Serpeness prepared to interrogate their new Jedi prisoners. Not with torture, necessarily, on the contrary she had requested a banquet to be prepared for them and for her Dark Council, but with just enough threatening to make her kindness seem without alternative and to remind the Council as to who exactly was in charge on Talamh. Such a heavy toll for such seemingly little reward as the raid on the Temple was enough to cause some treasonous mutterings to be reported by her spies. She gazed into the eye sockets of the skull she used as a wine glass, once King Zash of Zygeria. She was beyond ecstatic with the knowledge she had pulled from Palpatine's mind and the ability to commune with Plagueis himself, to heal any affliction, to grant near-immortality to anyone she desired. She would test her new abilities on her daughter's illness, but first she would have to deal with a few nuisances with mutterings of treason. As the captured Jedi "guests" were being escorted into the banquet hall. Lifting her skull goblet she greeted them, "Ah! My most welcome guests! I trust your accommodations are adequate?"
One of the captive Temple Guards relied, "We're prisoners of war and you threw us in a dark hole in the ground."
"Only the finest of holes!" Gràinne defended, "You even had a window! Do you realize how rare those are in prisons across this planet?" Staring them down for a moment her expression softened, "Ah but you see I have need of you, and I can give you nearly anything you desire in return."
Another captured Jedi spat in disgust, "We won't do anything to help you destroy the Republic! We'll die before we give in!"
"If you would rather die then why did you surrender?" Gràinne asked him, receiving only sheepish aversions of their eyes, "Further, I don't care about your Republic. Not at the moment anyway." Gesturing to the table before her she beckoned them "Sit! Eat! I can promise you this is much better than the gruel they give ye in the oubliette." Smiling, she bit into her roast swan and waited for the Jedi to do as suggested.
Slowly, one by one, they caved into their hunger and hesitantly accepted the venerable feast before them. Such excess was typically eschewed by the Jedi, but after days crammed into a tiny hole in the floor, only to be shoved into a much larger hole in the floor, with feeding being sporadic at best, anybody would give in. Welcoming their company she inquired as to their personal stories, to attempt to endear herself to them, "So, tell me about yeselves?"
No answer.
"Alright, well if ye are going to be like that I'll start. Do you know why I attacked yer temple?"
"Because that's what Sith do," the Pau'an male replied, "You kill and destroy everything which could pose a threat to you."
"I did it to save my child. I knew Palpatine was hiding in the Temple and tried to give ye advanced warning, why didn't ye heed it?"
"Wait, what?!" another captive asked.
"Oh, right, ye were already captured when that battle broke out. He's dead now, ye needn't worry yerself about it anymore."
"So you want to… save, the Republic?"
"I already told ye, I don't give a shite about your Republic. I needed Palpatine to save my child, and he refused."
"You're a mother?" a human female asked.
Gràinne smiled, genuinely smiled for the first time in a very, very long time, revealing to the captives that she had a few teeth missing. "Aye. Me wee Aislinn. I've burned entire planets to cinders to try and cure her illness. Now, with the knowledge Palpatine had, I finally can."
"Well what do you want from us?"
"Since the Jedi, particularly you, resisted, I'm willing to assume that ye are all hostile. I want to know the inner workings of the Jedi. What's yer 'Grand Master' planning?"
"We don't know, and even if we did, we wouldn't tell you."
Tracing her fingers around the rim of Zash's wine-filled braincase Serpeness cooed, "I can be pretty convincing." She sensed that the Jedi were starting to gather that the resemblance her cup bore to a skull was not an artistic design.
Finally her Dark Council arrived, prompting them to kneel and rise before their Empress who greeted them, "Ah! Right on time! I was just getting acquainted with our new friends." She hadn't replaced the fallen members yet but had given Desolata and Vengeance promotions as her Seneschal and Enforcer respectively. Both of them were still fanatically loyal to her, nut the remainder she knew had stirrings of treason within them. Imbeciles, did they really delude themselves into believing that they could overpower her? Together, perhaps they could, but they were not as clever as she.
Sitting at the table, a troupe of maidservants brought out bowls of beet soup to the seated members of the Dark Council, save for Desolata and Vengeance, who received a soup made from this strange tuber in the New World called "potato," due to Desolata having discovered an extreme allergy to beets which nearly killed her the first time she ate one and Vengeance simply despising their flavor. The Jedi captives were also given this potato soup. Serpeness herself was given mutton stew, given that Togruta could not digest vegetation. The survivors eyed their Empress with open disdain, and visons of mutiny danced in their heads.
"Members of the Dark Council, I welcome you to this celebratory banquet," she smirked sweetly, raising her "To the fall of our enemy, and to the rediscovery of immortality!" The Sith all took a long draught from their wine goblets, which were not made of skulls of fallen enemies, and began to eat the first course of their meal. Gràinne crossed herself and quickly muttered a prayer in Gaelic, having reconnected to the Catholic church, albeit her having been welcomed back into Catholicism was probably fueled by the utter terror of the Papacy but it got the job done. "Now, as for the next phase of the Grand Plan,"
A Chiss, Darth Toxikon, pointed at the Jedi, "If you are concerned with the Grand Plan then why do we dine with this Jedi filth?!"
The Togruta simply stared the Jedi down, maintaining unbroken eye contact with them, as she answered cryptically, "I'm sure they will prove themselves useful… for their own sakes." Returning her gaze to her Dark Council as they ate their soup, she continued, "As for the next phase of the Grand Plan, I have seen a potential for betrayal against me. Mutterings within my own Dark Council of treason."
A human, born of Hindustan, stood and shouted, "You are mad!" Suddenly, his face immediately dropped and he stumbled forward, collapsing to his knees coughing violently.
"And you believe you can challenge me?" Other members of the Dark Council who had been fed the beet soup also began coughing and stumbling, a few hacking up blood, while Serpeness simply watched, leisurely sipping on her wine. "I already know who is working to betray me, or rather, was working to betray me. I may not be more powerful than all of ye, but I'm far cleverer." Within a few minutes, the last of the traitors was dead, with the increasingly terrified Jedi trembling in their seats as the Sith beckoned for her guards, "Make examples of them."
"Yes, my Empress," the soldiers responded in unison, dragging the corpses out of the room.
"Now," Gràinne began, turning back towards the Jedi, "Where were we?"
Windu had looked upon the wreckage of the Temple and felt only rage. The "Reformists" were aligned with the Sith, why else would Skywalker and Tano have arrived right when the Sith attacked? Not only that but the Republic had once again betrayed their defenders, pulling back from the Sith onslaught and leaving countess thousands of Jedi to die in the chaos. His anger did not abate when the Senate had agreed to grant the Jedi emergency use of the GAR, far from it, he was going to make sure Sinube didn't get any ideas of further betrayal, but first he had to deal with a particular traitor. Opening the door of the cell, Windu entered, "CT-7567, are you aware of the extent of your betrayal?"
"I betrayed no one," CT-7567 spat, "My loyalty is to the Republic, not to you, and my name is Rex!"
"You don't have a name anymore," Windu stated matter-of-factly, "you brought enemies of the Republic to its doorstep."
"They were trying to warn us about the threat you ignored."
"You are sentenced to execution for your crimes."
"There hasn't been a trial yet."
"And you won't get one."
"We were given rights-!"
"By the late Chancellor Skywalker, I know. Your rights have been suspended."
"You can't do that! The Senate decides my fate!"
"I am the Senate." With that, a flash of amethyst filled the room.