'Why would the Dark Side make me come here?'
Darth Spectre had been asking that question for the last few hours she had been on this planet, avoiding the Prophets of the Dark Side. They were a cult, who travelled from one world to the next in order to avoid trouble from the New Jedi Order or the New Republic. The enemies of the Sith had been cracking down hard on the galaxy to make sure the Sith were truly destroyed. They were desperate to make sure another Sith empire did not rise to power ever again.
It was a far cry from the many mistakes which had spelt the death knells of the Old Republic and heralded the end of the Old Jedi Order, but the Jedi of today didn't want a repeat of the mistakes which led to the Clone Wars or a Sith like Sidious or Krayt rising to power.
Spectre herself was still reeling from the encounter with Darth Momin, and she did not think it was a coincidence the Dark Side had willed her to come to this planet. It seemed too much of a coincidence, so soon after the encounter with Momin. She had been hoping to spend some time in meditation and reflect on what happened, and if Momin was right. To be frank, she had started to doubt if it were possible for the Sith to rule the galaxy after their history had shown conclusively that they had failed each time.
Was Momin right? Were the Sith meant to serve the Dark Side, and serve its will? No matter how many times she thought about it, she knew the answer was yes. At the same time, Spectre had come to terms with something important.
She didn't have the will to build yet another Sith Empire. At all.
She had no intention of creating an organisation which would spend 1,000 years or more, setting up plan after plan, only for the empire that came out of it to fall because of the greedy overambitious nature of the Sith, or because they had just focused so much on the Jedi.
A dawning thought in Spectre's mind was to simply turn everyone on its head, and serve the Dark Side, but before Spectre could even meditate on the matter of Momin's philosophy, it seemed the Dark Side had persuaded her to visit this planet. It was one of the old Sith worlds, too far away from the standard Jedi patrols.
The moment she arrived, Spectre had thought she had gone to heaven when she had felt the strength of the Dark Side. The planet had welcomed her before she learnt of the Prophets of the Dark Side. They were a group of Force worshippers who'd been set up by a Sith Lord during the original Rule of Two era, and occasionally they had performed great services for the Sith.
But Spectre, unsure of what the Force wanted for her here, had decided to shroud her presence and she walked through the corridors of the ancient Sith fortress, exploring the place wreathed in darkness. She could feel the voices of ancient Sith Lords calling for her, tempting her, but she ignored them. She obeyed one voice, and as she was led into a single room she saw something that stopped her.
A Sith holocron sitting in a shrine.
Spectre walked towards the holocron and she slowly, gently and hesitantly picked it up, prepared for any unforeseen traps. The guardian avatar appeared to her, a cloaked man with a handsome face, but as he lifted his head Spectre saw a third eye in his forehead.
"Who are you?" The holocron avatar asked.
"I am Darth Spectre, Dark Lady of the Sith," Spectre replied.
The holocron snorted. "Of course, but I remember seeing a vision of you, your face, you had come to consult with me after an unforeseen encounter that had shaken you. I prepared this holocron in preparation."
"You…saw a vision of me?" Spectre was surprised by that. The Force allowed trained users to perceive the future, but the future was forever in motion and only really powerful seers and prophets could actually look really far into the future with any accuracy but the possibility for divergences became higher. For this seer to predict her appearance, he had to be very powerful in the Force.
"Yes," the Sith nodded simply.
"Who are you?" Spectre asked.
"I am Darth Millennial."
Spectre's eyes widened. Millennial. She had spoken with the holocrons of all of the Sith Masters of the Banite lineage. Darth Cognus, one of the seers of the line, had taken on a three-eyed apprentice who had skills more advanced than her own. But from what she had learnt Cognus had struggled and failed to break him of his beliefs of might making right, due to his business practices and in the end he had tried to kill her when he'd wanted to rip mastery from her and build an army to destroy the Republic. Cognus stopped him, and she tore out his third eye which allowed him to see the future, and she thought he'd died.
But she was surprised he had left a holocron and it had gone hidden for so long.
"I have heard of you, ancestor," Spectre replied, biting her words.
Millennial took her attitude with a pinch of salt. "When I saw you in my vision, I saw enough to know that the Sith had once more failed, and you killed your master to rebuild the order. I also saw enough to know the leader of the Sith of this latest empire had proved Lord Bane right."
"I thought you felt nothing but disdain for Bane," Spectre pointed out as she remembered her conversations with Cognus's holocron guardian.
"I thought he was limited. Bane created a Plan, but he underestimated the possibility some Sith Lords could decide to change it for their own desires, or they would do what I decided to do, renounce it completely. Sith is simply not made to waste centuries of time forming plans for some cause when they know they can seize power. They follow leaders so that they can become the leaders themselves. But I feel contempt for any fool who creates a Sith empire of great size and power and lets it fall apart because everyone depends on them," Millennial countered.
'Just what did you see in that vision?' Spectre thought to herself irritably but she was intrigued, too.
"I also knew you struggled to come up with a plausible and workable plan to ensure the Sith ruled again forever," Millennial added, tutting mockingly. "Ah, and here your limitations become clear."
Spectre furiously snarled and ignited her lightsaber. "My limitations?"
"Yes. Krayt was a fool. So was the successor who took Bane's plan and squandered it to become lazy and complacent. He wasted a millennia of work. A millennia," Millennial sneered in disgust. "If Cognus had listened to me, the Sith could have returned, stronger than ever, and defeated the Republic and the Jedi without resorting to waiting for so long. One of the reasons I felt contempt for the Rule of Two was that, as Sith, we sought power for ourselves, believing that the Dark Side would be our ally. It never occurred to Bane, Zannah, or my idiot bitch of a master Cognus we could be serving the Dark Side, and spreading destruction in its name. Lord Momin understood that."
"How do you know about Momin? The Jedi and the Sith erased all knowledge of him," Spectre demanded suspiciously.
Millennial's avatar smiled almost charmingly at her, but as a Sith herself she could see the vicious emotions behind it. "Do you know why Darth Cognus selected me as her apprentice?"
Spectre was thrown off by the question, and she shook her head. "No, why? Enlighten me."
"I had made a business career out of seeing the future, but when I became Cognus's apprentice, she taught me how to refine my senses and I received more accurate visions. I was even able to see the past. I looked back into the past and saw the many failures of the Sith. Darth Momin might have failed himself, but he was different enough to inspire me to begin moving against Cognus."
"What would you have done with the army?" Spectre asked. "After all, you wanted to conquer the galaxy yourself and repeat the mistakes of the past yourself?"
"Touche," Millennial said. "Actually, my plans were not as crude as Cognus believed. She had wanted me to take over her role as a seer, and use my abilities to further the Sith agenda. I was going to do that. I was going to burn worlds and create situations of fear. Fear is one of the paths to the Dark Side. Fear, the Jedi say, leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. I wanted to spread fear, death, anger, and hatred throughout the galaxy. I was preparing to create terror through the galaxy before I went to the senate and brainwashed them into performing hateful acts.
"But what does my Master do? She tries to kill me. When I looked into the future, I saw glimpses of potential possible futures. In one, the Sith were destroyed after centuries of work when one turned to the Light side and his apprentice had been unable to stop him. The Jedi who betrayed the Order and joined the Rule of Two could have been defeated, and the Sith Master killed. In the end, the Force willed them to lose their power, because they focused on petty issues like their obsession with the Jedi. They didn't see what I did. They failed to see the future. They gave into their own arrogance. That's why the Sith Empires of times past failed, and it's the destiny of the Sith to fail once more because you will repeat their mistakes unless you serve the Dark Side."
While Millennial had been speaking, Spectre had been thinking. It was as if a door had opened and closed behind her. She suddenly realised that Darth Momin and Darth Millennial were right. The Sith's original Grand Plan had worked in the end, but the Empire had fallen apart after 20 years, but the Force itself had seen the complacency of the Jedi and sought to punish them for it. Only for Sidious to be punished for concentrating solely on the Jedi and trivia, before doing the same with Krayt when he just repeated the old Sith tactics.
An idea blossomed in her mind.
