Chapter Text
The year is 41 BBY [3148 RE]. The Galactic Republic is half a century removed from a devastating conflict with the Sith Empire, which nearly brought the galaxy to its knees. With the aid of the valiant Jedi Knights, the Republic prevailed, and since that time, it has enjoyed unparalleled peace and prosperity.
But all is not well. Beneath the gilded surface of this tranquil age is a simmering anger, at the Republic, the Jedi, and the megacorporations who roam the hyperlanes exploiting innocent worlds. Many see the Republic as broken, unable to help the needy and right the wrongs of those who would do them harm.
Lurking in the shadows is a great evil, one that will tear the Republic in half, bring it down not from without, but from within. This phantom menace knows not yet its role to play in the great drama of history, but when it learns, it will strike terror into the hearts of quadrillions…
***
Scarat disembarked from his star yacht as soon as it touched down in the docking bay and the boarding ramp descended with a slow creak of metal scraping against metal. He had just stepped off the ship and started walking briskly toward the exit when he heard the panicked footsteps of one of his servants approaching him from the rear.
“Why, Jaazu, must you burden me so?” he said, turning to face the young Trianii in his employ.
“With all due respect, sir,” Jaazu said, beads of sweat dripping from the shaggy blue fur covering his face, “I would slow down. Spaceport security likes to cross every forn and dot every cresh. There are procedures.”
“I’ll leave them in your capable hands, Jaazu,” said Scarat. “I’m in a hurry. I don’t wish to stay on Alderaan any longer than I have to.”
“Shall I have any accommodations arranged, sir?”
“By all means.”
“What shall I say to security?”
“If they insist on impounding my ship, I’ll pay whatever fines they impose when I get back to the city,” he replied, waving a retinue of approaching pit droids with maintenance equipment over to the faulty ramp. “Gods know I can afford them.”
Jaazu nodded, and bowed his head in deference.
“Tell our representatives at the Aldera office to arrange a meeting between myself and Governor Palpatine as soon as possible,” said Scarat to his servant. “Once I’ve found what I’m looking for, we can begin this round of negotiations.”
“Of course, Master Tycho,” he acknowledged. “May the Force be with you.”
Scarat parted ways with Jaazu, flipping up his hood to conceal his eyes from onlookers and stepping out of the docking bay into the wider city beyond it. The spaceport opened into a market square, abound with the pleasant odor of freshly harvested local produce; thousands upon thousands of people’s disparate paths converged for just a moment here. Young children laughed and played, tossing around fruit and toy balls as they snaked through the crowds of parents and other smiling passersby. In the distance, sleek silver skyscrapers gleamed in the midday sunlight, flanked from behind by the jagged mountain vistas of the Triplehorn range, and from the sides by glimmers of light reflected off the lake that surrounded Aldera. The Alderaanian capital and its sisters across the planet were paradise to many, and the people of Alderaan took pride in this perception, making sure their environment was protected from spoil and pollution.
Scarat found it contemptible. Here was one of the jewels of the Core, a world of such great power and prestige that it almost rivaled Coruscant itself. Unlike Coruscant, or his homeworld of Etti IV, however, the humans of Alderaan took no pleasure in the domination and transformation of nature, and chose to live in harmony with it instead. That denial of humanity’s dominion over the galaxy made them weak. He could feel how strong the planet was with the Force, and yet they would never know what to do with all that power at their fingertips. They had fallen a long way since the days of Clovis Dax.
“Excuse me!” he shouted into the street as he flagged down an airtaxi. The vehicle descended and came to a slow halt a couple meters left of him, and the driver popped open the right side-door.
“Where to?” asked the grisly Devaronian with a voice like gravel at the helm, fidgeting with a pair of plush gambling dice hanging from the mirror.
“The Castle Lands,” said Scarat as he climbed into the taxi’s backseat, “and quickly.”
“The Castle Lands?” the taxi pilot questioned incredulously. “That’s a bit far off from Aldera, pallie. Besides, there’s all kinda restrictions on flyin’ round there. Those Killik mounds are sacred places, y’know.”
Scarat chafed at the Devaronian’s informality but said nothing of it. He reached into the interior pocket of his cloak and retrieved a handful of lustrous crystalline chips whose temptation he knew no alien could resist.
“I’d like this excursion to be a private affair if possible,” said Scarat, jingling the pile of currency in earshot of the Devaronian. “How many thousands is it worth for you to skirt a few airspace restrictions?”
The taxi pilot’s eyes widened as Scarat cupped his callused vermilion hands and dumped the credits into them.
“A-as many as you’re willing to give, kind stranger,” the Devaronian answered, stuffing them into his pants and shifting the cab’s internal mechanisms into the gear required for ascent.
“Fantastic,” Scarat remarked as the airtaxi flew upwards and filed into one of the many traffic lanes criss-crossing the placid cerulean skies of Alderaan. Even as the planet was undeniably strong with the Force, Scarat could sense darker shades pulling at the frayed edges, had since he had first visited the planet several years ago on a business venture with his father. Something was pulling Alderaan towards the Dark Side. If the rumors were true, and the artifact was here, the answers he was after were hidden amongst the Castle Lands, waiting for him to unlock the next step of his future.
***
The Castle Lands were a vast swath of ancient ruins and unspoiled wilderness, and so once the airtaxi crossed the boundary, dodging multiple squadrons of Alderaanian rangers in the process, Scarat directed the Devaronian to the exact location where he wanted to land. The Devaronian tried to convey a set of half-baked anecdotes concerning his career as a pilot, from his time as a street racer to his misadventures in the Republic Navy to his resettlement on Alderaan, but Scarat tuned him out, eventually tossing him another few credits to entice him into closing his mouth. Finally, they arrived, and the pilot wished Scarat safe travels as he climbed out of the vehicle to begin his search. Scarat let the man go, figuring he could contact Jaazu and arrange alternative transportation back to Aldera.
From beneath the tall blades of grass that danced in the wind rose four misshapen mounds, surrounding a central structure that resembled a tuber freshly plucked from the soil of a Corellian homestead. Many of their erstwhile features had been eroded away, and like trees they bore rings that showcased their immense age. Scarat sensed a powerful darkness emanating from them, a wound in the Force whose scar tissue stretched back millennia into the planet’s prehistory. He wasn’t the first man to investigate the Castle Lands; countless souls before him had extensively catalogued the landscape, the geomorphology, the intricate carvings within the Killik mounds and their anthropological significance for the development of proto-culture on Alderaan. But what they had lacked was the universe’s strongest and most obedient servant. Whatever was here, buried by time’s inexorable march and concealed from the general populace, it sustained a wailing scream that echoed through the fabric of the Force, one of pain, and of power. No doubt much of what he sensed was the lingering trauma of humanity’s expulsion of the indigenous insectoids from the system, but even that was not enough to explain the sheer strength of the turbulent darkness swirling in the Force.
He stepped forward, and felt the pathway illuminate before him, bright as a pulsar even though the setting sun cast a growing darkness over the Castle Lands. Treading briskly through the grasses, he arrived at the closest mound, over twenty times his height, and traced his finger along one of the rings, probing into the Force nearby to determine the exact location of the darkness he sensed. He was getting warmer, so warm it was as if the Force itself had been set aflame. The artifact was here, without a doubt. He could almost feel its intricate geometry beveling through the palm of his hand. But the further he walked, rounding the circumference of the dilapidated earthen cityscape, the more his vision of the way forward was rendered opaque, obstructing his search for the artifact. The path before him split in two, one leading forward and the other backward, a thoroughly bent fork in the road.
He reached out into the Force, feeling the mystic chords of fate swirl around him, sprawling out in infinite directions. Umbrus had taught him this, back when Scarat was his apprentice. It was essential to be able to feel the push and pull of the Force, the flow of time from one event to the next, and where the Force was taking you, so that you could defy its will and chart your own course. Scarat closed his eyes and felt fate grab hold of him, pull him into the web, push him away from the mounds, the Castle Lands, the Alderaan system altogether. Perhaps someone, something in some faraway corner of spacetime was reaching out to him, warning him of some dire threat to his very life. He reasoned instead, however, that the Force, stubborn as it was, was trying to keep him from the artifact, lest it fall into the wrong hands. He scoffed at this insolent excitation of cosmic arrogance.
Calling upon the Dark Side within him, Scarat gritted his teeth and tore at the binds the universe imposed upon him, ripping apart the tangle of cosmic threads and asserting the dominance of his own will above that of the Force. When he opened his eyes, his fingers crackled with Dark Side energy, and a bolt of lightning shot upward into the open air, dissipating somewhere in the upper layers of the atmosphere. He placed his right hand toward the ground and fell onto his knees, catching his breath and feeling a profound concoction of dread and discomfort wash over his entire body, before ultimately disappearing as though it had been drained out of him. He would continue to the artifact, no matter what rubbish the Whills fed into his mind to dissuade him from this momentous discovery. Now more than ever he knew he had to do this.
After several minutes of uneventful exploration, he came around to the other side of the dome-shaped mound, and his journey screeched to an abrupt halt when he noticed two things — a humanoid-sized aperture in the mound’s exterior, and a speeder bike parked only a few meters away. Someone had beaten him to the artifact.
***
The entrance which the unknown assailant had created turned out to be surprisingly shallow, only leading a couple meters inward before opening into a massive antechamber with tunnels splitting off from there. The tunnels were wide enough for multiple humanoids to fit inside, a testament to the hulking proportions of the Killiks. Scarat sensed the Dark Side emanating from one of the tunnels and climbed up into it, comfortably standing upright and walking forth into the darkness; normally he hated to dirty his clothes in so undignified a manner, but this time he could stomach such an excursion to pursue the artifact and apprehend this unwanted company. Though sunlight soon disappeared, this proactive expeditionary grave-robber had taken the precaution of illuminating his pathway into the dead Killik colony, a boon to both himself and Scarat, who could now easily trace the unknown intruder’s path with his own eyes without activating his lightsaber and exposing his identity.
Pressing onward and narrowly avoiding potentially treacherous descents into divergent pathways, Scarat arrived at the end of the tunnel, which terminated at the opening to a chamber even larger than the one where his journey had begun. It was poorly lit compared to the tunnel, but Scarat could still make out the assortment of exoskeletal plates and abstrusely configured metal strewn about the grassy floor of the mound’s cavernous interior. What may have once been a titanic center of a highly advanced industrial civilization was now a graveyard of cultural detritus. The only activity inside this behemoth was to be found in an adequately bright corner of the chamber, where a single humanoid figure labored in silence near a powerfully radiating source of ethereal darkness. Scarat summoned the power of the Force to propel himself forward and upward through the ruins of the colony, slowing his descent and landing some five meters from the artifact. Concealing his presence with the Dark Side, he caught his first proper glimpses of the pest who had gotten to his prize first.
He was a young human male, for which Scarat was grateful, as he could not bear the humiliation if one of the wretched aliens that Alderaan’s permissive society attracted had gotten its filthy hands on the artifact before him. The young man’s hair was the color of rust on the hull of a starship in mothballs; his skin was pale, and his deep blue eyes were focused intensely on his efforts to dig up more and more soil to unearth the artifact. His attire was unsuited to this kind of exploratory endeavor; he wore a purple robe draped in a shawl with ornate patterned markings that communicated some degree of wealth or privilege, as did the collar around his neck. Still, he worked diligently, seeming utterly unbothered by the dirt and grime collecting on his sleeves and the bottoms of his boots.
Finally, after expending countless milliliters of elbow grease on his backbreaking dig, the auburn-haired young man in the expensive-looking clothes cupped a glowing object in his hands and removed it from within the ground. It was a triangular pyramid with a gold frame that partially concealed a central concentration of crimson crystals. As the youth looked over the artifact, Scarat sensed something peculiar; when he took it in his hands and fiddled with it, passing it between his fingers, the darkness within it was amplified, the chorus of screams in the Force growing to a deafening crescendo.
The pieces clicked together in his head. It was highly improbable that an ordinary Force-blind inferior would simply stumble upon a Dark Side artifact and know its location precisely enough to dig it out of the ground, so of course this intruder was Force-sensitive. But what disturbed and intrigued Scarat was how much darkness he could sense inside the young man. Resentment, anger, hatred, self-absorption, all wailing in agonizing obscurity beneath a dignified, hard-working surface. He began to wonder what it was he had sensed when he first arrived in the Castle Lands, or indeed on Alderaan itself; his mind ran amok with questions demanding answers in stentorian concert. Who was this young man, and what secrets did he possess? How could he be so strong in the Dark Side that he could match and perhaps even overpower an artifact forged aeons ago by Dark Side masters?
“Careful with that relic, young one,” said Scarat, stepping out of the shadows of the Dark Side and making his presence known. Startled, the teenager recoiled and nearly dropped the artifact, narrowly managing to snatch it from its downward trajectory at the last second. With a reflexive quickness characteristic of a Force sensitive, he drew a vibroknife from a sheath concealed beneath his shirt and assumed a confrontational stance against Scarat’s personage, flicking a small switch and activating its internal generator. For an uncomfortable interval, the humming vibrations of the knife were the only sound exchanged between them.
“Who are you?” he demanded after taking a moment to steady his breathing. “Did you follow me here from the city?”
Scarat lifted his hood from his face and placed it gently behind him.
“Nothing so crass,” Scarat answered with a one-handed gesture of assurance. “Put the dagger down, if you would. I’m only trying to have a civil conversation.”
“If you wanted that, you would have approached me directly instead of lurking behind my back,” the young man shot back.
“I’m unarmed, I promise,” Scarat lied, waving his hands and flashing the inside of his cloak outwards. “I simply want to talk to you. After all, it appears we have a common interest.”
Scarat looked down at the pyramidal technological marvel the young man was holding in his opposite hand.
“I’m something of a collector of antiques, you see,” Scarat insisted, “and if I’m not mistaken, that is a—”
“A Dark Side holocron,” the teenager said, cutting him off before he could finish. “From the archaic alphabet used for the inscription, I’d say it must be around… a thousand years old? Maybe one and a half”
The boy lowered his vibroknife and returned it to his sheath, taking the holocron in both hands and combing through the grooves and notches on its triangular surfaces.
“You’ve got quite an eye, young man,” Scarat said, genuinely impressed. “But how can you be sure it isn’t a Jedi holocron? After all, what would an artifact of the Dark Side be doing on Alderaan of all places?”
“It can’t be a Jedi holocron,” the youth noted dryly. “Those are cubic, and the crystal within them is blue. I thought you said you were a collector?”
“I ask to test your acumen,” he said. “I’ve encountered several rare pieces much like this one in my time. In fact, so great is my skill that I can pinpoint a more exact date and planetary origin just by looking at it for only a few seconds. May I?”
Scarat extended his hand outward with an open palm, gesturing to the young man to give him the holocron. He reluctantly obliged, one eyebrow narrowed and the other cocked with evident skepticism. Scarat felt the heaviness of the holocron, feeling the sheer volume of Dark Side energy contained within him weigh him down and drag him forthright into the wellspring whence all life originated. He closely examined the artifact, taking stock of every crack and crevice and divot, passing his finger over the ancient inscription that spoke of the enormous power one could draw from darkness. Umbrus had shared with him a few such holocrons, though from far more recent eras of galactic history; his quest for one this old had always gone unfulfilled. He had suspected that a great wealth of forbidden knowledge long since lost to the sands of time may be contained with them; now that Scarat had this grand prize in his possession, he could finally test his late master’s hypothesis.
Right now, however, the presence of this teenager dissuaded him from revealing his more intimate knowledge of the Dark Side. Digging into the secrets of the holocron would have to wait.
“This holocron,” he announced to the youth, “was forged one thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven years ago.”
“During the First Sith War,” the youth commented. “I suppose I was a bit off.”
“Indeed, though it was an admirable attempt,” said Scarat.
The lad pressed his fingertips to his chin, and Scarat could sense he was in deep thought.
“How extensively do you deal in Dark Side artifacts exactly?” he asked. “Are you an archaeologist?”
“Not in the least,” Scarat said, recognizing the probing for clues as to his true intentions. “I simply received a tip from a business associate of mine about the whereabouts of a very valuable Dark Side artifact in the Alderaan system, and decided to do some hands-on work. When you deal in interstellar trade spanning the whole of the galaxy from Core to Rim, you learn a great deal more than you could ever have expected.”
He offered the lad a handshake, one which he accepted.
“Dymen Tycho of Tycho Consolidated Interests, at your service.”
“Tev.”
“No last name?”
“Just Tev. My family name isn’t important.”
Despite Scarat’s best efforts, Tev refused to let his guard down, even for a second. Scarat knew he was hiding something, perhaps a great many somethings, though he wasn’t sure quite what they were, only that they were bound up in a torrent of emotion desperately begging to be set free from a prison deep in his mind.
“You seem to have something of a familiarity with Dark Side relics,” Scarat said. “How did you find out it was here?”
“I heard some rumors on the street.”
“Rumors?”
“Freighter captains by the docking bay, talking about some secrets in the Killik mounds,” Tev elaborated. “Some sense of foreboding they couldn’t quite explain. Even the park rangers felt some kind of lingering dread, they were saying. It sounded just like a Dark Side artifact.”
“Are you a collector as well?” Scarat asked.
“Not really. I’ve never gotten my hands on one. But I’ve always been fascinated by the history of the Dark Lords and their empires.”
“There aren’t many people your age who can distinguish between one Sith War or another,” Scarat noted, suppressing a grin. “I don’t imagine Abbadon the Invincible comes to mind when most denizens of the galaxy think of the Dark Side.”
“They did some terrible things to the Republic during the Great War,” said Tev, “but I’m not interested in rendering moral judgment. I just think about the history. I’d like to study it at the University this autumn.”
“And what does your family think about that, Tev?”
The boy recoiled at the question, casting his eyes downward and to the left. Scarat felt ripples in the Force from Tev’s rising frustration. The mere thought of his family seemed to provoke very strong emotions; that wasn’t abnormal, but the kinds of feelings Scarat sensed were highly conducive to cultivation of oneself as a vessel for the Dark Side.
“I haven’t told them,” he replied succinctly. “I’m almost certain my father wouldn’t approve.”
“Well, not that it means much coming from a stranger in a dimly illuminated cave,” Scarat said, “but I have always believed it necessary to follow one’s passions, even at the cost of others’ disapproval.”
Scarat noticed Tev’s intermittent glances at the holocron, and returned it to his possession, though no less set on unlocking its treasures.
“Keep the holocron,” he said to the young man. “Study it well, so you can better identify the next Dark Side relic you haphazardly dig up.”
Tev took the holocron in his hands, maintaining his skeptical countenance as he looked Scarat in the eyes, perhaps searching for a glimmer of duplicitous intention. Scarat made sure that he wouldn’t find it.
“I ought to be getting back home,” Tev said. “If I’m not gone, I’ll be in trouble with the rangers, and I’m keen on avoiding such an outcome.”
“As am I,” Scarat concurred.
Promptly crawling back through the tunnel system and out into the viridescent expanse of the Castle Lands, Scarat and Tev bid one another farewell, and Tev, holocron in tow, departed on his speeder bike, taking a circuitous route to avoid detection by the Alderaanian security forces responsible for preserving and protecting the planet’s beauty. As Scarat activated his commlink and notified Jaazu of his need for a discreet and expeditious transport back to Aldera, he continued to watch Tev fly further toward the horizon. Scarat had no guarantee that he would ever meet the boy again, or gain back the holocron he had worked so long to acquire, but after his unexpected rendezvous with Tev in the mound-colony, his interest had been piqued. The darkness festering within him was unlike anything he had ever encountered, not even when pouring over the ancient texts with Umbrus. It defied all logic and expectation. He had to know more.
For years he had searched for an apprentice, a partner to carry on the tradition whose burden he had carried since Umbrus’s death. The Force had brought them together by its capricious will; now Scarat would make sure they stayed together. Tev’s destiny was uncertain, but Scarat knew of one possible future for the boy. He could very well be the next great master of the Force, the next participant in the Grand Plan to destroy the Jedi and tear the galaxy asunder. If Scarat was right, Tev would be the next Dark Lord of the Sith.