LordKazama86: The prologue to your story is definitely a different take on the mythos of the Sith than mine, and it's an interesting one. I'll be curious to see how it ties in to the story you're telling, and I hope you continue to enjoy my take on the unknown Jedi Master!
Sifo-Dyas may as well have had a leash attached to him as he was shuttled off to Kamino, one of the worlds that Dooku had taken care to delete from the Jedi Archives during his researches. He wanted to keep the location of the accomplished cloners based there a secret to ensure that the clone army was not activated before Dooku had enough time to organize the military might of his Separatist movement.
When they arrived at Kamino, Dooku stayed in the cockpit of the transport and bade Sifo-Dyas to order the clone army himself, taking the specifications of the Battle Orders with him. Over short distances, Dooku's conduit into Sifo-Dyas's mind remained as strong now as if his hand were touching the Jedi Master's forehead. As if on a child's marionette strings, Sifo-Dyas exited the transport and braved the Kamino rainstorms to enter the luminescent white halls of Tipoca City, datapad concealed under his robes. Sifo-Dyas wished he could do something to alert the Kaminoans that this order was false, that it must not be taken. However, every time he had so much as a stirring in his mind about acting contrary to Dooku's wishes, about taking matters into his own hands, the fears and the horrors flooded his mind once more.
Slowly, he was being conditioned to do only Dooku's bidding. To think as Dooku thought. To abandon any spark of individuality, lest his mind be battered with terrifying visions.
Much like the clones would have their independence genetically tamped down. The process of placing the order was surprisingly easy. After introducing himself falsely as a current ranking member of the Jedi Council, all that was needed was the security deposit provided by Darth Sidious, a selection of military training routines that Dooku had previously vetted, and a copy of the special Battle Orders that would ultimately make these clones Palpatine's, rather than the Republic's.
Sifo-Dyas wept inside through each step of the cloning order.
When the Kaminoans asked who the template for the clones would be, Sifo-Dyas demurred for a moment. This would be the last step. The last opportunity to stop this madness from coming to pass. The final stand he would make against the dark plans of the Sith.
As he moved to speak the words There will be no template! Destroy this order and everything associated with it!, he fell abruptly to his face on the floor. He could almost see Dooku's arched eyebrow in his mind as the staggering percepts of death and destruction, the acrid smell of burning flesh, the feeling of his very skin melting off whole and his nerves screaming out over every part of his body, all combined to fell him. The nearest Kaminoan bent down over him and asked if all was well. Once Sifo-Dyas's thoughts had been properly reconditioned, he stood and waved off the ministrations of his host, fobbing his collapse off as a result of intense sleep deprivation.
Which could have been entirely true. He had not slept since Dooku dragged him away from the museum. Yet another means the Sith used to ensure his compliance.
Sifo-Dyas told the Kaminoans that the clone template would be delivered later and would be recognized by carrying with him a copy of the training routines and Battle Orders to be used. The Kaminoans agreed and smiled at Sifo-Dyas as he traipsed back to the transport.
And to his ostensible death.
Sifo-Dyas slumped in the co-pilot's seat, utterly drenched from the windswept rains. Dooku no longer bothered with the restraints. He knew that Sifo-Dyas was now a broken man. A shell of the Jedi Master he used to be.
Ready for death. Aching for it.
But knowing it was not yet to come.
No mercy for his tortured mind yet.
That would have to wait until Dooku set the ship down on Kohlma, the burial moon of the planet Bogden – and home to the vicious Bando Gora cult. Prior to their journey to Kamino, Dooku had hired two of the last Mandalorian bounty hunters – Jango Fett and Montross – who had a strong mutual enmity. Their bounty was to be Komari Vosa, Dooku's former Padawan who left the order because of her growing infatuation with Dooku. She left Coruscant with four other Jedi to destroy the Bando Gora cult, but they instead destroyed her, torturing her to the point of madness and guiding her fall to the dark side of the Force. She assumed leadership of the cult by killing the two Jedi who survived the initial assaults of the Bando Gora, thus proving her devotion to the cult and to the evil its members sought to spread throughout the galaxy.
Dooku landed the transport surreptitiously at the base of the crag that housed the multi-domed monastic headquarters of the cult to await the arrival of the bounty hunters. Knowing how the Bando Gora despised any Jedi, this position would also be a fine staging point for Sifo-Dyas meet his apparent end. Dooku bade Sifo-Dyas out of the ship and toward the monastery, using him as bait to test the defenses of the cult before the Mandalorians arrived. Dooku wondered aloud what it was that impelled them to visit worlds in the midst of violent rainstorms.
Unable to release the volleys of tears he wished, Sifo-Dyas dryly thought that the fierce rainfalls compensated admirably for his shortcomings.
This last thought of Sifo-Dyas's formed a morsel of doubt in Dooku's own mind. It was as if Sifo-Dyas were still somehow able to break through the barrier Dooku had erected around him and contact the Force. Could it be that his puppet still had the capacity to reason for himself, no matter how viciously Dooku tried to stamp it out?
As Dooku wrestled with himself, Sifo-Dyas trudged up the crag toward the monastery with a fierce combination of dread, determination, and relief. At last, he would know respite from the myriad torments Dooku had forced on him over the past weeks. When Sifo-Dyas spied the main door to the monastery, he crouched down and skulked his way toward the summit of the crag. For the first time in weeks, he felt as if Dooku was allowing him a modicum of independent thought. Lest he dwell on that notion too long and risk punishment, Sifo-Dyas buried it deep within himself, under the layers of hurt and pain to which Dooku had subjected him.
But Sifo-Dyas's perception was not in error. The poisoned morsel had been metabolized in Dooku's psyche, distracting him and making his conduit into Sifo-Dyas's mind more tenuous.
For Dooku was forced to confront the depths of his depravity now, as never before. Previously, he could dismiss his maltreatment of the one man within the Jedi Order he could have still called friend as necessary for the greater good of the galaxy's denizens. The old, decadent, and corrupt Republic had to be swept away before a new, stronger, and pristine government could be installed. Dooku rationalized his abuse of Sifo-Dyas as necessary to bring that about by the only means possible. What was one man's current life and liberty when measured against the future security and safety of the entire galaxy?
Yet Dooku had disgusted himself with his conduct. He had betrayed the Order he had called home for decades. Devastated his friend's mind utterly. Violated his very thoughts. Forced him to engage in duplicity on a grand scale. And now, sentenced him to near-death in an assault that no man – not even Darth Sidious himself – could hope to escape. The litany of Dooku's sins paraded before him, mocking him. And as Dooku watched Sifo-Dyas's ascent from the cockpit of the transport, their mockery grew all the louder.
But were these thoughts worthy of a Sith Lord? Dooku's utter dominion over his friend, combined with his plans to create a new government to usurp the old Republic had drawn currents in the Force to him, suggesting a Sith name to him, even before it was bestowed on him by his master. Tyranus, the Force seemed to whisper to him. It was that name he used to lure the bounty hunters into this most dangerous of hunts. It was that name he now echoed into Sifo-Dyas's mind as the identity of his controller. It was that name he was destined to assume as soon as the clone army began gestating in Kamino's watery womb.
Thus did the nascent Darth Tyranus endeavor to discard the last shreds of Dooku's noble Jedi dignity in favor of the manipulative machinations of the Sith. Finally, as Sifo-Dyas reached the stone footbridge in front of the main door of the monastery, Tyranus drove a mental saber through the very heart and spirit of Dooku. His eyes shut one last time as anything resembling a Jedi. But in his death throes, the persona of Dooku did a curious thing. Before those eyes reopened with Sith vision, as a final act of – mercy? compassion? friendship? – Dooku released his conduit into Sifo-Dyas's mind with a parting thought of Goodbye, old friend.
Instantaneously, despite weeks of sleep deprivation and sensory overload, and aided by a sudden dump of adrenalin, Sifo-Dyas's sensorium achieved razor clarity. As the Bando Gora advance guard charged him, his lightsaber snapped into his hand and activated. With the first killing stroke, tears streamed freely from both eyes – one for himself, and one for the friend who was now truly dead.