Author's Note: if you're reading this it means that we've arrived together at the final installment, and so I must offer my most heartfelt congratulations to you, Constant Readers. You've stayed with this for the past weeks and for that I'm exceedingly grateful. Thank you, and enjoy.


Out of Many…

It was Sidious' particular trait that he could intuit the future. If the Jedi had Mace Windu and his ability to see shatterpoints…then Sidious had the power of clairvoyance. He could see the future, and he could perceive the prism of possibility that lay therein.

He could see the desert planet and that slave woman—could see the life beginning in her. Plagueis' labors were fast bearing fruit, and rather than suffer replacement at the hands of some nondescript, Palpatine would head off the trouble.

In time, Sidious would take the Sith'ari as his apprentice. To be molded in the ways of the Sith. For this to occur, Plagueis had to die. An infant, even one carved in the desert crucible of the Outer Rim, could not ascertain the revenge of the Sith. Not immediately.

But a child from Iridonia? One sufficiently deprived and sufficiently motivated to serve Sidious exclusively?

He would do. For the time being.


En route to his master's quarters in The Works, Palpatine forwarded a message to Sate Pestage.

"Palpatine," Pestage said with a curt smile. "What can I do for you?"

"You can tell me about Veruna."

Pestage smiled. "I thought you might bring that up."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. He's perfectly unwilling to play along with your office and with Valorum. To be honest, I don't think he yet realizes how, ah, influential having friends like us can be for him."

"He's not a gifted man intellectually," Palpatine said. "But for the foreseeable future he will serve our purposes."

One of Pestage's eyebrows arched. His features withered and belied the youth and charm behind them.

"You're…willing to deal with the rabble?"

"Yes," Palpatine said, inclining his head slightly. "When the time is right…we will reveal ourselves."

"Understood, master." Sate Pestage was a brilliant politician. And he didn't get that way by signing a lot of checks. He got that way by knowing when to agree, when not to, and when to not ask questions. Especially of Palpatine.

"We shall wait. Until things are as they should be," Palpatine said calmly. "Unrelatedly, Call Doriana; tell him his apartment is ready. And find Tarkin. Tell him I wish to speak with him at his earliest convenience."

"Yes, master." Pestage gave a humbled smile.

Palpatine was already switching off the comm.


All life is interconnected.

Sidious knew this.

Aside from the ever-present and ever-false assumptions of Light and Dark, the universe operated on a scale of harmony. On a scale of death, birth, and resurrection.

A species can rise and fall in the geological blink of an eye, and leave no imprint on the history records. And sometimes a species can begin as a single cell in a pool of bubbling primordial ooze and become the dominant form of life across the stars.

That's the one worth remembering.

In a thousand years, no one will remember the name Darth Plagueis, the Sith Lord who wouldn't do what he needed to do.

Inaction angered Sidious on a fundamental level. Plagueis wanted to spend more time sitting in his parlor considering the myriad recesses of the Force, rather than doing something—anything. He wanted to understand the Force. Sidious wanted to control it.

As Palpatine he had put up a convincing front. Thousands of Senators had aligned with him as part of the Rim faction. Said faction opposed the increasingly corrupt administration of Finis Valorum, and Palpatine had all their ears and their votes. He had taken a stance against Veruna of Naboo, the overweight and overwrought King who saw fit to build Theed on the blood and sweat of the oppressed.

But Palpatine wasn't in the Senate for the people. Palpatine could care less about the people.

The Senate was merely a means to an end.


All life is interconnected.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.

Palpatine was Plagueis, and Plagueis was Palpatine. That didn't change anything, though.

All the elements of the universe are born in the supernovae of dying stars. When those celestial bodies became no more, the sum of their parts spread across the cosmos in a shockwave of…creation. Focusing on a point of gravity in space, coalescing together into ancient iterations of planets, those parts laid out the very schemata for life.

That was the way of things. The way of the Force.

Skeletal hands wrapped around a gilded lightsaber hilt, lifted it away from its master's belt, and switched it on. A blade the color of blood lit up Plagueis' quarters.

Sidious raised the blade over his head. For a moment, he hesitated.

Through passion, I gain strength.

This was too easy. Like killing a crippled rancor. The thought filled Sidious with disdain. Sith were not meant to hesitate, and yet he had. Hesitation heralded weakness—fear—and Sith were fearless. Sidious knew this, and despised his own shortcoming.

Strangely, perhaps even intentionally, that anger made Sidious stronger. And he focused on the present.

Plagueis, asleep in his bed. Perfectly, almost sadly oblivious to what was about to happen to him.

Through strength, I gain power.

Sidious glanced at his master. Just long enough to see the pallid blue skin covering bone and blood, and closed eyelids that masked the red orbs beneath as if to keep their brilliance from radiating out.

Through power, I gain victory.

Long ago, those eyes of Darth Plagueis had pierced Sidious' soul and filled him with curiosity. Wonder. Hate. Who did this Plagueis think he was, trying to divine Sidious' destiny? Trying to take the future out of the hands of the only being capable of seeing it.

Plagueis had prevented him from pursuing Alura, from making alliances with Finis Valorum. Most of all, though, Palpatine hated his Master because of the Sith'ari. Plagueis meant to replace Sidious. And Sidious could not stand to see a universe where his power was nonessential.

So…before letting gravity guide the lightsaber to its destination—cleaving Plagueis' head from the rest of his body…Sidious reached into the Force and gazed through the crystals of possibility. Into the future. And he found his gaze once again on that desert planet.

Sidious could only see a pair of Jedi walking across a sun-parched plain. Nothing else, but the equation was simple enough to decipher.

The row houses would be the parlance of the Sith'ari, and the woman his protector. Jedi intervention would…complicate things, but that was a challenge to be met. A challenge for another day.

Sidious scowled, and returned to the present.

Through victory, my chains are broken.

Part ofhim had wanted Plagueis to stir. At least then, the apprentice would have a challenge on his hands. This was just as well. For now, Sidious could live without challenges. There would be enough of them in the future.

Plagueis' whole life, all his victories and struggles and failures. All his service to the Ascendancy, and the countless hours spent training his treacherous apprentice. All of it has added up to this and only this.

He has existed only for this.

To follow suit of generations of Sith before him. To fall at the hands of a simple and clumsy lightsaber attack—devoid of any elegance or aptitude. To be the first victim of Darth Sidious' labyrinthine schemes. The first…but most certainly not the last.

Then, the blade of blood crossed through larynx and flesh and blood like a butcher's knife.

The Force shall set me free.


Thus it was. After the death of two apprentices, Maul and Dooku of Serenno, Sidious finally took the Sith'ari under his wing. The boy was Anakin Skywalker, who earned freedom by an auspicious conspiracy of forces: a contingent of Jedi, a Gungan, athe recently-elected ruler of the Naboo, Padme Amidala…

Sidious made good on his promise to watch Skywalker's career with great interest. As war ravaged the dying Republic, Sidious played the part of a caring politician while seducing Skywalker to his dark purposes.

When the endgame arrived and Sidious killed Mace Windu, Skywalker ceased to be. He became Darth Vader, and the stories the public heard told that Anakin Skywalker—the Hero Without Fear—had died when the 501st Legion invaded and sanitized the Jedi Temple.

Sidious spent years hunting the last remains of the Jedi rebels across the galaxy. Darth Vader killed Obi-Wan Kenobi aboard Sidious' treasured space station, and the Grand Master Yoda had long since gone into exile; his presence in the Force masked even to the Emperor.

Sidious' Grand Empire—the one he had lied about to Tyranus and promised to Vader—was, on a fundamental level, the irrational summation of a blood feud begun thousands of years ago over a simple difference in point of view.

Sidious was, above all, the sole proprietor and prime mover of a plot formed before he was even conceived, a provocateur succeeded where his progenitors had failed. Palpatine was a pleasant and warm façade. Sidious was cold and distant.

Before the Grand Army of the Republic was raised, Sidious funneled funding to Jedi Master Jorus C'Baoth's brainchild—the Outbound Flight project. The expedition was summarily destroyed by proxy: a young Commander of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet left Outbound Flight a radioactive hulk drifting through space.

And secondly, the execution of Order 66—a code installed in the clone officers of the Republic military while they were still in their crèche-schools, commanding immediate and necessary action to stop traitorous Jedi commanders. Order 66 was the apogee of a lifetime spent in pursuit of the extermination of the Jedi. From there on out, the way things were was over. The old ways of life stuttered and fell in the province of mass militarization and the omnipresence of Darth Vader as the Emperor's enforcer. Sidious' Empire destroyed the old galaxy, and recast it in fearsome black. It was a new age. A new paradigm for the people and the planets involved.

One from which the galaxy never fully recovered.

Sidious' truest of true natures became evident when he betrayed Vader in favor Luke Skywalker. The betrayal sealed Sidious' and Vader's fate alike. Both died in the explosion of Sidious' second battle station. And the Empire was a fraction of what it once was, disassembled and ineffective.

It remained only for a brilliant Chiss—the one who had destroyed Outbound Flight so many years ago—to pick up the pieces and lead the Empire to glory once more.

--END--