EXCERPTS FROM THE AUDIO JOURNAL OF QUI-GON JINN, JEDI KNIGHT

Coruscant, Jedi Temple, 13:5:4

Yesterday's joy seems already a distant memory, as the harsh reality threatens to crash over us, and to precipitate the Republic into a war.

The Confederacy of the Independent Systems, the CIS, is becoming more powerful and daring with each passing day. More and more star systems choose to join the Separatist ranks and the Supreme Chancellor seems unable to stop the flood.

Palpatine has sworn he won't allow the Republic to fall into pieces, but I don't really know how he will be able to do it.

The Jedi and the diplomatic corps have been working frenetically to find a peaceful solution to the crisis, but now several parties in the Senate are pressing for a more resolute action. They insist for the creation of a Republican Army, without realizing that such an act won't bring back the secessionist systems. It will only bring an escalation of the hostilities, and to a war whose consequences are unimaginable.

A war!

For twenty-five thousand years the Jedi – later joined by the Sith – have protected the Republic, ensuring peace and order. There has never been any need for an army before, and the Jedi Order is firmly against its creation. Even the Grey Order, whose training is more military-oriented is against it and the prospect of a war. And yet there are already rumours claiming that the members of two orders will be asked to act as field commanders should the Senate approve the Military Creation Act that will be voted in a few days.

What saddens me more in all this matter is that the man who leads the Separatists, the man I might soon come to refer to as "the enemy", is the man who taught me to be a Jedi.

My former master, Dooku. Count of Serenno.

I have never understood why he left the Jedi Order.

I remember he told me he felt the Republic was corrupted, and that he no longer believed in it.

Back then, I thought that leaving when the Jedi's work was even more necessary, was an easy – even coward – way out. I believed he should have remained and operated to eliminate the corruption he so despised.

I reasoned like the idealist he had taught me to be, but in the end I accepted his decision and let him go. I mourned the loss of my mentor and friend, one of the few persons who had know about Obi-Wan and my pain about losing my son.

I have always remembered him fondly, often stopping to contemplate his bust in the Archives, as I walked along the statues of The Lost Twenty.

All of this changed two years ago, when Dooku reappeared on Raxus Prime, criticizing and denouncing the Republic, the Jedi and the Sith. He accused us of being corrupted and hypocrital.

I could accept the accusations moved toward the Republic—I too have sensed the corruption spreading like cancer in the Senate and in the lower offices-- but I could not forgive him for what he said about the Jedi. And I cannot forgive him for what is happening because of him.

The Council thinks Dooku is just an idealistic, perhaps misguided, politician, and that, as a former Jedi, he will never commit a major offensive action against the Republic.

I am not as sure about this.

I knew my former master very well, and I can tell the man I am seeing and listening to nowadays is not the one I used to be friends with. There is something different in him, something darker. I can feel it.

I have talked about this with Yoda, but the only answer I got was not to allow my feelings to cloud my judgement.

I meditated on the advice I was given, and searched inside myself for any lingering resentment against my former master, but I found none. Whatever is causing my uneasiness, it is not rooted into my past relationship with Dooku.

I have discussed this matter with Obi-Wan too, and my son agrees with me. He does not trust Dooku and his supposed former Jedi's ethic. He feels there is something more at work than what is seen under the light.

My son has been telling me for quite some time he can sense the darkness grow in the Republic.

He calls it an elusive feeling – he likes that word, elusive – whose origins he cannot pinpoint, but he knows it is real.

He told me again this afternoon, and his still boyish face, the face that only yesterday beamed with happiness and pride, looked older when he confessed to me he was not sure it had been a good idea to conceive a child just now, for he worries about the galaxy his son will be born into.