Order.

Dooku shook his head sadly. The Republic was decaying from the inside, and the Jedi seemed to be content to go down with it. Typical Yoda, thought Dooku, sneering as he thought of his old Master. Just like a toad in water, if you turned up the heat slowly, the toad never realized that the water was boiling (and killing him) before too late. Dooku had tried to warn him that the Republic's corruption, malfeasance and wastefulness was only going to drag the Jedi down into the muck with them. Yoda, as he prone to do, ignored him and kept counsel with the Jedi that were either to dull to notice what was happening or too afraid to consider what it meant. Windu, Kenobi, Unduli, Mundi and Plo Koon, each more useless than the last, these were the sycophants that Yoda trusted. Probably because they told him what he wanted to hear. Dooku knew as well as anyone, that when you got old, you didn't want anyone around that challenged you, and Yoda was certainly old.

What Yoda hadn't wanted to hear was Dooku's radical ideas. Despite the fact that Dooku had proposed taking certain steps that would have lead to a better future for trillions and trillions of beings, Yoda had prattled on about not interfering with the Republic. As if the Jedi didn't interfere! It was an insane piece of logic from a being who's brain had probably started to shrivel one hundred years ago. Who could know how much was left now.

But now Dooku was free. Dooku was home. And he had discovered something much more powerful than Yoda and his lapdog Jedi. He had discovered true power.

The dark side had always been something that had fascinated Dooku, not because it was supposedly evil, but because it seemed to be a purer form of power for a force sensitive individual such as himself. The Jedi, Dooku had come to realize, were so uncomfortable with the idea of power that they had become blind. Blind to the wisdom of the dark side.

Dooku had been pulling away from the Jedi for years, taking on fewer and few missions, as he came to realize that the Jedi had no intention of fixing the myriad problems that they had, and even less appetite for his own opinions in the matter. He had quietly returned home to Serenno a few years before he had officially left the Jedi. His parents had been gone, but the riches that his family had accumulated had not. Dooku had set about and restored his family's legacy. Which had certainly left him with a comfortable place to fall back on after he had officially left the Jedi Order.

There had been many that had sought him out in the days following his departure. His resignation from the Jedi Order had made news broadcasts across the Republic. Most people saw it as the rebuke that Dooku had meant it for. Jedi Masters did not leave the Jedi Order. Only nineteen others had, in the entire history of the Order, and now it was twenty. But the hopes of his departure making the Jedi Order turn introspective failed. The Jedi that he kept in contact with had said that his departure had been like a stone falling into a pond, it had made a ripple at first, but then it had disappeared into nothingness soon after.

But there had been one very important person that Dooku had met with during that time, a meeting which just might have altered the course of the galaxy.

He had only discovered Sidious' name after a number of meetings, each of which had been more tantalizing than the last. By the time he realized what he was, Dooku was already hooked. And that was how Count Dooku of Serenno, had been seduced by the dark side. Not with a grand gesture or out of rage, but out of cold, calculating truth. It was not exactly something out of a Holofilm. But it was what Dooku had wanted, he had wanted to put his faith in someone or something that saw the truth and wanted to do something about it.

And Dooku had pledged his loyalty to his new Master and the Sith.

And now the Jedi won't know what hit them.

The plan that his Master had put together was breathtaking in its intricacies. Decades of long planning by the Sith had saw them emerge, not at the head of an Empire as had been in centuries previous, but at the head of a movement. These new Sith saw the value of cloak and dagger manipulation and had been poisoning the Republic for a long time, in subtle but effective ways. And the best part was, that the Jedi seemed to have no idea this was happening. The Guardians of the Republic were asleep at the wheel. And the speeder was being driven right into a wall...

His Master, Darth Sidious, had realized that even if the Republic became even more of a rotten shell than it already was, that the strength of the Jedi was such that it could keep the rotting corpse alive for decades. And of course it was always possible that the Jedi might actually wake up and take action that would reinvigorate the Republic. Thus, while the initial work of the Sith had been in weakening the Republic through manipulation, lies and deceptive practices, the next part of the plan focused on eliminating the Jedi as a threat. For there could be no Jedi in a galaxy ruled by the Sith.

That plan was two fold. The first part of the plan was to embroil the Jedi in a galaxy spanning civil war that was likely to be as bloody as it was useless. The goal was not to win the war, per se, but to drag it out and show that the Jedi were not the omnipotent force that they had once been. Sidious wanted the drag the Jedi from their quiet little Temple and put them on the front lines and constantly in the public eye. The public, who had been told that the Jedi were the best military force money could buy, would suddenly rendered impotent. As the war dragged on without conclusion, it would be easy to frame the Jedi as warmongers. Once the Jedi were discredited, it would be a simple thing to have them removed.

The second part of the plan was to weaken the Jedi from the inside. Unbeknownst to most average citizens of the Republic, the Jedi Order was prone to vigorous debates and disagreements. Most of these debates were smoothed over in private, and the Jedi, as a rule did not let the public view any of these private disagreements. But with enough leverage, one could create a schism within the Jedi.

And that was what Dooku was going to do.

Though Dooku had never been among the most popular of the Jedi, he was influential. Known for his incisive intellect, Dooku had, through the years, developed strong relationships with a number of Jedi. Mostly he ended up being friendly with Jedi that tended to be outspoken malcontents. Now, what he was doing was conveying to his allies within the Jedi Order that he was going to be forming his own sect of the Jedi.

For those that railed against Yoda's passivity, Dooku would offer them a chance to take action. For those that wanted the Jedi to take a stance against slavery, Dooku assured them that under his leadership, they would be allowed to hunt down slavers and bring them to justice. And to those Jedi who despised the Republic, Dooku would offer them a place where they did not need to work within or on behalf of the Republic.

Those that were loyal to him, and he counted about five or six that he would consider completely loyal, he told to stay put within the Jedi and feed him information on what they were doing, they became Dooku's own, personal spies within the Jedi. He shared everything he learned with Sidious, of course. That relationship was still too new for him to be testing the boundaries.

But, in Dooku's opinion, all he had to do was court more followers and then have them leave the Jedi en mass. Such a big defection along with the rise of another competing institution that housed Jedi would do much to undermine the Jedi's reputation in the public's eye. It would also further the perception that the upcoming civil war was nothing more that a schism between two sides of the Jedi, a war which trillions of lives would certainly be lost.

Little did they know it, but the downfall of the Jedi was in motion. The best part for Dooku would be the moment when Yoda realized that he would be the last Grand Master in the history of the Jedi. His failure would be complete. The lost Master would come home. And this time, he would rule the roost.

The Quarters of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine

With the last dignitary of the day dismissed, the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic could finally don his preferred persona, that of a Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious. His staff, handpicked and loyal to a fault, knew that once it reached a certain hour that he was to be left alone, no matter what the emergency.

As Sidious sat in his high back chair, he chuckled at the irony of the current situation. The Sith Empire had fought bloody wars against the Jedi and the Republic, and lost them all. Sure, there had been victories and periods of time when the Sith had been ascendant, but inevitably it had all crumbled down, leaving the Republic and the hated Jedi to claim overall victory.

But now, a Sith, who were supposed to be all but consigned to the dustbin of history, were sitting in the Chancellor's office, and the Jedi were none the wiser. The victory of the Sith, was almost at hand...

But Sidious could not afford to be complacent, he had to walk the same high wire game that he had since he had murdered his Master. It was a difficult thing, running a double life, one could not simply be a Dark Lord of the Sith and the Chancellor of the Republic at the same time, and for better or for worse, for appearances sake, he had to be seen as the Chancellor of the Republic. The arrival of Dooku as his new apprentice was a godsend in that way.

With Maul departed (and what a sad failure he had turned out to be) Sidious had known that he needed a replacement and quickly. There was no room for error when there was only one living Sith. But Sidious had long had long had his eye on Dooku as one of the Jedi Masters that was strong enough in the Force to realistically be his apprentice. Realistically, what were his other options? Kenobi? And interesting idea, but he was far too young and inexperienced. Windu? The anger was there, as was the intellect, but Windu was not someone who did well with subtlety. There were other options, clearly, but Dooku was the best. And the best thing about Dooku was that he was old, tired and just looking for a way to make a mark on the galaxy. Dooku was used to taking orders.

And now Dooku could devote his days to running the vast conspiracy that was the Sith, while Sidious did his best to keep the Republic trapped in gridlock, all the while seemingly like he was the one being slowed down by indolent Senators. Truly, when they wrote the history of his reign, the historians would no doubt amaze themselves with how amazingly his plan went. Sure, Naboo had been a blow, Sidious thought with some distaste, but it had done its job well enough.

Sidious, now dressed in the simple black robe that he preferred when not putting on his 'Supreme Chancellor Palpatine' façade, walked around his home in 500 Republica, a building that housed many of the most important Senators and business people in the Republic. His home, though large, was sparsely furnished. In fact, that was what most people commented on first. For Palpatine, it was a simply display of his personal austerity. He told others that he was not interested in accumulating wealth (in the way that so many Senators came to line their own pockets) so he didn't display any.

The truth of the matter was that he didn't really care about trinkets. The only thing he cared about was power, and he had plenty of that.

Sidious reflected that Dooku was, of course, a temporary stopgap, a Sith apprentice only in name. The former Jedi Master thought himself to be an important man in the grand scheme of things, but the truth was, there were only two chess masters on this board. Darth Sidious and Grand Master Yoda.

The biggest advantage that Sidious had was that he knew exactly who he was playing his game against. He had spent years studying Yoda, finding out who he trusted the most and studying them, until he had a complete picture of his main adversary. Yoda could do no such research on him. Yoda might not even perceive that he was playing in the game at all.

With his knowledge of Yoda, Sidious was able to keep the Jedi Grand Master off-balance. The loss of Qui-Gon Jinn had been intended to destabilize Yoda, and remove from him one of his more trusted (and brash) advisors. Maul wasn't supposed to have died to bring Sidious this minor victory though.

Sidious bounced a fist off the table in front of him. There had been so much potential in Maul. Sidious had trained him from a young man to where he had been nearly his equal in terms of lightsaber skills. Maul had cunning too, and a warrior's intellect. Though he too often went for the brutal when the subtle could do, Maul had demonstrated that he was, perhaps, capable of leading the Sith once his own strength had started to fade.

And then he had proved that he was an unworthy apprentice.

Maul had always displayed a propensity for wanting to test himself against strong opposition, which meant that whenever Maul had happened upon a Jedi, that Jedi had found themselves defeated and deceased, in that order. Maul had always been clever enough to keep his identity a secret though. And as much as the Jedi investigated the murder of one of their own, they had never found Maul.

But Naboo had been Maul's undoing. While Sidious was still frustrated at his setback, he accepted that it was better to have had his apprentice fail now, then fail later on when the costs for such a failure would have been significantly higher. Hopefully Dooku would be wise enough to survive, at least until Sidious could find another candidate to be his apprentice...

But for now, Sidious could sit and wait. The minefield of traps he had laid for the Jedi were just getting started...

The Palace of Count Dooku, Serenno

"Old friend, how are you doing?" asked Dooku.

"I am well," replied Jedi Master Orin Vali, his tone suggesting caution. Orin Vali was a Jedi Master known for his skill at mediation. Vali was also known as an outspoken critic of the Republic. While Dooku didn't consider him a friend, he was someone that he had discussed his own frustrations with the Jedi and the Republic on many different occasions. Now, for the first time since leaving the Jedi, he was making contact with him. Dooku had contracted a bounty hunter to deliver to Orin Vali a device that would allow them to share an untraceable holotransmission. From what Dooku could tell of the surroundings that Master Vali was currently on a mission. Dooku made a note to reward the bounty hunter, Cad Bane with a further payment.

"This is just a social call," Dooku said, lying. "Just wanted to check in with one of my old friends."

"I'm the same as ever...what do I call you now? Master Dooku?"

"Count Dooku is fine."

"Is that what you are going by now?" asked the sandy-haired Jedi Master. Orin Vali was younger than Dooku by a fair few years, but there was gray in his hair now. Short and bland looking, Orin wouldn't have drawn a second glance, unless you heard him speak – Orin had one of those amazing voices that could draw a listener in. A born orator, to say the least, like himself.

"It was the name I was born into," Dooku replied placidly.

"And a name you liked to remind us of," said Orin. "But forget that, why go through all this trouble to contact me?"

Dooku got straight to the point, "Are you tired of the Jedi Order?"

"I am no more tired of it than I usually am."

"Are you now? I remember you confiding in me that you had considered leaving the Order," said Dooku.

"That was information shared between Jedi Masters," Orin said. "I have no words for one of the lost twenty."

Dooku hid a smile and tried to look offended, everything he had suspected would happen was happening. "Come now, has so much changed between us?"

"Yes," Orin replied simply. "We are no longer colleagues, Count. I no longer know who are what you've become. Instead of coming and talking to me like a man, you send a thug to drop off a holotransciever. All to keep your privacy, I assume."

"I see that I have misjudged you. I only wanted to see if you were interested in having a more serious discussion."

Orin's eyes flashed, "Never."

"I see," Dooku said, in the tone of someone who was eating a particularly disappointing piece of nerf steak, "Well, I have misjudged things, then. Goodbye, old friend. We will meet again."

"Hopefully not."

The transmission ended.

Dooku let the smile he had been holding back emerge on his face. Jedi were so easy to manipulate.

A short while later, Dooku called his Master. As always, the visage of Darth Sidious was covered by a black cloak. Though Dooku could tell that Sidious was slightly on the older side, he had no idea if this was just a face that he chose to present to him. Dooku kept his mind open about the whole thing.

Dooku knelt in front of the projection of Sidious, who was projected above his desk. Dooku's old joints protested at the movement. Age took its toll on everyone, force sensitive or not.

"What is your bidding, my Master?"

"You have made contact with the Jedi Master?" stated Sidious. How Sidious knew that Dooku had just spoken to Orin Vali was impossible to tell. Eagerly, Dooku waited for the day that he had the same powers as Sidious.

"I have. The message has been delivered."

"This Jedi will inform the Council?" asked Sidious.

"He will," replied Dooku confidently. "Orin Vali is a proud Jedi, and one that questions the role of the Jedi constantly. Deep down, however, he is a man of great loyalty. His distrust of the Council is legendary, and that is why when he speaks to them about me, his words will be believed."

"Good," said Sidious, appearing to lean back in his chair, wherever he was. "Putting the Jedi off-balance is key in the next phase of our plans. Now Yoda will send Windu to investigate you. Be ready for him."

"I will show him exactly what we want to show him," Dooku pledged.

"How goes your recruitment efforts?"

"I have five Jedi ready to defect at the moment. Several more are providing me intelligence from within the Temple. I also have some of the civilian workers feeding me intelligence," Dooku reported proudly. "I estimate that within a few months, I could have ten times as many Jedi ready to defect."

"Excellent. This will be the first step in weakening the Jedi Order," purred Sidious. "Keep me informed of your progress."

"Yes, my Master."

The holographic form of Darth Sidious winked away. As always, Dooku found the experience of talking to his Master to be deeply unsettling. But what wasn't unsettling was the idea of making his own Jedi Order, one made from ideas that he had thought of, one that would free the Jedi from the shackles that they had imposed on themselves.

And then Dooku would see where the chips fell.