Feathers on the Water

fandom musings mostly about star wars, reblog bower at shadowonthewaves-blog

[ospreyeamon]

revan as the ghost

I had the odd experience of playing KOTOR 1 and having my Revan, then playing KOTOR 2 and discovering that I liked its Revan more than mine. Revan as Narrative Ghost/Controversial Historical Figure is far more interesting to me than Revan as main character.

Part of it is that 2 fleshes out Dark-Side pre-amnesia Revan into a more compelling character. All of the juicy hints about the deeper plan and purpose behind the Jedi Civil War, the past relationship with Kreia who is as preoccupied with her former student’s legacy as with her own, the probable betrayal of Revan’s own forces led by the Exile at Malachor V.

The motivation of preparing for the future great war against the True Sith is great because it doesn’t preclude the other motivations of vengeance, power-lust, and the love of warfare. Revan might have despised the atrocities of the Jedi Civil Wars as evils necessary to save the galaxy. Revan might have subconsciously latched onto the True Sith as an excuse to solve the problems with the Republic and Jedi Order using outright warfare because everything looked like a nail after the Mandalorian Wars. Revan might have just been acting with an eye to the long-term logistics of forcibly holding power in the Republic post-conquest and was never planning on fighting the True Sith Empire because Revan thought it was a real threat, but because another war would be politically convenient. Revan might have slid from one to another over time.

Maybe Revan always considered himself to be loyal to the Republic, even if the Republic didn’t always appreciate the form that loyalty took. Maybe Revan decided that democracy doesn’t work and the Republic would be better off under a competent autocrat. Maybe Revan decided that the structure of the Republic’s constituent governments – mostly monarchies, aristocracies, and corporate plutocracy – meant that it wasn’t a real democracy and believed a benevolent dictatorship could be used to build a foundation of true democracy. Maybe the future long-term structure of the Republic’s government wasn’t a major consideration, with Revan taking the pragmatic view that the best government for the Republic would be the one that enabled it to survive.

Supplying that backstory as a jigsaw of character dialogue was an excellent choice, especially since it also works well for the events of the first game. Brianna the Handmaiden believes Revan showed the desire of his heart when he killed Malak during the Battle of Rakata Prime; Kreia thinks she’s completely wrong about that.

All the characters have at least heard of Revan; the Exile, Kreia, T4-M4, Mandalore, HK-47, and the Jedi Masters knew Revan personally. And, beyond being a mere person, Revan represents things to people.

Kreia is invested in the idea that Revan was always driven by some vision of a greater good, that she never became primarily ruled by hatred or power-lust. Kreia has a low opinion of those she views as dominated by emotion and is unwilling to believe her prize student ever fell into that trap. She really wants every choice her old Padawan made to have been well-informed and well-considered, always feeding towards Revan’s larger goals rather than undermining them. (Yet, there are a couple of Revan’s actions, like killing Malak, that I feel Kreia would have preferred to blame on the Force, on the unfairness of the universe, rather than on Revan.)

It’s a major blind-spot in Kreia’s assessment of Revan. Cutting Malak’s jaw off but keeping him as her second-in-command – seemingly not expecting any negative effect on Malak’s loyalty – is unlikely to have been anything but a short-sighted emotional outburst on Revan’s part.

In contrast to Kreia’s narrative, I think that Revan’s disappearance in unknown space between the games was unplanned and unwilling. Revan apparently spent years attempting to build a massive logistical staging ground for a war with the True Sith; locating the Star Forge, invading to capture Republic infrastructure, brutally converting captured Jedi. Why, after previously engaging in such large-scale preparation, would Revan leave to fight the True Sith alone, without telling anyone but T3-M4? Why would Revan leave without warning Admiral Carth of the Republic Navy and battle-meditation master Bastila Shan about the threat?

More likely, I think, that Revan’s memories were returning in tatters and scraps. Revan became increasingly sure that there was something important she couldn’t remember; some vital secret that would explain so much, and spell disaster if not uncovered. Revan’s journey to unknown space began as a temporary trip retracing a past journey, searching for prompts to resurface those memories. Something went wrong.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Revan despaired of the state the Jedi, Revanchist Sith, and Galactic Republic were in after the Battle of Rakata Prime and the “end” of the Jedi Civil War; despaired of the mess she had apparently made trying to manipulate the Republic and Jedi into forms capable of standing up to the True Sith. Maybe Revan came to doubt his previous assessment that the True Sith Empire were planning to invade the Galactic Republic, since it had been more than a decade since the beginning of the Mandalorian Wars with still no sign of them, and left to do some quiet scouting without raising what might be a false alarm that triggered an avoidable conflict.

Another judicious choice of character trait with KOTOR 2’s Revan was – and even post-amnesia still continued to be – secretive. Revan kept the grand strategy for the Mandalorian Wars close to her chest; good for operation security, but also good for hiding your plan to purge your own forces. Even HK-47 and Kreia, who were close to the Revanchist Sith’s upper command structure, aren’t certain what Revan was trying to achieve because Revan didn’t tell them. When Revan vanishes between the games, it is seemingly without having told any of her companions save T3-M4 where or that it was to investigate the True Sith Empire. That repeated failure to share information provides another justification for the ambiguity.

That bled through when I replayed 1 and imagined a new Revan, a stranger even to himself.

How did you change so much? Could you change again?

You remember your mother’s face, remember her voice as she read to you from the histories she loved so much, but the records in the Jedi archives imply that’s impossible, that you were given to the Order too young. You remember racing your swoop bike across the fields of Dantooine as a teenager; as a teenager you were a Padawan studying in the Enclave there. How many of your memories are real? How much of you is real?

Is there a monster slumbering under your skin that might awake, unravelling the person you are now to take your place? Did the young Revan have all the Jedi Masters fooled, rotten from the very beginning? Might you eventually live your life haunted by nightmares of committing another person’s atrocities?

More frightening than the idea that you and the Revan lost to amnesia are different is the idea that you are the same; that your past choices won’t be beyond comprehension or justification. If you remember, will you understand why you started the war? If you remember, will you understand why you bombed Telos? If you remember, will you discover that you have been the person who could make those choices all along?

[ospreyeamon]

Omelettes on the Roof

Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Characters: Lys’trel (Sith Inquisitor), original slave characters

Content Warnings: Canon-Typical Slavery, Orbital Bombardment

The slaves walked down the middle of the streets of the darkened city. Nobody was above ground to stop them. There were soldiers somewhere – far away – manning ground to orbit defences. All the other Imperial citizens were in the shelters or had fled by speeder. A family of Talja foxes hurriedly crossed between laneways.

Blackout curtains and tinting smothered the windows. Only the dim red emergency lights had been left on. Lys’trel had never seen stars so bright. Her eyes poured over nebula and constellations she couldn’t name, searching for the Republic squadron of the sirens’ wailed warnings, as Delph’rina pulled her forward by the hand. She saw leather-winged otocalt but no star ships.

Or perhaps she did. One star was moving smoothly and swiftly while the others remained still around it. Was that a ship?

“Maybe, summer bud. Try not to worry. What will come will come.” Delph’rina’s lekku made a gesture of reassurance but her fingers tightened around Lys’trel’s.

Old Xannel called out in the Muttering Tongue from ahead of them, voice loud to be heard over the sirens. “Here here! Middle lyceum, middle building!”

Lys’trel translated for Yath Jarkey who was walking on Delph’rina’s other side. He was new and only spoke Basic and Ryl.

They turned off the street into the dim park surrounding a complex of three storey buildings. Shrubs edged paved paths that led off to a little garden on one side and a strangely shaped collection of bars and platforms on the other.

Lys’trel had never been inside a school before. She tried to imagine what it would be like full of children.

“Canteen unlocked!” said Old Xannel with triumph. “I knew that a lyceum would be our best bet,” Old Xannel continued slipping into Imperial Standard. “They haven’t changed at all since I was young – the locks are still terrible.” Old Xannel continued regaling Little Xannel and Storm Wind and Lan-Rao with tales of a free-born childhood spent learning music and sports and forbidden sweet bartering.

Somebody else had gotten to the kitchen before them; the doors were open, the cupboards were open, and there was a spilled box of something which crunched beneath Lys’trel’s feet spread across the floor. Lys’trel and the other children were set to work shutting the outside doors and attempting to pin coverings to the windows while Delph’rina, Old Xannel and the other grown-ups turned one of the lights on and began taking stock of what was left in the fridges.

It was a great haul. There was even fresh fruit to eat while the grown-ups argued about what to cook.

Lys’trel savoured every moment of every bite. The sweet smell as she brought the fruit up to her mouth. The feel of her teeth breaking through the thin skin to the flesh beneath. The sticky drip of the juice down her chin.

Old Xannel and Delph’rina made them wash their hands afterwards. They had decided to fry omelettes because there wasn’t enough time to bake anything.

She, Delph’rina and a few others took their omelettes and hot tea up to the roof of the building next to the kitchen. The roof was surrounded by a metal mesh cage but there were benches and even a water fountain around the side of the stairs. A glow-spider had strung a shining web in one corner.

It was cold but Lys’trel wanted to watch the sky. Delph’rina and others wanted that too.

Lys’trel ate her portion of the omelettes slowly, the bite of hunger having been sated earlier by the fruit. It was rich and good; egg and cheese and crunchy red vegetable.

While they feasted, she took in the view. From the top of the lyceum building, you could see the city centre to the west, towers and pyramids faintly outlined against the horizon. To the south were the important factories slaves never came out of on the rare occasions they were ordered in. To the north stood forested mountains part of their work group had decided to make towards, knowing they might never even reach the foothills.

The sky yawned above it all, a bright abyss. There were more ships moving now. Bright flashes. A star falling, breaking apart.

Delph’rina put her arm around Lys’trel as she licked the last traces of omelette from her fingers.

“Knew I might die in the war,” sighed Yath Jarkey, his lekku curled in grief. “Never thought it would be like this. No blaster in my hand, not an Imp in sight. Killed by our own people. But– at least it’s not for nothing. No more bombs for the Imps.”

Lys’trel was overcome by tears. She was never going to find her mother. Delph’rina was never going to see her son Otho’rina again.

Delph’rina and Yath Jarkey were upset and speaking low and quick. She dug her nails into her palms, curled up and tried to muffle her sobs. It hurt. It hurt.

Suddenly, Delph’rina gasped, her fingers digging into Lys’trel’s shoulder. She looked up, her breath catching in her throat.

The eastern skyline had been pieced by burning light – fire red pocked with flashes of white. A grey shadow rose around it. Above, more lights streaked down towards the horizon.

“They got the depo.”

Sound crashed over them like the bursting of a pressure drum. The glow-spider and its web were thrown across the cage. Lys’trel vainly tried to muffle her ear-cones with her hands.

The dark cloud grew and grew, blotting out the starlight beyond it. Light silently bloomed inside it for several long seconds before fading away, gone completely before the noise of the impact reached them.

They waited and waited. Lys’trel realised she had stopped breathing, frozen in silence as if bombs were stalking predators that might be hidden from. The cloud plume in the east billowed up and out, ever larger, but no more explosions came.

In the morning the sky was dark with earth and smoke, the sunrise glorious. In the morning they were forced back to work by harried masters – futilely cleaning the settling dust that choked the air – while public holo-displays played footage of bodies lifted from the cracked ground of cities to the east. In the morning they were still alive.

[miraluking-respectfully]

it is interesting, though: every risky or stupid-looking decision the jedi council makes in vanilla swtor re: their membership (letting DS Jedi stick around for so long with so many responsibilities, letting Kira remain a padawan on a high-profile jedi's ship) become way more understandable when you remember they lived through an extremely recent jedi mass death event and are probably onboarding/keeping around literally anyone with a pulse no matter how yellow their irises are looking lately

[plotbunny-bundle]

Listen

Banishing the Dark Jedi is how they galaxy ended up with the Hyperspace war. Those banished Jedi took over the Sith empire and came with war ships and an army.

Trying to murder all the dark sider is led to the Reconstituted Sith Empire who came back with An Army, a war fleet and Generational Trauma. also genocide is against the Jedi Code.

The Sith order is in the galaxy and openly recruiting. If they reject the fallen/at risk Jedi the Sith could take them in.

So either they lock these fallen or at risk Jedi up, where they could get worse. Or keep them around and try to help them by example and supervision. A problem Jedi on the right side is better then an Enemy with insider information and a grudge.

[ospreyeamon]

Especially since we see that the Order is having to contend with simultaneous crises. I assume that part of the reason why the Knight and Consular aren't given additional back-up during Acts 1 and 3 is because the Plague and the Devastator Crisis and then the two different messes caused by the Sith Emperor happen at roughly the same time. In Act 2 the Order seems to have some breathing space to try to be more proactive, but then the Second Great Galactic War heats up and it's all hands on deck. There are presumably other disasters flaring up off screen with other Jedi, like the half of the High Council we never meet, running around after them.

By Act 3 there are also compelling reasons to allow the Barsen'thor and Hero of Tython in particular to be kept on the mission roster, no matter how red their eyes glow. The Barsen'thor has become the leader of the Rift Alliance and can't be censured without risking offending them. Lord Scourge has attached himself to the Hero of Tython; such a high-ranking defector so close to the Sith Emperor is hugely valuable.

Still, I think there would be deep tensions regarding the allowance of Dark Jedi in the Order. A lot of Jedi might doubt the Council's judgement that they won't snap or betray the Order at the worst moment possible, given many Jedi believe using the Dark-Side of the Force is like willingly drinking Evil Juice. The Dark Jedi probably doubt that the Order's tolerance would continue after the defeat of the Sith, especially since we do see fallen Jedi imprisoned on Belsavis.

[dopaminevampire-deactivated2024]

Kotor theory because I am deep diving lore.

Spoilers, kinda.

So regardless of whether we acknowledge the idea of the Sith Empire and brainwashing, I was surprised to learn that Korriban was already occupied when Revan and Malak showed up. It seems to be implied Czerka already set up shop there, but more interestingly, Jorak Uln, the crazy old coot that holes up in one of the tombs, is a remnant from Exar Kun's war 40 years previously. As is Sion, from the second kotor game.

That would be the war that Jolee fought in against them.

Looking at the history further, it seems that Sith war ended and a few scattered Sith made a run for it in various parts of space. Some of them ended up on Korriban and restarted the academy there. Its been running the *entire time* and none of the Jedi did anything about it.

The current headmaster of the academy as in the time of gameplay is Jorak's pupil, so guess is good he's been there a long while as well.

And that led me to thinking- when exactly did Yuthura show up in all of this?

Now my immediate reaction to this was "this is ridiculous, this is dumb, this has to be an oversight, there's no way these Sith have been here for 40 years and roll over and show belly and fall in line the moment the new punk kids show up on the block" but then THAT got me thinking about something else that doesn't entirely make sense either-

One of the first battles Revan and Malak engaged in was attacking Foerost. This battle is an almost exact copy of another battle that was initiated by Qel-Droma... 40 years earlier... in the last Sith war... with Exar Kun. Spoils of this battle ended with Revan and Malak taking most of the Republic fleet from drydocks and also heralding themselves in as the new Sith Lords.

Which brings us back to Korriban. What better way to make a bang and convince these Sith holdouts to fall in line than copying a battle from their own past war? Maybe even doing it better? Proving their mettle?

If we add in that perhaps this was preventing Revan from accessing the Star Map, capturing the Republic fleet makes a whole lot of sense too. Or even if not, asset denial.

Bonus- I also learned there is a bar on Korriban named "The Drunk Side"

[ospreyeamon]

Wookieepedia says that the Jedi Order couldn’t allocate as many resources to mopping up the remnants of Exar Kun's Sith army as the Council wanted to because the Republic persuaded them to focus on the post-war reconstruction efforts. Korriban is much bigger than just the Valley of the Dark Lords, which is all we ever seem to see of it, so there would have been other hiding places on the planet Jorak Uln could have been moving between.

Your theory about Revan and Malak redoing the Battle of Foerost but better in part to attract the survivors of Kun and Qel-Droma's old following to them makes a lot of sense. Revan seems to have put effort into forcibly converting captured Jedi to the cause and to the Dark-Side. Recruiting existing Dark-Siders – or killing them if they refused to accept Revan's leadership – would match that.

It's such an effective way for Revan to signal the weakness of the Republic and the Jedi. The Sith attacked Foerost in the last war, but have the defences improved since then? No, Revan and Malak being able to one-up Qel-Droma suggests that the Republic learnt no lessons from the Great Sith War at all. Stealing a fleet that would otherwise be fielded against you is also just a strategically sound opening move too.

Huh, I had completely missed that Darth Sion was one of Exar Kun's old acolytes. I assumed that he was one of the Revanchist Jedi like Nihlus, that he had known the Jedi Exile during the Mandalorian Wars, however distantly.

(The brainwashing story annoys me so much. The two KOTOR games do give us enough clues to put together what Revan and Malak were doing in the gap between the Mandalorian and Jedi Civil Wars – they were hunting down the Star Forge and using it to engage in a secret military production build-up to stack the deck in their favour before attacking the Republic. Revan was intentionally leaving the Republic's infrastructure intact so it could serve as a platform for an invasion of the True Sith Empire after the Republic had been defeated.)

[dopaminevampire-deactivated2024]

Now you got me thinking even more...

(It's 4 AM and I can't sleep and this is all un fact checked stream of consciousness thought)

First of all, very true that Korriban is a huge place. I remember a line about Dreshdae being the only active settlement on the planet though, so either the Sith remnants were roughing it or like I said, no one bothered to check in on the place.

Also, if Czerka was there before, it might be even more obscure. Seeing as they renamed Kashyyyk "Edean," anything goes. Korriban might have fallen completely off the map basically. Its location and lore locked in the forbidden Jedi archives. So can't match it to this little nowhere settlement.

That's possibly why Revan and Malak never found it sooner, if there were historical and naming inconsistencies and they were forbidden from the Archives.

Speaking of, on the other hand, maybe that's how they learned about some of the Sith things in the first place. Revan and Malak had a huge thirst for knowledge. So if they learned about that lack of mop up in the wake of the last war (thanks for that addition, I'd missed that) then it looks something like this:

*learns Sith remnant exists out there*

"Oh. That could be a problem."

*Mandalorians start attacking."

"Now that is a PROBLEM."

Jedi Council: *believes there is an unseen dark threat*

Revan and Malak: *put two and two and remember what they read from before*

So again. All the more reason to argue to go to war if they believe that is the secret dark threat behind the war. A resurgence of Sith from 40 years before, pulling the strings behind the scenes.

And about the brainwashing/Sith Empire lore- I don't HATE it, I just waffle between "this is a cop out, let Revan be feral" and "this makes it easier and more sensible for why you can be a light side paragon in kotor."

Actually, I dug REALLY hard and found the OG og lore someone cross posted from lucasforums years ago. It's long, but I could post that and tag you if you're interested and haven't seen it before. Talks about Revan's fall to the dark side, the reasons why, and a bunch of other characters' paths. Kreia remained pretty much spot on to it.

[ospreyeamon]

That thread sounds interesting. If you could post it I would appreciate that.

I took Dreshdae being described as the only active settlement on Korriban to imply that there were other known abandoned ones. Korriban’s location was almost certainly restricted from the young Knights but the Jedi Master who would go on to call herself Kreia was a former keeper of the Jedi archives and histories. I bet she knew where Korriban was.

Given the way the Jedi Council talks about Revan and Malak, it doesn’t sound like there were any red flags in their behaviour prior to them leaving to fight in the Mandalorian Wars. To the contrary, Revan seems to have been held up as the paragon of that generation, driven to fight the Mandalorians by the atrocities committed on Cathar. Revan and Malak are pretty much quintessential fallen heroes. Sure, the seeds of Darth Revan’s flaws – ruthlessness, utilitarianism, manipulativeness, secrecy – were presumably already there, but those qualities are fine in moderation.

If you’re asking “What turns a hero into a villain?” then “mind-control” isn’t a satisfying answer. For one thing it means your villain was never truly a villain, just a victim of mind control, so you haven’t actually answered the question. One of the plot holes in the mind-control story is the part where the mind-control broke early in the Jedi Civil War but Revan and Malak kept invading like nothing had changed. It also requires all the other Revanchists to somehow not notice the massive suspicious shift in Revan and Malak’s priorities after their jaunt off to the Sith Empire, or for Vitiate to mind control all of them which – given what we see on Ziost – would likely be beyond even his capabilities.

The mind-control story also doesn’t answer the question of why Revan in particular fell because Revan was already making some extremely ethically dubious choices before the end of the Mandalorian Wars. Revan orchestrated the Battle of Malachor V in a way that enabled it to be used as a purge. Revan probably intentionally delayed their fleet’s arrival to force the use of the Mass Shadow Generator.

Revan fell because of the Mandalorian Wars. War changes people. What I wrote about the Revanchist Jedi falling during the war because the shift to military decision making and the moral injury that caused, I think was especially true of Revan. Revan was in overall command – billions lived and died by Revan’s decisions. Choice after choice after choice, each more horrible than the last. Revan warped under that pressure.

It makes sense amnesia could have scraped away the layers to reveal Revan’s “true self” – the compassionate nature eroded away – because the layers scraped away included the memories of the Mandalorian Wars, which were what had changed Revan. Being temporarily cut off from the Force also probably helped, as being enmeshed in the Dark-Side cannot have been helping whatever anger management issues led Revan to rip Malak’s jaw off.

Pre-amnesia, Revan’s main defining character trait is that they are inconveniently brilliant. The greatest tactical and strategic mind of the era. Maybe it makes sense for Revan to be a dumbass post-amnesia, especially since that’s also post-brain-damage, but not before. I’d argue that it would be out-of-character for Revan to have to taken a fleet after the True Sith immediately after the end of the Mandalorian Wars.

A reasonable chunk of the navy Revan led in the Mandalorian Wars – including valuable senior officers like Rear Admiral Saul Karath – stood down and returned to the Republic after the Battle of Malachor V was won. Revan and Malak no longer had those ships or that expertise. The Republic government would have ceased constructing and supplying them with new ships with the end of the war.

The Revanchists had no maps of the Sith Empire, no intermediary outposts to secure their supply lines, no allies in unknown space to link up with. That’s not a situation a commander who was good at logistics would have willingly put themselves in if they thought there were other options.

The idea Revan and Malak would have gone alone is just as stupid. Admirals don’t do their own reconnaissance. That’s the scouts’ job. Your high command is too valuable to risk like that.

(I'm sorry, the mind-control story just annoys me so much.)

[dopaminevampire-deactivated2024]

Sure, here it is.

Darth Revan Rising

It is a period of turmoil in the Galaxy. The fierce Mandalorian warrior race begins the MANDALORIAN WAR by viciously and simultaneously attacking three quadrants of Republic space. As the battle rages on, Jedi Master REVAN moves surreptitiously between unknown sectors, scouting for potential strongholds to withstand the attacks. He soon discovers the shadowy Malachor V, a planet listed by Mandalorian scholars as "forbidden" to step foot on. The reason for this soon becomes clear as Revan is almost devoured by primal Sith forces on the world's surface. Revan's will allows him to feed on (and not be consumed by) the power of the dark side. Revan develops an evil but brilliant plan: Using the dark power of Malachor V, he will seduce an army of Jedi, completely loyal to him alone. He will then turn the planet's evil power against the Mandalorian army in battle, luring them to his stronghold and destroying them completely. A stronghold is immediately constructed.

Meanwhile on Dantooine, the small Jedi academy overseen by Master Vodo-Siosk Baas is shocked to learn that a lone Jedi Padawan has disobeyed a direct order from Jedi Master ATRIS, a prominent Jedi on the Council. This single student has left behind the relative safety of the training grounds to fight alongside the Jedi loyal to Master Revan. But this young one, like the other Jedi brethren, is unaware of the tremendous dark side power wielded by Revan and the terrible secrets of Malachor V. Revan's power continues to grow, and he secretly strengthens his stronghold, hiding it even from his apprentice, DARTH MALAK. Soon, the evil force infecting the planet became the FORGE for Darth Revan's shock troops; the feared SITH ASSASSINS - fallen Jedi, tempted and cajoled by the evil of Malachor V, and under Revan's evil command. Soon, a shadow academy to the one on Korriban is constructed; and an evil enclave mirroring the Jedi academy on Dantooine is complete.

Proving Grounds

It is a period of tumult and astuteness for the galaxy's most powerful entities, as the Mandalorian conflict culminates. The Jedi, fighting alongside the Republic and their finest tactical minds, such as Admiral SAUL KARATH aboard his flagship Leviathan, begin to force the fierce Mandalorians back into a retreat. The rout of the Mandalorians reaches a crescendo above the skies of Malachor V. Unbeknownst to the Jedi Order, DARTH REVAN has discovered numerous Sith artifacts and holocrons, all stored in great tomb-like cities buried beneath Malachor V's surface. As Revan plundered these tombs and relics, he fell deeper into the Dark Side. He learned of the location and the true nature of Korriban, he learned of the location of other Sith artifacts, and he learned how those strong in the light side of the Force could be seduced and made to see the strength inherent in the Sith teachings.

Revan knew he had discovered more than a staging area for the Mandalorian War - he had discovered an ancient, planet-sized Sith storehouse of knowledge. He had discovered a world that held one purpose - to teach and train others in the ways of the Sith. He had discovered a weapon that he could use against the Mandalorians, and a weapon by which he could convert more Jedi to his cause. This process of "turning" Jedi into SITH ASSASSINS continued even as the Jedi Council hailed Revan as a hero, as he lead the Republic forces to victory over the Mandalorians in the skies above Malachor V, and forces them to surrender. Revan is able to draw upon the dark side energies of the planet below and use it during the battle, destroying the Mandalore and ending the Mandalorian threat. Simultaneously, more and more Jedi, unable to ignore the power emanating from the planet below, become corrupted by its influence.

A lone Jedi Knight, who had journeyed earlier to fight alongside Revan, forsakes him after the surrender of the Mandalorians - and the apparent loss of the Knight's connection to the Force during the battle - and journeys back to the Old Republic, determined not to fight any longer. The Knight is exiled by the Jedi Order, and the Knight's lightsaber is removed. Meanwhile, Darth Revan and his apprentice, DARTH MALAK, return from the Mandalorian War with a new fleet, comprising many previously loyal Republic soldiers and commanders, and a systematic and lethal attack begins. In tandem with the attacks of his fleet, Revan orders his SITH ASSASSINS to ratchet up the frequency and brutality of their swift attack strikes. The period of history known as the Old Republic Insurrection begins.

In disarray, the Jedi Council quickly gathers a small band of Jedi warriors together under the command of Jedi BASTILA SHAN with an imperative and almost suicidal mission; to capture Darth Revan, demoralize his troops, and strangle the insurrection. Setting a trap against a small Republic fleet, a small Jedi strike force boards Revan's ship, battling the Dark Lord into submission. Rather than helping his Master, DARTH MALAK lets the Jedi drag Revan from the throne after attempting a mind-wipe which was only partially successful. Returning to the Council with a comatose Revan, Jedi Masters healed Revan's mind, and implanted a loyal Republic personality.

The Feeding of Malachor V

It is a period of uncertainty across the galaxy. After a long and vicious battle in the deepest area of the STAR FORGE, Dark Lord of the Sith DARTH REVAN succeeds in destroying his ex-apprentice DARTH MALAK. After recovering from the duel, Revan seeks out the secret dark outposts he established during the Mandalorian War. Journeying to the Outer Rim in the EBON HAWK, Revan is focused with a single purpose: locating the source of the dark power on MALACHOR V. Those awaiting Revan's arrival, including members of the Sith and the Jedi, are shocked when he fails to return from this pilgrimage. It is unknown whether Revan destroyed or resurrected the primal Sith forces on this forbidden planetoid.

The turmoil of the previous decade has had a detrimental effect on the surviving members of the Jedi Order. Disillusionment and despair persists in the wake of the war both throughout the Old Republic, and within the Jedi Order itself. Furthering exacerbating the malaise is the corruption of Darth Revan and Darth Malak, and the untold harm their actions had brought to the Republic. These three reasons were cited by many the impetus for the disbanding of the Jedi. While the Jedi mull over their troubles, the battle-hardened Mandalorian hero CANDEROUS ORDO returns to the homeworld of DXUN, seeking to rebuild his clan, and find a new purpose in the galaxy. Through prowess and cunning, he rises to eventually become Mandalore.

JEDI MASTER KREIA, Revan's old mentor, is still haunted by guilt, wondering whether it was her teaching that resulted in Revan's fall to the dark side, and begins to search for him. Sensing his last location, she travels to Malachor V, but is unable to shield her emotions, and is completely consumed by the dark side of the Force. She is lost to the Jedi, spending the next several years on Malachor V, learning its secrets, and eventually becoming The master of the Sith academy there. Guided by Kreia's influence, Sith assassins once again begin to emerge silently from Malachor V and strike at isolated Jedi across the Republic, capturing some Jedi to turn to the dark side, and slaying those that resist. Taken to the dark side world of Malachor V to be fed to the planet's dark energies, these Jedi husks create even more assassins and DARK JEDI, feeding the planet's hunger.

~~Personal comments resume here~~

Now, I still have a few bones to pick with this version as well. "Revan's will allows him to feed on and not be consumed by the power of the dark side" and then the next sentence is the brillinant plan of 'Hey, let's conquer our own Republic!'

Which seems like a very corrupted dark side thing to do. There's just no way around that.

Like you said, I think the best explanation is basically wartime trauma. My personal version goes like this: (LSF!Revan personally so going to use she/her in this bit) Revan is looking for tactics against the Mandalorians. The reason it was picked was because it was a taboo world to them. She wants to find out why and maybe use this to her advantage. Goes there, probably discovers the Trayus Academy and is horrified by this, especially since the world is opening up to settlers now. Decides to take two birds with one stone and defeat the Mandalorians there and get rid of this dark side nexus at the same time. (Jury's out on whether the temptation of knowledge is too strong and she Dabbles in some of the things there. Probably a strong possibility. Malak definitely does.) Bao-Dur creates the Mass Shadow Generator, they have the big fight, but she screwed up and it worked better (worse?) than ever intended. Everyone gets a touch of void and it makes all the Jedi go mad and dark side, including Revan. And if you're going a bit mad, things like disappearing into the Unknown Regions become a bit more justifiable in the addled mess of her mind. Especially, referencing another post here, that the Jedi didn't set a great track record of being welcoming and forgiving when they exiled the one Jedi who returned to them and covered up the true reason why. None of the Revanchists would have any reason to feel inclined to come home. At some point during the war, (referencing comics) just before the Covenant affair was exposed on Coruscant, some of the Jedi Council even put arrest warrants out on Revan and Malak. So they definitely weren't going to get the welcome mat back home.

To quote Bastila- "The dark side is not simply giving in to anger or temptation to use the Force to destructive ends. These things only lead to the dark side. The dark side grows stronger and more insidious the closer you draw to it. It begs you to surrender to it, to release all its terrible power… and it becomes harder and harder to resist. And once you stop resisting, it is too late. It twists you up inside and… and turns you into a mockery of everything you once stood for."

Invading the Republic they once protected is definitely a mockery of all that Revan and Malak once stood for. The dark side in itself is brainwashing enough, they didn't need help from any Sith Emperors.

[ospreyeamon]

The OG outline from Lucas forums is interesting. It feels like a concept draft that was diverged from as the story got further into production. Proto-Revan seems to be closer to Exar Kun as a character; a power hungry dick out for his own ambition from the very beginning. There’s even that mention of Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas who was killed during the Great Sith War, almost certainly before Revan was born.

To clarify a couple of my base assumptions, I don’t believe that the Dark-Side Force is intrinsically evil because I don’t believe ontological evil is a thing. Evil is a philosophical concept and a useful short-hand, but not something that objectively exists. I view the Light-Side/Dark-Side divide as a passion vs serenity dichotomy (and even then all dichotomies are false dichotomies, Voss please elaborate on the Force being grey). The ancient Je’daii managed to balance practicing the use of the Light and Dark-Sides of the Force for thousands of years before the Force Wars broke out, which is no worse than the Jedi’s track record with that kind of conflict.

I see the wound of Malachor V as being similar to the wound of the Exile – not a thing of evil but a thing of trauma. The Exile’s wound is something that most Force-sensitives who perceive it react to as something pitiable, abominable, or unnerving, but it exerts no control over their decision-making. The Exile subconsciously feeds on the deaths of the people they kill, but they decide to kill independently of the Force-drain; they aren’t killing people to feed on them or by feeding on them. So far as we know, they spent their nine years of lonesome wandering not killing anyone.

Given how badly the Jedi above Malachor V react to its destruction, relative to characters’ reaction to the destruction of Alderaan, I assume that Malachor V must also have been an inhabited world at the time it was destroyed. What shoved the Revanchist Jedi at Malachor V over the final precipice was feeling the deaths of millions or billions of people funnelled into them through the Force. Adding to the depth of the wound is that Malachor V was an old Sith world now in the sphere of Republic known space, presumably conquered during the Counter-invasion following the Great Hyperspace War which left other older scars ripped open by the Mass Shadow Generator. Possibly there was also something that happened on the planet during the Old Sith Empire, but nothing that prevented its continuing habitation.

My assumption is that the Trayus Academy was founded by Darth Traya, since you know Trayus Traya. There probably had been an old Sith Academy or library on the site, but I think its particular terrible teachings were the product of the Revanchist Sith marinading themselves in the wound at Malachor V. Specifically, the stealth/life-drain abilities that pinnacled in Darth Nihlus seem to have been something new, something that that the Jedi had never seen before. Given that the Jedi Council didn’t recognise the kind of threat the Sith had metamorphosed into during the Dark War and that they still believe Kreia had died in the Mandalorian Wars, I think that Nihlus and Traya mostly stayed on Malachor V during the Jedi Civil War because they weren’t fighting the Republic.

Rather than there having been any brainwashing involved in Revan’s decision to invade the Republic – either from the Dark-Side or the Sith Empire – I think that Revan convinced themself and their followers that invading the Republic was necessary to save the Republic. All the blood and suffering of the Jedi Civil War was justified by the idea that it would prevent the destruction of the Republic and other neutral worlds by the True Sith Empire in the future. (That this provided an excuse to kill the Jedi Masters they had come to despise so much was merely a seductive convenience.)

The Republic’s government was incredibly corrupt and ineffective during the Mandalorian Wars, and the Jedi Council of the period was just as useless. If they couldn’t deal with the Mandalorians there was no way they were going to hold up against the even greater threat of the True Sith Empire. The Jedi Council would have refused to believe Revan had discovered the shadowy threat when the Council had not. The Republic Senate had only properly mobilised the military after the Mandalorians attacked them, even though the wars had been going on for years and it was obvious Republic worlds would be invaded eventually. In the face of such incompetent leadership, it would have been natural for Revan and the Revanchists to believe they could do better.

Revan was wrong about being able to do better. Revan failed to prevent their relationship with Malak disintegrating until Malak shot them in the back. Malak was Revan’s most important ally and not someone Revan had foreseen betraying them (even though Revan had cut Malak’s jaw off). Malak never bought into or lost faith in Revan’s grand plan to remake the Republic, neglecting to maintain Revan’s policy of keeping key infrastructure intact. Personally, I think that Revan fell to the Dark-Side before Malak and that was part of the tragedy of their relationship. Malak, like most of the Revanchist Sith, became ruled by hatred rather than strategy. The result was a weakened Republic with a brittle economy rather than the strengthened one Revan had planned to build – it was extremely fortunate the True Sith Empire only decided to invade after another couple of centuries rather than, say, immediately after the end of the Dark War.

[ospreyeamon]

There is an idea present in the Jedi Council’s tellings of the origins of the Jedi Civil War – not just in the KOTOR games and tie-ins but SWTOR’s Galactic Timeline as well – that you can trace the troubles in the Mandalorian Wars and the origin of the Jedi Civil War back to Revan and Malak’s defiance of the Council’s order to stay out of the Mandalorian Wars. That Revan and Malak’s fall was rooted in the hubris of thinking that they knew better than the Council. That if only Revan, Malak, the Exile and their cohort hadn’t disobeyed, then everything would have been fine.

I don’t think that everything would have been fine if Revan and Malak had just obeyed the Council. The Mandalorians would have continued with their invasion of the Republic, killing hundreds of billions of people. The True Sith Empire still wouldn’t have revealed themselves.

Eventually, Mandalore the Ultimate would have decided that the time was right to force the Jedi to enter the war, on the Mandalorians’ terms rather than the Order’s or the Republic’s. One advantageous way to do this would have been to uncover the location of the Dantooine Enclave, the Jedi’s primary base in the Outer-rim, and nuke the planet from orbit. The True Sith Empire still wouldn’t have revealed themselves.

Having been directly attacked, the surviving members of the Jedi Council would have been forced to enter the war, whether or not they believed the shadowy threat might still be a problem. Their inaction would have devastated the reputation of the Jedi in the Republic and neutral worlds – the Jedi stood by and allowed trillions to die, only getting involved when it was their own necks on the line. Revan, Malak, and the other Jedi who wanted to enter the war earlier would have been furious that the Council had countermanded them from acting on their own better judgment only for this to be the result. The split in the Order still would have happened, just differently.

But I think that the Revanchist Jedi had their own equivalent of this idea – that if the Jedi Council had just answered the Republic’s call to war like the Revanchists everything would have gone better, and the Jedi Civil War would have been avoided. I think they were wrong too.

Given Mandalore the Preserver’s account of the Mandalorian high command’s assessment of the potential threat of a Jedi contingent led by Master Kavar, I imagine the war would have continued to go badly for the Republic under Kavar’s leadership until Revan and Malak became desperate enough to assassinate Kavar so Revan could take his place as supreme commander. Possibly after the Mandalorians assassinated, injured or otherwise took out of commission battle-meditation prodigy Padawan Bastila Shan. Revan and Malak still would have arced through a decent to become fallen heroes. The split in the Order still would have happened, just differently.

[dopaminevampire-deactivated2024]

Kotor theory because I am deep diving lore.

Spoilers, kinda.

So regardless of whether we acknowledge the idea of the Sith Empire and brainwashing, I was surprised to learn that Korriban was already occupied when Revan and Malak showed up. It seems to be implied Czerka already set up shop there, but more interestingly, Jorak Uln, the crazy old coot that holes up in one of the tombs, is a remnant from Exar Kun's war 40 years previously. As is Sion, from the second kotor game.

That would be the war that Jolee fought in against them.

Looking at the history further, it seems that Sith war ended and a few scattered Sith made a run for it in various parts of space. Some of them ended up on Korriban and restarted the academy there. Its been running the *entire time* and none of the Jedi did anything about it.

The current headmaster of the academy as in the time of gameplay is Jorak's pupil, so guess is good he's been there a long while as well.

And that led me to thinking- when exactly did Yuthura show up in all of this?

Now my immediate reaction to this was "this is ridiculous, this is dumb, this has to be an oversight, there's no way these Sith have been here for 40 years and roll over and show belly and fall in line the moment the new punk kids show up on the block" but then THAT got me thinking about something else that doesn't entirely make sense either-

One of the first battles Revan and Malak engaged in was attacking Foerost. This battle is an almost exact copy of another battle that was initiated by Qel-Droma... 40 years earlier... in the last Sith war... with Exar Kun. Spoils of this battle ended with Revan and Malak taking most of the Republic fleet from drydocks and also heralding themselves in as the new Sith Lords.

Which brings us back to Korriban. What better way to make a bang and convince these Sith holdouts to fall in line than copying a battle from their own past war? Maybe even doing it better? Proving their mettle?

If we add in that perhaps this was preventing Revan from accessing the Star Map, capturing the Republic fleet makes a whole lot of sense too. Or even if not, asset denial.

Bonus- I also learned there is a bar on Korriban named "The Drunk Side"

[ospreyeamon]

Wookieepedia says that the Jedi Order couldn’t allocate as many resources to mopping up the remnants of Exar Kun's Sith army as the Council wanted to because the Republic persuaded them to focus on the post-war reconstruction efforts. Korriban is much bigger than just the Valley of the Dark Lords, which is all we ever seem to see of it, so there would have been other hiding places on the planet Jorak Uln could have been moving between.

Your theory about Revan and Malak redoing the Battle of Foerost but better in part to attract the survivors of Kun and Qel-Droma's old following to them makes a lot of sense. Revan seems to have put effort into forcibly converting captured Jedi to the cause and to the Dark-Side. Recruiting existing Dark-Siders – or killing them if they refused to accept Revan's leadership – would match that.

It's such an effective way for Revan to signal the weakness of the Republic and the Jedi. The Sith attacked Foerost in the last war, but have the defences improved since then? No, Revan and Malak being able to one-up Qel-Droma suggests that the Republic learnt no lessons from the Great Sith War at all. Stealing a fleet that would otherwise be fielded against you is also just a strategically sound opening move too.

Huh, I had completely missed that Darth Sion was one of Exar Kun's old acolytes. I assumed that he was one of the Revanchist Jedi like Nihlus, that he had known the Jedi Exile during the Mandalorian Wars, however distantly.

(The brainwashing story annoys me so much. The two KOTOR games do give us enough clues to put together what Revan and Malak were doing in the gap between the Mandalorian and Jedi Civil Wars – they were hunting down the Star Forge and using it to engage in a secret military production build-up to stack the deck in their favour before attacking the Republic. Revan was intentionally leaving the Republic's infrastructure intact so it could serve as a platform for an invasion of the True Sith Empire after the Republic had been defeated.)

[dopaminevampire-deactivated2024]

Now you got me thinking even more...

(It's 4 AM and I can't sleep and this is all un fact checked stream of consciousness thought)

First of all, very true that Korriban is a huge place. I remember a line about Dreshdae being the only active settlement on the planet though, so either the Sith remnants were roughing it or like I said, no one bothered to check in on the place.

Also, if Czerka was there before, it might be even more obscure. Seeing as they renamed Kashyyyk "Edean," anything goes. Korriban might have fallen completely off the map basically. Its location and lore locked in the forbidden Jedi archives. So can't match it to this little nowhere settlement.

That's possibly why Revan and Malak never found it sooner, if there were historical and naming inconsistencies and they were forbidden from the Archives.

Speaking of, on the other hand, maybe that's how they learned about some of the Sith things in the first place. Revan and Malak had a huge thirst for knowledge. So if they learned about that lack of mop up in the wake of the last war (thanks for that addition, I'd missed that) then it looks something like this:

*learns Sith remnant exists out there*

"Oh. That could be a problem."

*Mandalorians start attacking."

"Now that is a PROBLEM."

Jedi Council: *believes there is an unseen dark threat*

Revan and Malak: *put two and two and remember what they read from before*

So again. All the more reason to argue to go to war if they believe that is the secret dark threat behind the war. A resurgence of Sith from 40 years before, pulling the strings behind the scenes.

And about the brainwashing/Sith Empire lore- I don't HATE it, I just waffle between "this is a cop out, let Revan be feral" and "this makes it easier and more sensible for why you can be a light side paragon in kotor."

Actually, I dug REALLY hard and found the OG og lore someone cross posted from lucasforums years ago. It's long, but I could post that and tag you if you're interested and haven't seen it before. Talks about Revan's fall to the dark side, the reasons why, and a bunch of other characters' paths. Kreia remained pretty much spot on to it.

[ospreyeamon]

That thread sounds interesting. If you could post it I would appreciate that.

I took Dreshdae being described as the only active settlement on Korriban to imply that there were other known abandoned ones. Korriban’s location was almost certainly restricted from the young Knights but the Jedi Master who would go on to call herself Kreia was a former keeper of the Jedi archives and histories. I bet she knew where Korriban was.

Given the way the Jedi Council talks about Revan and Malak, it doesn’t sound like there were any red flags in their behaviour prior to them leaving to fight in the Mandalorian Wars. To the contrary, Revan seems to have been held up as the paragon of that generation, driven to fight the Mandalorians by the atrocities committed on Cathar. Revan and Malak are pretty much quintessential fallen heroes. Sure, the seeds of Darth Revan’s flaws – ruthlessness, utilitarianism, manipulativeness, secrecy – were presumably already there, but those qualities are fine in moderation.

If you’re asking “What turns a hero into a villain?” then “mind-control” isn’t a satisfying answer. For one thing it means your villain was never truly a villain, just a victim of mind control, so you haven’t actually answered the question. One of the plot holes in the mind-control story is the part where the mind-control broke early in the Jedi Civil War but Revan and Malak kept invading like nothing had changed. It also requires all the other Revanchists to somehow not notice the massive suspicious shift in Revan and Malak’s priorities after their jaunt off to the Sith Empire, or for Vitiate to mind control all of them which – given what we see on Ziost – would likely be beyond even his capabilities.

The mind-control story also doesn’t answer the question of why Revan in particular fell because Revan was already making some extremely ethically dubious choices before the end of the Mandalorian Wars. Revan orchestrated the Battle of Malachor V in a way that enabled it to be used as a purge. Revan probably intentionally delayed their fleet’s arrival to force the use of the Mass Shadow Generator.

Revan fell because of the Mandalorian Wars. War changes people. What I wrote about the Revanchist Jedi falling during the war because the shift to military decision making and the moral injury that caused, I think was especially true of Revan. Revan was in overall command – billions lived and died by Revan’s decisions. Choice after choice after choice, each more horrible than the last. Revan warped under that pressure.

It makes sense amnesia could have scraped away the layers to reveal Revan’s “true self” – the compassionate nature eroded away – because the layers scraped away included the memories of the Mandalorian Wars, which were what had changed Revan. Being temporarily cut off from the Force also probably helped, as being enmeshed in the Dark-Side cannot have been helping whatever anger management issues led Revan to rip Malak’s jaw off.

Pre-amnesia, Revan’s main defining character trait is that they are inconveniently brilliant. The greatest tactical and strategic mind of the era. Maybe it makes sense for Revan to be a dumbass post-amnesia, especially since that’s also post-brain-damage, but not before. I’d argue that it would be out-of-character for Revan to have to taken a fleet after the True Sith immediately after the end of the Mandalorian Wars.

A reasonable chunk of the navy Revan led in the Mandalorian Wars – including valuable senior officers like Rear Admiral Saul Karath – stood down and returned to the Republic after the Battle of Malachor V was won. Revan and Malak no longer had those ships or that expertise. The Republic government would have ceased constructing and supplying them with new ships with the end of the war.

The Revanchists had no maps of the Sith Empire, no intermediary outposts to secure their supply lines, no allies in unknown space to link up with. That’s not a situation a commander who was good at logistics would have willingly put themselves in if they thought there were other options.

The idea Revan and Malak would have gone alone is just as stupid. Admirals don’t do their own reconnaissance. That’s the scouts’ job. Your high command is too valuable to risk like that.

(I'm sorry, the mind-control story just annoys me so much.)

[dopaminevampire-deactivated2024]

Kotor theory because I am deep diving lore.

Spoilers, kinda.

So regardless of whether we acknowledge the idea of the Sith Empire and brainwashing, I was surprised to learn that Korriban was already occupied when Revan and Malak showed up. It seems to be implied Czerka already set up shop there, but more interestingly, Jorak Uln, the crazy old coot that holes up in one of the tombs, is a remnant from Exar Kun's war 40 years previously. As is Sion, from the second kotor game.

That would be the war that Jolee fought in against them.

Looking at the history further, it seems that Sith war ended and a few scattered Sith made a run for it in various parts of space. Some of them ended up on Korriban and restarted the academy there. Its been running the *entire time* and none of the Jedi did anything about it.

The current headmaster of the academy as in the time of gameplay is Jorak's pupil, so guess is good he's been there a long while as well.

And that led me to thinking- when exactly did Yuthura show up in all of this?

Now my immediate reaction to this was "this is ridiculous, this is dumb, this has to be an oversight, there's no way these Sith have been here for 40 years and roll over and show belly and fall in line the moment the new punk kids show up on the block" but then THAT got me thinking about something else that doesn't entirely make sense either-

One of the first battles Revan and Malak engaged in was attacking Foerost. This battle is an almost exact copy of another battle that was initiated by Qel-Droma... 40 years earlier... in the last Sith war... with Exar Kun. Spoils of this battle ended with Revan and Malak taking most of the Republic fleet from drydocks and also heralding themselves in as the new Sith Lords.

Which brings us back to Korriban. What better way to make a bang and convince these Sith holdouts to fall in line than copying a battle from their own past war? Maybe even doing it better? Proving their mettle?

If we add in that perhaps this was preventing Revan from accessing the Star Map, capturing the Republic fleet makes a whole lot of sense too. Or even if not, asset denial.

Bonus- I also learned there is a bar on Korriban named "The Drunk Side"

[ospreyeamon]

Wookieepedia says that the Jedi Order couldn’t allocate as many resources to mopping up the remnants of Exar Kun's Sith army as the Council wanted to because the Republic persuaded them to focus on the post-war reconstruction efforts. Korriban is much bigger than just the Valley of the Dark Lords, which is all we ever seem to see of it, so there would have been other hiding places on the planet Jorak Uln could have been moving between.

Your theory about Revan and Malak redoing the Battle of Foerost but better in part to attract the survivors of Kun and Qel-Droma's old following to them makes a lot of sense. Revan seems to have put effort into forcibly converting captured Jedi to the cause and to the Dark-Side. Recruiting existing Dark-Siders – or killing them if they refused to accept Revan's leadership – would match that.

It's such an effective way for Revan to signal the weakness of the Republic and the Jedi. The Sith attacked Foerost in the last war, but have the defences improved since then? No, Revan and Malak being able to one-up Qel-Droma suggests that the Republic learnt no lessons from the Great Sith War at all. Stealing a fleet that would otherwise be fielded against you is also just a strategically sound opening move too.

Huh, I had completely missed that Darth Sion was one of Exar Kun's old acolytes. I assumed that he was one of the Revanchist Jedi like Nihlus, that he had known the Jedi Exile during the Mandalorian Wars, however distantly.

(The brainwashing story annoys me so much. The two KOTOR games do give us enough clues to put together what Revan and Malak were doing in the gap between the Mandalorian and Jedi Civil Wars – they were hunting down the Star Forge and using it to engage in a secret military production build-up to stack the deck in their favour before attacking the Republic. Revan was intentionally leaving the Republic's infrastructure intact so it could serve as a platform for an invasion of the True Sith Empire after the Republic had been defeated.)

[ospreyeamon]

the falls of the revanchist jedi

The narrative doesn’t directly examine why the Jedi who followed Revan and Malak fell. It is spoken of as a given – they followed Revan into war, so they followed Revan into darkness. That’s not how people work though. That’s not even how people under the influence of the Dark Side of the Force work. Spending twenty years as Palpatine’s thrall didn’t prevent Vader from throwing his Master into the reactor shaft to save his son. Revan can murder every NPC available to be murdered until reaching Rakata Prime only to pull a 180, redeem Bastila, and be feted as a hero of the Republic, Sith-eyes and all.

All but one of the surviving Revanchist Jedi who followed Revan and Malak into the Mandalorian Wars followed them again into the Jedi Civil War. Even the Exile, that lone dissenting actor, can say that they would have fought with their fellows against the Republic had their connection to the Force not been severed; that they were unable, not unwilling. Yet, the Exile can also say that they would not have followed Revan and Malak in attacking the Republic, that they went to war to defend the innocent. Many of the other Jedi who joined the war effort alongside them must have felt the same way, in the beginning.

Many of the soldiers of the Republic like Carth Onasi returned home after the Mandalorian Wars were over, even those like Saul Karath who would bow to Revan again. What then are the factors that led every surviving Revanchist Jedi, save the Exile, to follow Revan from the Mandalorian Wars into the Jedi Civil War?

1) The Mandalorian Wars changed the Jedi who fought in them. The Exile’s dialogue provides the different reasons why they might have left to fight in the war – to protect the innocent, to test their power, to defend the Republic, to win glory – reflecting varying motivations of Knights and Padawans recruited by Revan and Malak. However, despite the differences in the initial reasons for defying the Jedi Council to answer the Republic’s call, they all would have gone through similar uniting experiences during the war. Terrible experiences. Shared hardship often serves to reinforce group identity.

Older Jedi like Kavar and Arren Kae had fought wars before, but the initial expedition led by Revan and Malak was almost entirely composed of young Knights and older Padawans. Military morality, ethics in warfare, tends to be rather twisted from the perspective of modern western civilian morality. Your ability to prosecute the war and the safety of your soldiers takes priority over the lives of enemy, and sometimes even allied, civilians. Ruthless is more than a virtue, it’s a necessity. Collateral damage is an inevitability. For young relatively inexperienced Jedi, raised on ideals of valuing all life and always seeking non-violent resolutions, the transition to military command positions where they were not only required to kill, not only required to led troops to their death, but required to give orders which they knew would directly result in the deaths of civilians would have been distressing.

We know that the Exile once led troops directly into a minefield during the Battle of Dxun, but I think that barely scratched the surface. We aren’t given the full laundry list of the Mandalorians’ war crimes, but at the very least it includes the crime of aggression, murder of civilians, use of child soldiers, and conscription of captured civilians into the Neo-Crusaders and for forced labour. Given this disregard for the lives of civilians, I consider it likely that the Mandalorians also used hostages and headquartered themselves inside buildings like schools and hospitals. I suspect both sides used poison weapons, nuclear weapons, torture, and executed prisoners of war.

2) The Battle of Malachor V was a purge and a crucible of conversion. Kreia, HK-47, and the recording of Bastila Shan all say it; “a series of massacres that masked another war, a war of conversion”, “the intention was to destroy the Jedi, break their will, and make them loyal to Revan … Revan was "cleaning house" at Malachor V”, “to convert the last of the Jedi who fought beside [Revan] – and murder those who would not”. The Jedi in the radius of the Mass Shadow Generator would have included the Jedi Revan did not believe would agree with the plan to invade the Republic.

I think many of the Revanchist Jedi had already been falling by inches before Malachor. The Mandalorian Wars were brutal and one of the major symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is emotional dysregulation. Irritability, anxiety, depression, guilt, anger – the ongoing effects of trauma make a person more susceptible to inadvertently drawing on the Dark-Side of the Force. Using the Dark-Side of the Force was forbidden by the Code enforced by the Jedi Council, but the Revanchists had been pressured to compromise their ethics in other ways to effectively prosecute the war.

For any Jedi who had not already fallen, the detonation of the Mass Shadow Generator was a final blow they could not withstand. They all fell – into the Dark-Side, into death, away from the Force.

This was the conversion that Revan desired. The moral conversation – the acceptance of actions that violated their previous moral code, the previous moral code that would not have permitted making war on the Republic. The conversion in the Force – pushing Jedi to the Dark-Side ensured that they would not be accepted back into the Order by the Jedi Council even if they desired to return.

3) The Jedi Council’s decision to exile the Jedi who returned to face them was a gift to Revan and Malak. The Council’s judgement might have been rooted in their discomfort with what the Exile had become but the reason they publicly gave is that the Exile disobeyed the Council to follow Revan to war. That reason applied equally to every single other Revanchist. By exiling the one Revanchist to return the Jedi Council exiled them all, whether or not they intended to. They may not have, but by deciding to keep secret the true reasons behind their sentence of exile they ensured the other Revanchists could interpret their judgement no other way.

Telling the Revanchist Jedi they would never be welcome to return to the Jedi Order ensured that they would never go back. Onwards was the only path left to them.

4) Revan was extremely charismatic and competent. The Revanchist Jedi had already decided that Revan and Malak judgement was better than the Jedi Council’s when they chose to defy the Council’s orders to follow them to war. Revan, Malak and the Revanchists then won the war for the Republic. In fact, Revan even discovered the shadowy threat the which had been the Council’s justification for sitting out the war through engaging in it, while the Jedi Council remained ignorant.

The Republic government probably bungled the early stages of the Mandalorian Wars by not intervening sooner. The Mandalorians were committing more than enough war crimes for them to justify it, but they allowed Mandalorians to expand their territory, build their forces and industry, and entrench their advantage. When the Republic did enter the war, it wasn’t because the Republic leadership had made a strategic decision, or even a moral one; it was because some corrupt politicians organised bribes to fast-track Taris into the Republic because it was under threat and they wanted to protect their business holdings there. The Jedi Council was also tangled up in the culture of corruption; Lucien Draay was given a seat on the Council even though he’d been accused of planning and assisting the murder of four Padawans because of his powerful family connections.

The Old Republic was more an aristocratic republic than a democratic one. Alderaan, Onderon, the Empress Teta system – they were all monarchies during this period, not democracies. If aristocrats could hold power through right of blood and plutocrats through wealth, then why shouldn’t Revan lead the Galactic Republic by right of merit and conquest?

Revan was secretive, but at least some of the other Revanchist Sith knew about the shadowy threat – the True Sith Empire. If the Republic was going to need to fight another war against an even greater enemy, surely it would need better leadership. Leadership like Revan.

[ospreyeamon]

jaric kaedan: designated jerk

Jaric Kaedan is the designated jerk of the cold war era Jedi Council. When there is a mean or aggressive thing the writers want a member of the Council to say, Master Kaedan is nearly always the one to say it. However, I would argue that a lot of the mean things Kaedan says are mean things which needed to be said by someone.

For example, his questioning of Kira Carsen’s loyalty after it is revealed she is a Child of the Emperor is pertinent given the context. That someone who was accepted into the Order as an adult after attempting to steal the hyperdrive of a ship which just happened to belong to a member of the Jedi Council, whose position as that Council Member’s Padawan granted her close access to the Council, has been concealing her origins as a Sith acolyte is suspicious. During Act One the Jedi uncover a Sith sleeper agent, Tarnis, embedded deeply in Republic military research. In Consular Act Three, the potential infiltration of the Jedi Order by the Children of the Emperor is proven to be something Kaedan was absolutely correct to be concerned about. The Council would be remiss in its duty of protection towards the other members of the Order if they didn’t investigate the possibility of Kira being a plant. Arguably, they’d also be failing Kira by not consolidating the evidence proving her innocence because Kira might need that evidence if her status as a Child of the Emperor leaks again in the future.

Kaedan’s cynicism about the prospects of Tol Braga’s plan bring peace with the Empire is entirely reasonable. The risks of undertaking the mission go beyond the risk to the members of the strike team. If the Jedi abduct or assassinate the Sith Emperor it will trigger a second great galactic war – a war the republic military has been preparing for but may not be ready to begin. Even if Tol Braga succeeds in turning the Emperor to the Light, the wider Empire would be unlikely accept the commands of a Jedi Emperor, either dismissing the “redemption” as lies or mind control, or denouncing the ruler they are already becoming disillusioned with as a traitor.

His concerns about Jomar Chul’s vision are also valid. Even if the Hero of Tython is unwaveringly loyal to the Order and would never willingly draw on the Dark-Side of the Force, the Jedi Council should be aware that Jedi can be forced into falling under torture. The vision is an ill omen at the outset of an already poorly considered mission.

This gives me the impression that Jaric Kaedan’s role as the designated jerk is something which exists in-universe – that he has fallen into a dynamic with the rest of the Jedi Council where he feels he must voice the cynical and callous opinions because most of the time nobody else is willing to. If the points aren’t raised the quality of the Council’s discussions will suffer, the quality of the Council’s decisions will suffer. None of them particularly want to tell Bela Kiwiiks she might have welcomed a mole into the Order or tell Tol Braga his pet emperor redemption project is stupid. So long as Jaric Kaedan is always willing to be the bad cop then then the other members of the Council are free to play the good cop, or the mediator, or the supplier of wise proverbs.

Which is, moving further into headcanon, part of the reason why Kaedan is such a grumpy jerk. He knows he’s slipped into this trap and resents it. He shouldn’t have to always be the one bringing these things up. He shouldn’t have to worry that nobody else will if he’s not there. And the habit of imagining and voicing cynical takes, once established, is difficult to break.

[ospreyeamon]

tasiele background headcanons

Tasiele’s mother Renisele Shan was a Jedi Master, born to two Jedi Masters. Tasiele’s father Bon was a paralegal employed by the Jedi Order parttime to advise them on tax law and conflict of interest declarations. Tasiele loved philosophy and she loved arguing about it, something her parents jokingly both claimed she had inherited from the other.

Her mother was killed in action during the overthrow of the Myrialite autocracy in the Kanz sector*. After her death, Tasiele's father’s contract with the Order was not renewed, with the reason given being that his relation to a member of the Order presented a potential conflict of interest.

The lover Tasiele petitioned the Jedi Council for the right to marry and raise Satele together with wasn’t Satele’s biodad – that brief relationship had fallen apart before Satele was born. It was part of the reason why Tasiele initially had Satele communally reared in the creche; she wasn’t confident in her ability to juggle her duties within the Order with the responsibility of being the sole caretaker of a young child.

In addition to visiting her daughter between missions, Tasiele also volunteered in the Creche when she was on rest-stay in the Temple. She found she enjoyed working with babies and toddlers as she became more confident in how to talk to and teach small children – enough that she was considering becoming a fulltime Creshe Master.

The lover Tasiele wanted to marry and raise Satele with was a sullustan named Jenb Tumm, an actuary employed by the Ord Ibanna Environmental Protection Agency. They met on a thrilling mission involving whistle-blowing survey-droids, forensic accounting and trespassing in swamps, which resulted in the Chief Compliance and Financial Officers of Czerka Brema receiving five-month suspended sentences.

Tasiele had no idea that she was at risk of being exiled and losing all contact with her daughter when she made her petition to the Council. For the vast majority of the Order’s history, it had been considered normal for some Jedi to raise their children or marry or both. There were many examples of Jedi like single-mother and adult-entrant to the Order Nomi Sunrider who rose to sit on the High Council. The request wasn’t a radical one, but rather an appeal to return to tradition; to do what Tasiele’s parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had done freely. The Galactic Republic weighing in on what should have been an internal Jedi affair caught her completely off-guard.

The Jedi Council suspended Tasiele’s sentence of exile early in the Great Galactic War, when it became clear the Order would need to call in every Jedi it could find to stand a chance of holding off the Sith. By then it was already too late – she was gone.

*The dates for the Kanz Disorders and the Great Galactic War come from very different sources and would put the end of the Kanz Disorders as happening in the middle of the Great Galactic War. Given that the Galactic Republic and Jedi Order lost that war, spending most of it being pushed back or in stalemates unable to retake territory, I think it would be very unlikely that they would have diverted resources to dismantle slavery in the Kanz sector. I believe it makes more sense to place the Jedi-Republic intervention led by Knight Mari-Elan Nora a couple of decades before the beginning of the Great Galactic War instead.

[muchymozzarella]

I think Miguel hating Miles is a hilarious meme but some people truly have 0 reading comprehension because they think that's real and also that Miguel somehow stole his double's life instead of, you know, wanting to make sure his daughter didn't know the trauma of losing her father to a random act of violence.

But because that world collapsed seemingly as a result of his actions, he connects sacrificing his happiness to his ultimate goal of preserving every world.

From a storytelling perspective we KNOW he's in the wrong because that's how these stories work, but from a practical perspective he has more insight and experience and we trust he's correct in his assessment because he literally knows best. He could still be wrong but the idea of it is less compelling.

So most of the spider people he has brought in both believe him because he has been proven right time and time again, but also it's likely he brings in people who he believes are most susceptible to his mission statement, with some exceptions - he's clearly brought people from worlds that are hostile and unbearable to live in, like Margo and Hobie and Gwen. Because despite his plans, he also still has a heart and empathy for those in need.

[ospreyeamon]

Miguel hating Miles is at its root Miguel hating himself. Miguel sees himself in Miles and he has never forgiven himself for, never recovered from, the destruction of the universe of the family he adopted.

Like, Miguel probably wasn't doing too well even before that happened. We see what draws the Spiderpeople to each other and it's empathy and loneliness. Miguel and Jessica can't leave Gwen behind, even though they think in the greater scheme of things they should, because she's just had her relationship with her father disintegrate in front of them; they can't leave her alone to suffer with nobody who understands.

How isolated to you have to feel to willingly give up your own life to live somebody else's? Miguel adopted his other self's family as much because he wanted to be a part of it as to protect them from grief, so when things go horribly wrong he blames it on his own selfishness. But who would foresee that going off to live in a parallel universe would cause that parallel universe to collapse? It's not like you're causing a time paradox.

Besides, if we can trust Miguel's rant about how everything is Miles' fault (which, we obviously can't, but anyway), the anomalies began around the start of the first movie in line with the supercollider multiverse experiments. Miles' being bitten by the Wrong Spider was just a consequence of those experiments, like the Spiderpeople crashing into his universe. So, the root cause of the instability in the Spiderverse, including the collapse of Miguel's adopted universe, is almost certainly the ongoing effects of the supercollider experiments.

(Holey Moley really is the Big Bad. He's going to be so chuffed about that. Not only is he Miles' nemesis but Miguel's as well! ALL THE SPIDERPEOPLE WILL ACKNOWLEDGE HIS THREAT LEVEL!)

Miles wasn't to blame for the things that went wrong around him and Miguel wasn't either. But if Miguel blames himself he can believe that he can prevent that kind of tragedy from happening again by avoiding his past mistakes and helping other people avoid his past mistakes. By locking them in containment fields if necessary.

And Miguel does a great job of keeping the negative effects of the ongoing anomalies in check! And (given that Miles finds what appears to be every single other Spiderbeing in existence hanging out in a cool secret society he wasn't invited to join) Miguel adopts every Spiderperson he meets because they're all so lonely without any other Spiderpeople around, it would be like leaving a wet kitten by the side of the road.

It's just with Miles, Miles who Miguel sees too much of himself in, Miles who acts as a trigger for all of that unaddressed self-loathing, that Miguel comes undone. That's why we see the group of Miles' Spiderfriends break off and decide to help him after the chase scene - the chase scene was when it became obvious just how badly Miguel was projecting and how much his trauma had overwhelmed his ability to analyse the situation.

Oh buddy, you are way too close to this one. We are going to prove you wrong about how the multiverse works and then give you so many hugs.

[ospreyeamon]

some heads are not fit to wear the crown

Houses Ulgo and Rist’s assassination of Price Gaul and Queen Silara Panteer is one of those decisions where – though murder is wrong, though it triggered great strife – I absolutely understand why they did it. Ulgo and Rist removed what they viewed as dangerously incompetent leadership because they believed it was necessary to protect Alderaan.

The Galactic Republic agreed to sign the Treaty of Coruscant because they lost the Great Galactic War. The Imperial fleet had succeeded in occupying Coruscant’s skies, giving them the ability to launch an orbital bombardment at will, while the Republic lacked the means to dislodge them. Imperial troops had taken the Galactic Senate hostage and killed the Supreme Chancellor. Because the Empire had already been winning the war even before they seized the capital to use as a bargaining chip, the Sith Emperor was the one to set the terms of the frosty peace.

The Treaty of Coruscant was a shockingly good deal for the Republic under the circumstances (which is why many in the Empire were so resentful of it). The only territory the Empire demanded they cede which the Empire had not already occupied or was actively contesting was seven uninhabited star systems, when the Republic did not expect to be able to hold most of those fronts. The Empire had Republic representatives followed around by droids to monitor their adherence to the Treaty, but did not demand any Republic citizens be handed over to stand trial in the Empire for crimes real or invented. Crucially, Empire set no caps on the Republic’s ship building or military expenditure and extracted no economic reparations.

Those like Gaul Panteer, Leontyne Saresh and Elin Garza who publicly decried the Treaty, saying that the Republic should have kept fighting rather than accept peace with the Empire, were in denial about the political reality of the situation. At that time, the Republic had no prospect of being able to swing the tide of the war to put themselves in a stronger position in the peace negotiations. If the Republic had refused to ratify the Treaty the Empire could have levelled its capital, killing billions and decapitating institutions like the SIS headquartered on the planet. The only meaningful blow the Republic was dealt by the Treaty of Coruscant was to its pride.

Bouris Ulgo hated the Sith Empire, but he wasn’t an idiot. The Treaty of Coruscant, humiliating though it may have been, gave the Republic the perfect opportunity to rearm itself in the breathing space provided by the Cold War. The Republic was bigger than the Empire – bigger economy, bigger population – so given the opportunity they could out produce and out recruit the Empire. If the Republic was patient, then they could have their vengeance and victory.

But being protected by the Treaty of Coruscant long enough to rearm required remaining part of the Galactic Republic, because the Empire made the Treaty with the Republic. The moment Alderaan seceded, it was no longer protected by the Empire’s promise to withdraw, and the Imperial Military could launch a second invasion without breaking the Treaty. And why wouldn’t the Sith Empire invade Alderaan? What else did all their forces ordered to break off the attacks on Coruscant and other Republic worlds have to do? Gaul Panteer’s very loud and public removal Alderaan from the Republic must have looked like an open invitation for the Empire to come and conquer some beautiful new camping sites.

And for what? Was Gaul Panteer arrogant enough to believe Alderaan so important that he could manipulate the Republic into abandoning the Treaty of Coruscant? Was he so myopic that he imagined he could sit on Alderaan feeling self-righteous with no consequences he hadn’t considered in the heat of the moment? Did he think that he could leverage Alderaan’s status as a Core Founder to extract concessions from the Republic to undo the cessation and stop opposing the Treaty – is that what his secret negotiations with the Republic were about?

Declaring the secession was an act of short-sighted rage. Failing to walk it back was self-absorbed irresponsibly. He placed his people in the firing line of a second invasion without so much as a warning, let alone a consultation.

Gaul Panteer was Alderaan’s senator, not Alderaan’s head of state. He wasn’t the elected monarch, just the reigning Queen’s heir. The decision to take Alderaan out of the Republic never should have been his to make; the question should have been decided by Queen Silara and the aristocratic assembly at the Elysium (and, if Alderaan were actually a democracy during this period, a general referendum).

This raises the question of why Queen Silara didn’t countermand her son’s declaration of secession. Maybe Gaul inherited his lack of strategic acumen from Silara. Maybe she disagreed with the secession, but decided that it was more important to avoid undermining the son she had appointed senator than to keep Alderaan in the Republic; that risk of House Panteer losing face took precedence over the risk of the planet being invaded. Or maybe Queen Silara, who suddenly fell ill upon her son’s return from Coruscant, lost control over the situation because Gaul took advantage of her poor health to usurp her authority.

Whatever the reasons, House Panteer was not doing a good job of fulfilling one of the most ancient traditional functions of any monarchy: making sure your lands won’t be conquered by an external power. Alderaan’s other great noble houses were not doing a good job of encouraging House Panteer to take their job more seriously. Probably the Elysium was already bogged down in the gridlock which would later prevent them from electing Queen Silara’s successor.

Bouris Ulgo was the head of the Alderaani military, its planetary defence force. It was his job to protect Alderaan from invasion. Gaul Panteer had made that job impossible. House Rist, infamous as spies as well as assassins, agreed with his assessment. Possibly the Rists had gotten wind of the Imperial Diplomatic Services overtures to House Thul.

Bouris Ulgo was a soldier, who had killed many times before in defence of his homeworld. Everyone and their pet Thranta on Alderaan seems to know the Rists are assassins; the nobility tolerating a house of assassins among their number implies a tactic approval of the occasional convenient murder.

To protect Alderaan, Ulgo and Rist decided, Gaul and Silara Panteer had to die. Only by killing them could they instigate the election of a new monarch – a monarch who would return Alderaan to the safety of the Republic before the Empire could take advantage.

According to his lore entry, Bouris Ulgo didn’t return to Alderaan after the Treaty with any ambitions of becoming king. I suspect he came back to see to the wellbeing of his lands and his vassals as he hadn’t been able to after the Battle of Alderaan, to keep an experienced eye on the planet’s defences during Panteer’s foolishness, expecting to soon leave again to assist in the Republic’s preparations for the anticipated second war. While some sources say he intended to usurp House Panteer, if that were true it would have made far more sense from him to announce the imposition of martial law and declare himself king immediately after the Panteers’ assassination while loudly denouncing the murders as obviously the work of the Sith Empire, not wait until it was clear that the election of Queen Silara’s successor had ground to a holt because of the assembly’s bickering and House Thul had appeared, plainly planning on letting the Empire in by the back door.

To me, Bouris Ulgo is a deeply tragic figure because his assessment that he alone of the heads of the Great Houses cared more for the good of Alderaan than petty politics was correct. Unfortunately, he was a military man with a military mindset who lacked the skill at political manipulation to achieve his desired goal of returning Alderaan to the Republic, falling back to military tactics inappropriate to the problem he was attempting to fix out of desperation. It feels unfair that Ulgo should be saddled with blame for the civil war over Panteer, when Gaul Panteer’s decision to secede was the pivotal domino in the chain of events which resulted in Alderaan becoming the stage for an Imperial-Republic proxy war.

It really says something about House Panteer that in their planetary missions they accept both factions’ solicitations of alliance and can be swayed to either side. Organa or Thul, Republic or Empire, Jedi or Sith – one is as good as the other if vengeance on Bouris Ulgo will be reaped.

Gaul Panteer claimed such outrage that the Republic conceded to a frankly beneficial peace with the Sith Empire that he took Alderaan out of the Republic, drastically increasing the odds the Sith Empire would launch another attack on the planet. The surviving members of House Panteer claim such outrage that the heads of their house were assassinated because they put the planet in incredible danger that they are willing to support the Thul puppets of that same Sith Empire Gaul Panteer deemed it unacceptable to compromise with, even at the cost of billions of lives. House Panteer’s effective foreign policy is that the last attacker to have assaulted Castle Panteer is the devil who must be destroyed, regardless of the potential cost to Alderaan. Truly, some heads are not fit to wear the crown.

[depizan]

Gaul Panteer’s very loud and public removal Alderaan from the Republic must have looked like an open invitation for the Empire to come and conquer some beautiful new camping sites.

This is a really good point. Bouris Ulgo was a diplomatic disaster for himself and his rule, but it seems like no one else on Alderaan really grasped the potential consequences of Gaul's actions. At least no one with sufficient power or presence to do something about it. (Whether that was take the sort of action Bouris did, or convince Queen Silara and/or enough heads of noble houses to take less violent political action.)

It's actually a little surprising that the Empire didn't just sweep in and take over. ... Or, then again, maybe it's not. If they'd done as Bouris feared, that might have reduced the chances that other systems and planets would withdraw from the Republic. By just aiding one faction of the internal conflict, the Empire could downplay the threat they posed to independent worlds. And we know from Ord Mantell that they were trying to get more worlds to secede from the Republic.

And, honestly, that's probably the best way to ensure that they'd win when the Cold War heated back up. There's no way that the military and strategic minds of the Empire didn't know they were out numbered. But if they used the time of peace to pick away at the Republic, fracture it, capture bits of it through internal conflicts, then they might meet on less uneven footing next time.

How unfortunate for Bouris, who might have been the hero of Alderaan if the Empire had acted a little more rashly.

[ospreyeamon]

I’m not sure if we’re given the precise period between the Treaty of Coruscant and the start of the Alderaani Civil War, but I think it must be shorter than the game makes it sound. There would be little reason for the Sith Empire to wait, or for Ulgo and Rist to assume they would wait. All the Empire needs to do is get Thul onside and draw up their strategic plans, then probably assassinate Gaul and Silara Panteer to create a political vacuum to sufficiently delay any attempt to reverse the secession when the Imperial fleet materialises in the system. Alderaan’s secession might have caught the Empire unprepared because it was just so stupid.

Gaul Panteer’s decision to secede is said to have been very controversial, and Ulgo and Rist managing to stay in the fight against Thul and Organa for years without the backing of a powerful foreign government suggests Ulgo might have been the faction with the greatest local support (definitely they had the military). But, of course, only a tiny number of people on Alderaan have any kind of vote. The other Great Houses proved themselves incapable of setting aside their own interests to comprise in the failed election, so they would have been equally unable to compromise to unite to challenge House Panteer. Which is … strange. Strange that the system of the aristocratic assembly remained stable for so long, but failed right after they'd had a patriotic war to fight. Strange that the assembly should become gridlocked when trying to elect a new monarch, which had been done many times before.

If I were going to go full blown conspiracy theorist, I would say that Gaul Panteer was poisoning his mother Queen Silara as part of a plan to illegally seize the crown. Or if not poisoning, then exaggerating the severity of her illness to trap her away from the public eye so he could act as her regent.

The timing of Queen Silara’s illness, coming on suddenly just as Gaul returned from Coruscant after making a decision she would have had every reason to disapprove of. The styling of Gaul Panteer as Crown Prince when the rest of Alderaan’s lore describes an elective rather than hereditary monarchy. The dysfunction that overwhelmed Alderaan’s politics until it ignited into outright war. The senator acting with the authority that should belong to the monarch.

Elective monarchies in real life have a demonstrated propensity to devolve into hereditary monarchies, because ruling families use their time on the throne to grow and consolidate their networks of power to increase their likelihood of securing future elections. For Alderaan’s elective monarchy to have lasted anywhere as long as it did, I believe that there must have been a prohibition on two successive monarchs coming from the same noble family. The heir of the previous monarch cannot contest the election of their successor. Gaul Panteer could not legally become king.

House Panteer has produced more monarchs than any other of the Great Noble Houses; for a very long time now they have won every election they are permitted to contest. It is extremely likely that the prohibition on serving consecutive reigns as the ruling house was the only thing preventing them from winning more. Alderaan’s model of elective monarchy existed to House Panteer’s detriment because it forced them to share the crown with the rest of the nobility.

Alderaan had been through a period of crisis during Gaul’s mother’s reign as queen, with the Great Galactic War bringing a major invasion to a planet that probably hadn’t seen one in well over a thousand years. Crises can serve as opportunities for politicians to take actions they would not normally receive support for, potentially expand their personal power or the power of their government. Gaul Panteer deepened the tension and instability on Alderaan by taking it out of the Galactic Republic.

The politics of the assembly at the Elysium were mind-bogglingly dysfunctional. Far more so than I would have expected for a long-standing government coming out of a war the planet was united in fighting. If Gaul and his co-conspirators had been cultivating dissent between the other noble houses to make the idea of House Panteer continuing to hold the crown after Queen Silara’s death in the name of stability more attractive, that would go a long way to explain the quagmire.

(Why did Gaul Panteer keep his negotiations to return Alderaan to the Republic secret? What concessions was he seeking and were they to benefit Alderaan, or House Panteer?)

If Queen Silara was as great and good as her reputation claims, she would have never approved of such a plan. Breaking thousands of years of tradition, placing Alderaan in danger of a second invasion to do so, to run the risk of plunging into a civil war when the other Great Houses baulked at being shut out of power? Perverse. But if she were trapped in medical seclusion while her son acted as her regent, Silara couldn’t have stopped her younger relatives’ plot to prevent their generation being skipped over by the crown.

[ospreyeamon]

I’ve been trying to tease out reasons why the Inquisitor, who is just trying to get by in a Sith-stab-Sith world, has fewer opportunities for neutral to positive encounters with Jedi than the Warrior, who is there to actively cause problems during Acts One and Two. Doylist-wise, it’s probably because you can’t change faction so there needs to be an implied reason why the Sith Inquisitor doesn’t go skipping off to the Jedi Order as soon as they are permitted to travel to neutral space.

It’s ironic how much less murdery my Warrior’s reputation with the Jedi is than my Inquisitor’s. Especially since one of the things that contribute to them acquiring those reputations is that Lys’trel tries to approach the Jedi she encounters with diplomacy and honesty (her views on the Jedi are ... complicated, but she doesn’t hate them or want them destroyed) while Tsojât is hostile and manipulative (he believes the Jedi Order is rotten to its core and the galaxy would be a better place without it).

Jedi like Nomar Organa and Masters Ryen and Ocera assume Lys’trel is lying when she proposes exchanges of mutual benefit and professes to have no intent to fight because the Empire and Republic are, technically, at peace. She’s a Sith. Obviously she’s lying. Every encounter the Sith have ever had with the Jedi from invading Republic space without making a formal declaration of war to holding the lives of the civilians on the capital hostage while negotiating the Treaty of Coruscant has proven they can’t be trusted.

They decide to lure her into traps to kill her under the justification that it’s what she’s trying to do to them and leave messages that are discovered by other Jedi after their deaths saying things like “played along with Sith’s plot to get Rehanna Rist out of the firing line, will intercept before Sith can enter the Elysium to carry out terrible plan” and “Padawan Zavros was tricked into believing Sith had non-threatening reason to be on Taris, will spring trap in the ruined temple when the Sith infiltrates it” because they’ve convinced themselves that’s what’s going on. When she kills them in self-defence it is taken as evidence confirming that version of events.

Another factor in Lys’trel poor reputation with the Order is that many Jedi’s initial impression of her is that she is a fallen Jedi defected to the Sith. Coming from a family enslaved during the Empire’s conquests during Great Galactic War and raised among many native Basic-speakers, Lys’trel speaks Republic Basic with a Rim accent rather than an Imperial one. She’s a very unImperial looking Rutian twi’lek and the Empire’s former policy towards Force-sensitive slaves is that they were to be killed on discovery. Viewing her as a proven traitor is more comfortable than viewing her as evidence of the fate of the Force-sensitives born in the territory lost to the Empire in the Great Galactic War.

She also has what some people perceive to be an unsettlingly erratic death-tinged Force-presence. Other Sith tend to attribute it to Lys’trel being a necromancer. Jedi, being less familiar with necromancy, are left wondering how many people would need to die around you for you to feel like that and why your aura would oscillate like an amateur unicyclist plotting a sine graph.

Tsojât is on a quest to reveal the Jedi as villains with good publicity. All the Jedi and the Republic’s posturing about peace and tolerance and standing against genocide is just that – posturing. He is going to rip off that mask, which means his own and the Empire’s behaviour must contrast favourably to their enemies’.

He was raised to follow the standards of right behaviour that seek to balance honour and obligation. Honour and obligation don’t disappear just because you’re dealing with enemies and inconveniences. He makes no promises he does not intend to keep, attempts negotiation even when he is certain (and maybe would prefer) that there can be no peaceful resolution with the Pubs, and tries to avoid civilian casualties.

Where Lys’trel proposing exchanges of mutual benefit was deemed suspicious, Tsojât’s stark distain is expected. Sith hate Jedi, so a Sith being open about that is a Sith being honest.

Tsojât spared Master Yonlach and Knight Yul-Li (because that was the price Yul-Li asked when he gave up his information), persuaded the Willsaam parents to leave with him and departed Castle Organa without attacking Master Volryder, spared Knight Ulldin (so he could recount how Zylixx snapped after having a Sith quote the Jedi code at him), and delivered Nomen Karr back to the Order alive (that was Jaesa’s decision and Tsojât considered it a mistake he had to respect her right to make).

To the Jedi, this apprentice of the infamous Darth Baras appears an unexpectedly honourable enemy. A Sith showing signs of somehow overcoming the disadvantages of his birth. Many Jedi who know of him imagined that he is struggling against the genetic disadvantage of a “Sith Pureblood” naturally attuned to the dark-side of the Force (the tsissai aren’t), that his childhood must have been brutal and neglected (it wasn’t), and that Tsojât’s disinterest in killing every enemy in his path is a sign that he is subconsciously feeling the call of The Light and The Jedi Path (he’s not).

Ironically, this interpretation of Tsojât has similarities with Tsojât’s own evolving view of the Jedi, softened by studying Jaesa’s life while hunting her. He hadn’t methodically contemplated how deeply a person’s understanding of the universe would be shaped by the dominant narratives of their culture before. Of course most Jedi don’t know the truth about his people and what the Republic did to them when all the histories they were raised on are a mess of propaganda, prejudice, and omission. Of course they don’t understand the Force if their Masters spoon feed them lies about it. Of course the experience of being on the other side of the Great Galactic War gave many people a plethora of bad impressions of the Empire. Succeeding in flipping Jaesa does nothing to disabuse him from this perspective.

While the SIS and Jedi Order do share information, they aren’t always the most efficient about it which leads to an … interesting conversation at the official big-shot Sith dossier swap after the Battle of Corellia as the SIS agents attempted to figure out why the Jedi Order ranked the new Emperor’s Wrath a lower threat than the freshly named Darth Occlus.

[ospreyeamon]

some heads are not fit to wear the crown

Houses Ulgo and Rist’s assassination of Price Gaul and Queen Silara Panteer is one of those decisions where – though murder is wrong, though it triggered great strife – I absolutely understand why they did it. Ulgo and Rist removed what they viewed as dangerously incompetent leadership because they believed it was necessary to protect Alderaan.

The Galactic Republic agreed to sign the Treaty of Coruscant because they lost the Great Galactic War. The Imperial fleet had succeeded in occupying Coruscant’s skies, giving them the ability to launch an orbital bombardment at will, while the Republic lacked the means to dislodge them. Imperial troops had taken the Galactic Senate hostage and killed the Supreme Chancellor. Because the Empire had already been winning the war even before they seized the capital to use as a bargaining chip, the Sith Emperor was the one to set the terms of the frosty peace.

The Treaty of Coruscant was a shockingly good deal for the Republic under the circumstances (which is why many in the Empire were so resentful of it). The only territory the Empire demanded they cede which the Empire had not already occupied or was actively contesting was seven uninhabited star systems, when the Republic did not expect to be able to hold most of those fronts. The Empire had Republic representatives followed around by droids to monitor their adherence to the Treaty, but did not demand any Republic citizens be handed over to stand trial in the Empire for crimes real or invented. Crucially, Empire set no caps on the Republic’s ship building or military expenditure and extracted no economic reparations.

Those like Gaul Panteer, Leontyne Saresh and Elin Garza who publicly decried the Treaty, saying that the Republic should have kept fighting rather than accept peace with the Empire, were in denial about the political reality of the situation. At that time, the Republic had no prospect of being able to swing the tide of the war to put themselves in a stronger position in the peace negotiations. If the Republic had refused to ratify the Treaty the Empire could have levelled its capital, killing billions and decapitating institutions like the SIS headquartered on the planet. The only meaningful blow the Republic was dealt by the Treaty of Coruscant was to its pride.

Bouris Ulgo hated the Sith Empire, but he wasn’t an idiot. The Treaty of Coruscant, humiliating though it may have been, gave the Republic the perfect opportunity to rearm itself in the breathing space provided by the Cold War. The Republic was bigger than the Empire – bigger economy, bigger population – so given the opportunity they could out produce and out recruit the Empire. If the Republic was patient, then they could have their vengeance and victory.

But being protected by the Treaty of Coruscant long enough to rearm required remaining part of the Galactic Republic, because the Empire made the Treaty with the Republic. The moment Alderaan seceded, it was no longer protected by the Empire’s promise to withdraw, and the Imperial Military could launch a second invasion without breaking the Treaty. And why wouldn’t the Sith Empire invade Alderaan? What else did all their forces ordered to break off the attacks on Coruscant and other Republic worlds have to do? Gaul Panteer’s very loud and public removal Alderaan from the Republic must have looked like an open invitation for the Empire to come and conquer some beautiful new camping sites.

And for what? Was Gaul Panteer arrogant enough to believe Alderaan so important that he could manipulate the Republic into abandoning the Treaty of Coruscant? Was he so myopic that he imagined he could sit on Alderaan feeling self-righteous with no consequences he hadn’t considered in the heat of the moment? Did he think that he could leverage Alderaan’s status as a Core Founder to extract concessions from the Republic to undo the cessation and stop opposing the Treaty – is that what his secret negotiations with the Republic were about?

Declaring the secession was an act of short-sighted rage. Failing to walk it back was self-absorbed irresponsibly. He placed his people in the firing line of a second invasion without so much as a warning, let alone a consultation.

Gaul Panteer was Alderaan’s senator, not Alderaan’s head of state. He wasn’t the elected monarch, just the reigning Queen’s heir. The decision to take Alderaan out of the Republic never should have been his to make; the question should have been decided by Queen Silara and the aristocratic assembly at the Elysium (and, if Alderaan were actually a democracy during this period, a general referendum).

This raises the question of why Queen Silara didn’t countermand her son’s declaration of secession. Maybe Gaul inherited his lack of strategic acumen from Silara. Maybe she disagreed with the secession, but decided that it was more important to avoid undermining the son she had appointed senator than to keep Alderaan in the Republic; that risk of House Panteer losing face took precedence over the risk of the planet being invaded. Or maybe Queen Silara, who suddenly fell ill upon her son’s return from Coruscant, lost control over the situation because Gaul took advantage of her poor health to usurp her authority.

Whatever the reasons, House Panteer was not doing a good job of fulfilling one of the most ancient traditional functions of any monarchy: making sure your lands won’t be conquered by an external power. Alderaan’s other great noble houses were not doing a good job of encouraging House Panteer to take their job more seriously. Probably the Elysium was already bogged down in the gridlock which would later prevent them from electing Queen Silara’s successor.

Bouris Ulgo was the head of the Alderaani military, its planetary defence force. It was his job to protect Alderaan from invasion. Gaul Panteer had made that job impossible. House Rist, infamous as spies as well as assassins, agreed with his assessment. Possibly the Rists had gotten wind of the Imperial Diplomatic Services overtures to House Thul.

Bouris Ulgo was a soldier, who had killed many times before in defence of his homeworld. Everyone and their pet Thranta on Alderaan seems to know the Rists are assassins; the nobility tolerating a house of assassins among their number implies a tactic approval of the occasional convenient murder.

To protect Alderaan, Ulgo and Rist decided, Gaul and Silara Panteer had to die. Only by killing them could they instigate the election of a new monarch – a monarch who would return Alderaan to the safety of the Republic before the Empire could take advantage.

According to his lore entry, Bouris Ulgo didn’t return to Alderaan after the Treaty with any ambitions of becoming king. I suspect he came back to see to the wellbeing of his lands and his vassals as he hadn’t been able to after the Battle of Alderaan, to keep an experienced eye on the planet’s defences during Panteer’s foolishness, expecting to soon leave again to assist in the Republic’s preparations for the anticipated second war. While some sources say he intended to usurp House Panteer, if that were true it would have made far more sense from him to announce the imposition of martial law and declare himself king immediately after the Panteers’ assassination while loudly denouncing the murders as obviously the work of the Sith Empire, not wait until it was clear that the election of Queen Silara’s successor had ground to a holt because of the assembly’s bickering and House Thul had appeared, plainly planning on letting the Empire in by the back door.

To me, Bouris Ulgo is a deeply tragic figure because his assessment that he alone of the heads of the Great Houses cared more for the good of Alderaan than petty politics was correct. Unfortunately, he was a military man with a military mindset who lacked the skill at political manipulation to achieve his desired goal of returning Alderaan to the Republic, falling back to military tactics inappropriate to the problem he was attempting to fix out of desperation. It feels unfair that Ulgo should be saddled with blame for the civil war over Panteer, when Gaul Panteer’s decision to secede was the pivotal domino in the chain of events which resulted in Alderaan becoming the stage for an Imperial-Republic proxy war.

It really says something about House Panteer that in their planetary missions they accept both factions’ solicitations of alliance and can be swayed to either side. Organa or Thul, Republic or Empire, Jedi or Sith – one is as good as the other if vengeance on Bouris Ulgo will be reaped.

Gaul Panteer claimed such outrage that the Republic conceded to a frankly beneficial peace with the Sith Empire that he took Alderaan out of the Republic, drastically increasing the odds the Sith Empire would launch another attack on the planet. The surviving members of House Panteer claim such outrage that the heads of their house were assassinated because they put the planet in incredible danger that they are willing to support the Thul puppets of that same Sith Empire Gaul Panteer deemed it unacceptable to compromise with, even at the cost of billions of lives. House Panteer’s effective foreign policy is that the last attacker to have assaulted Castle Panteer is the devil who must be destroyed, regardless of the potential cost to Alderaan. Truly, some heads are not fit to wear the crown.

[jesuistrefatugie]

Quick question: Did Darth Zash teach Nox/Occlus/Imperius anything? Or did she just use them as an errand runner?

If not, then that's like running around with a loading rocket launcher and hoping not to trip. Expect the rocket launcher is a shit ton of force energy. And the tripping part is a sudden change in morals/ethics.

[sith-shenanigans]

To be fairer to her than I think she deserves, each act is supposed to cover about a year, so there’s presumably some training going on between each planet.

Zash being Zash, though, I don’t think she was interested in teaching them much more than they needed to a) survive and b) not embarrass her/themself. Because embarrassing themself would be embarrassing her.

Poor Ahene ended up on Balmorra without really even understanding how to meditate properly because everything Zash said on the subject was either baffling or (from her perspective) flat-out counterproductive. And that’s kind of… important. For psychological stability. But she was just kind of going “probably it’s normal that I’m horribly stressed all the time? I am very traumatized, this is probably normal?” Until the holocron of Kel’eth Ur had to help her out. (She’s not a secret lightsider, so his method didn’t help, but he helped her develop one!) She’s still kind of horribly stressed, but now it’s more from the actual trauma and less from the trauma plus not putting her mind in order ever.

Honestly, barring noncanonical holocron theft, the Inquisitor’s best bet for the presumable offscreen training they had is probably Kallig.

(Which is going to be a thing in the fic, though it hasn’t gotten there yet.)

[ospreyeamon]

My assumption is that Zash was fairly generous with her teaching of the Inquisitor, wanting to encourage them to trust her and not bolt out of Imperial space at the first opportunity, but was very careful not to encourage any skill or knowledge that would increase the Inquisitor’s chances of escaping the body-snatching ritual.

Duelling? Zash isn’t planning to take the Inquisitor on in an honourable swordfight. Healing? Provided its things like how to set and fuse bones on the fly rather than any energy-draining techniques definitely – got to make sure the body stays in good shape. History? So long as it isn’t about Tulak Hord’s era and avoids any important instances of possession that should be safe enough. Filing taxes? The structure of the Pyramid of Ancient Knowledge? Etiquette? Dancing? If it distracts the Inquisitor from what she isn’t teaching them, Zash will spend the afternoon showing her new apprentice how to requisition datapads.

But anything related to rituals, the Emperor and his Voice, ghosts, mind tricks, or Sith magic? No way. Maybe the same for literacy if the Inquisitor were unlucky enough to be lacking in the area – that would make it easier for them to go poking around on their own, but if Zash were the one to teach them that might cement the Inquisitor’s faith in her desire for their well-being.

My Inquisitor had a fun time with Zash. They went to the opera together. They hosted a couple of parties together. Zash encouraged Lys’trel to go to college to study a certificate in archival practices, because in another few months once she’s learnt the ropes Zash can secure her an official research bursary. Zash encouraged Lys’trel to adopt aspects of Zash’s fighting style, because really the Overseers pushing her into Makashi had been a form of sabotage. Zash encouraged Lys’trel’s interest in the Jedi Civil War, because the age of Tulak Hord has been picked over for centuries and that will make it so much harder to come up with a truly groundbreaking thesis topic.

Lys’trel learnt a lot from Zash, including how to file her taxes, but in hindsight she can see the many ways that education had been warped to align with the setup for the planned body-theft.

[sith-shenanigans]

Oh, I love that. And I can very much see it as a path Zash’s manipulations could take—hell, she probably would have preferred to take a similar route with Ahene, except that Ahene responded near-invariably poorly when she tried. (And also that too much combat training was an iffy prospect; my Zash was already quite ill by the time she took an apprentice, though she’s spent most of her viewpoint time lying to herself about exactly how bad it is.) So she figured out pretty early that the more she tried to entice Ahene, the more terrified of her Ahene got (and the more Ahene hated her, though Zash picked up on that much less). So Zash resorted to… much more blatant emotional abuse, honestly, though never doing anything that she thought would be perceived as malicious; she put a lot of effort into making sure Ahene didn’t feel safe navigating the galaxy without her guidance.

Which didn’t, uh. Work. Because Zash was really sure that Ahene was so desperate for praise and kindness that she wouldn’t be able to tell that Zash kept undercutting anything that would make her feel safe enough to be independent, because Zash doesn’t really think of other people as people. Zash thinks of people as collections of responses and motivations that will respond the “right” way to things, and can’t imagine someone who’s survived that kind of physical and emotional deprivation not clinging onto the first person to show actual (alleged) kindness.

… And meanwhile Ahene went “my master is using me to fill some kind of emotional need, this is a thing masters do, I should act like I love and trust her even though every nice thing she does is incredibly poisonous.” Because if there is one skill Ahene came pre-equipped with, it’s the ability to shove down her true feelings and act the way someone with power over her seems to want. Not always as well as she possibly could—she’s much more timid and hesitant with Zash than Zash would like—but about as well as she sees as a realistic response.

[themildestofwriters]

Darth Zash taking an interest in their apprentice’s training is also a very good tactic to be able to understand the apprentice. I doubt Zash wanted everyone to know she had cheated death at the hands of her apprentice. Rather, I think she’d want to keep that on the downlow. So, pretend to be her apprentice for a bit, until she can start slipping off that mask, until she can be Darth Zash once again, though perhaps by a different name.

Training is a good way to observe the quirks of your apprentice. Spending time with them is a good way of getting to know them, their personality, how they act, etc. For an emotionally starved Inquisitor who does buy into it, Zash is fool’s gold: her motives are hostile, but her actions would be so fulfilling. A seemingly genuine connection and relationship filled with respect and love and compassion that ends with complete heartbreak because it was all a lie—of sorts: I do believe that Zash, assuming you play your cards right, has genuine affection for the Inquisitor. They just prioritise their own life over them.

Ooh, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I could def see Horak-Mul and Ludo Kressh having a real heartfelt reunion, because so much has passed since they last saw one another, and… to be honest, from my perspective, Ludo Kressh and his side of the war was the “right” side of the war who just so happened to lose. Like, had Ludo Kressh been made Dark Lord, the Hyperspace war would never have happened (or as it happened in canon) and the Empire wouldn’t have fallen as it did.

It'd also help out my Inqui, because it would automatically predispose Horak-Mul to her, being favoured by Ludo Kressh as she was. Also, like. I could totally see Ludo Kressh and Horak-Mul getting absolutely giddy at the idea of destroying the Sadow’een Temple. My Inquisitor is worried about the lost history, but also doesn’t like Sadow, much, either.

As for Adas… Freedon Nadd had the holocron on Onderon, but, after the Naddists were wiped out, it was taken by the Jedi elsewhere. However, how long after the Naddists is what I’m playing with. The general idea I’m working on is that the Adas holocron was stored in the Sith Temple on Dxun, and that it was during the Cold War when Jedi began looking into known Sith locations to pillage and destroy or at least confiscate Sith artefacts—Adas’ holocron being one of them.

In replacing Balmorra’s quest with a quest to Dxun, because it just makes sense for one of Tulak Hord’s treasures to be hidden away there, at the hands of a man who canonically pillaged Sith artefacts and lore (Nadd).

Adas is a cranky man who has high expectations for anyone he trains, so my Inqui has to actually make something of herself before he teaches her what he knows—though, history is free, because there was a long period where none of the Sith who held his holocron wanted to learn about history or philosophy and were instead more focused on how best to murder people with the Force, and he just really wants to learn some history.

Also, I 100% support Ahene getting those axes. At least one of them! Or, if not, give her some Adas imagery during a fight. Dual wielding axes, because she lost her lightsabers, and they were the only thing available!

[sith-shenanigans]

My Zash has been having… a rather terrible time trying to get that information, aheh. She’s doing her best! There are lessons, even if they’re weird ones and sometimes happen at horrible hours because there’s no way Zash keeps a consistent sleep schedule. But in the end she’s largely resorted to keeping Ahene away from people who would Notice Things who wouldn’t write it off as an apprentice coming out of their shell and couldn’t be disposed of.

My Zash also isn’t particularly inclined to bother with the “unnecessary” parts in general—she considers it a point of pride to do the training she does give to her own standards of quality, she just… doesn’t see her paper-doll apprentice as needing to know anything but mission/survival skills and enough social understanding to avoid Incidents and keep from being eaten alive. (And with Ahene, she can’t use the lessons as a bribe very well, though she’ll probably get a better handle on why that’s not been working later.) Hence keeping Ahene—and most of my inquisitors, though not necessarily quite to the same extent—away from Sith society as much as possible, to keep her from making the kind of allies who might realize that someone else was riding around in that meatsuit.

That obviously isn’t ideal for coming into it with connections—but it’s very difficult to pretend to be another person, in person, to someone who knows that person. Especially in a world where there are shapeshifters and Force illusions and ghostly possessions. So Zash has been very on board with Ahene making connections with normal people—who are not making reciprocal two-way emotional connections with Sith, generally, and are easier to get rid of if things go wrong—and very down on Ahene interacting much with other Sith.

(It is also… a thing with my Zash that while she was attached to Ahene in her terrible possessive way, all her genuine affection was predicated on the ability to mold someone in her image—even if literal body theft hadn’t been on the table, I see her as someone who doesn’t really see a difference between caring about someone and owning them. So she did care about Ahene, but only to the exact extent that Ahene was hers, and that would always have fallen apart horribly.)

… Honestly, it’s probably a bit more emotionally rational to be taken in a bit. It is very much Ahene’s trauma that led her to the worst possible conclusion, which just happened to be mostly correct. It has been very not-correct in other circumstances. Like when she reacted with immediate distrust towards Bessiker.

Also! Ludo Kressh was right. I will insist on this forever. (And I am deeply horribly attached to Horak-Mul.)

The axes, alas, are not trying to show up in Ahene’s plot, where she would probably just be very fascinated about history at them. Someone here—I am looking at my warrior—thinks that she deserves a metaphor about being the Emperor’s axe (since Vitiate-as-acknowledged-Sith’ari is a thing in my worldbuilding) and also to hit him with an axe. One of those is happening, one of those is hopefully not.

[ospreyeamon]

You are so right about Zash trying to sneakily keep the Inquisitor isolated. Like, other than the whole visions of glorious destiny thing, Zash chose the Inquisitor as her body-snatch victim because they were a former slave; no known family at the time, most people who knew them before the Academy were probably also slaves who nobody would listen to. Part of why I think that Zash trained the Inquisitor is that the training was a way of managing their social interactions in addition to curating their skill-set. Time spent in lessons with Zash is time not spent out meeting other people.

One reason why she encouraged Lys'trel to study the certification was because it's a huge entry level course taken mostly by non-Sith and it's believable that Lys'trel might not remember any given one of her fellow students afterwards. (Another reason was that Zash didn't want to have to retake that certification herself.)

My assumption about why Zash kept the fact that she had taken two new apprentices secret is that it wasn't actually because she wanted to keep the Inquisitor away from Corrin and Kaal, it was because she needed to keep Corrin and Kaal away from the Inquisitor. Corrin and Kaal weren't in on the body-snatching plot but Zash was planning on keeping them around afterwards. That meant she had to carefully control everything they knew about the Inquisitor – Zash's bestie who knew everything about Zash and who Zash had totally passed on all of her cool ritual knowledge and Sith magic tricks to, who Zash was immeasurably proud of and foresaw leading the Sith into a new age of glory, and who Zash planned on leaving everything to in the event of her death including her two adorable junior apprentices who Kallig was so looking forward to meeting when they arrived back on Dromund Kaas.

It pinged as a red flag to Lys'trel when Grandpa Kallig told her about Kaal and Corrin. Not because it was suspicious that Zash would take more apprentices, but because if Zash and Lys'trel's relationship really was what Zash presented it as being, Zash would have told Lys'trel that she'd expanded their little Teaching-Linage. Lys'trel was certain Zash had a deeply self-interested motivation for taking her as an apprentice and promoting her to Lord so quickly, but she thought it might be that Zash was over her head in the Sith infighting and needed a powerful and loyal ally to survive. The lie of omission signaled it was something more sinister.

@themildestofwriters I very much agree that Zash never would have wanted it revealed that she had stolen her apprentice's body. I headcanon that it's illegal for the living to possess people in the Reconstituted Empire, or even to research how to possess people, because Vitiate doesn't want anyone figuring about how his deal with the Voice works because that would be useful knowledge for people seeking to inconvenience him. (Vitiate's excuse for why it's okay for him to do it is that he has ascended to godhood.)

This provides a Watsonian explanation for Thanaton's non-specific accusations against Zash and the Inquisitor. Thanaton knew that Zash was illegally researching possession but couldn't use that information against her without revealing that he also knew more than was legal about that field of knowledge. Part of what Thanaton knew was about the Emperor's Children, so he needed to be careful that never came out because it would open him up to accusations of treason.

So, Zash plotted the body-snatch very carefully, trying to minimise to risk of being pegged as not-the-Inquisitor while transferring as much as possible over to her new identity. That's another reason for her to butter up the Inquisitor; the closer they seem, the less strange it would be for Zash to write them into her will, enabling her to keep her stuff.

[themildestofwriters]

There’s also Zash’s visions to consider. There’s always been an emphasis on visions with Zash, and I don’t think it’s all false pretence for why she did what she did. I think she had a genuine vision (or visions), because the whole Dark Temple angle seems like a wild gamble otherwise. If I were going to possess my darling apprentice, I wouldn’t send them into the Dark Temple alone to pacify a ghost with the threat of possession and madness and just… getting murdered hovering over their head.

It wasn’t just pragmatic thinking that led to her selecting from a coterie of slave-born acolytes, but the genuine belief that doing so would lead not just to her surviving her affliction, but that doing so would be the best way forward.

Of course, we all know how that ended, which has got to suck ass. Imagine receiving a vision from the primordial font of power born of life itself, only for it to be a fucking troll. “Sike! You thought you’d ride the coattails of your apprentice straight on up to the Dark Council? Sucker, now you’re trapped in a Dashade (and an obelisk).”

[ospreyeamon]

I could have phrased my addition about the Inquisitor's background factoring into Zash's decision to body-snatch them better. What I meant was that the Inquisitor being a former slave with no known family influenced the way Zash interpreted her visions of them. If Zash's visions had shown her a non-Force-adept or a powerful established Sith or even someone like the Sith Warrior with a family to notice suspicious changes, I don't think Zash would have concluded that the Force was pointing her to an ideal new body.

But really, Zash should have known better than to trust it would be that convenient (and maybe she would have if she weren't dying and desperate). The Force loves a good self-fulfilling prophecy. Anakin's dreams of Padme's death, that guy Jolee Bindo knew who was the center of the Big Swirling, hell, even Revan from a certain point of view. You can't trust the Force to be on your side in cases like this because its on everybody's side, and therefore nobody's.

[jesuistrefatugie]

Quick question: Did Darth Zash teach Nox/Occlus/Imperius anything? Or did she just use them as an errand runner?

If not, then that's like running around with a loading rocket launcher and hoping not to trip. Expect the rocket launcher is a shit ton of force energy. And the tripping part is a sudden change in morals/ethics.

[sith-shenanigans]

To be fairer to her than I think she deserves, each act is supposed to cover about a year, so there’s presumably some training going on between each planet.

Zash being Zash, though, I don’t think she was interested in teaching them much more than they needed to a) survive and b) not embarrass her/themself. Because embarrassing themself would be embarrassing her.

Poor Ahene ended up on Balmorra without really even understanding how to meditate properly because everything Zash said on the subject was either baffling or (from her perspective) flat-out counterproductive. And that’s kind of… important. For psychological stability. But she was just kind of going “probably it’s normal that I’m horribly stressed all the time? I am very traumatized, this is probably normal?” Until the holocron of Kel’eth Ur had to help her out. (She’s not a secret lightsider, so his method didn’t help, but he helped her develop one!) She’s still kind of horribly stressed, but now it’s more from the actual trauma and less from the trauma plus not putting her mind in order ever.

Honestly, barring noncanonical holocron theft, the Inquisitor’s best bet for the presumable offscreen training they had is probably Kallig.

(Which is going to be a thing in the fic, though it hasn’t gotten there yet.)

[ospreyeamon]

My assumption is that Zash was fairly generous with her teaching of the Inquisitor, wanting to encourage them to trust her and not bolt out of Imperial space at the first opportunity, but was very careful not to encourage any skill or knowledge that would increase the Inquisitor’s chances of escaping the body-snatching ritual.

Duelling? Zash isn’t planning to take the Inquisitor on in an honourable swordfight. Healing? Provided its things like how to set and fuse bones on the fly rather than any energy-draining techniques definitely – got to make sure the body stays in good shape. History? So long as it isn’t about Tulak Hord’s era and avoids any important instances of possession that should be safe enough. Filing taxes? The structure of the Pyramid of Ancient Knowledge? Etiquette? Dancing? If it distracts the Inquisitor from what she isn’t teaching them, Zash will spend the afternoon showing her new apprentice how to requisition datapads.

But anything related to rituals, the Emperor and his Voice, ghosts, mind tricks, or Sith magic? No way. Maybe the same for literacy if the Inquisitor were unlucky enough to be lacking in the area – that would make it easier for them to go poking around on their own, but if Zash were the one to teach them that might cement the Inquisitor’s faith in her desire for their well-being.

My Inquisitor had a fun time with Zash. They went to the opera together. They hosted a couple of parties together. Zash encouraged Lys’trel to go to college to study a certificate in archival practices, because in another few months once she’s learnt the ropes Zash can secure her an official research bursary. Zash encouraged Lys’trel to adopt aspects of Zash’s fighting style, because really the Overseers pushing her into Makashi had been a form of sabotage. Zash encouraged Lys’trel’s interest in the Jedi Civil War, because the age of Tulak Hord has been picked over for centuries and that will make it so much harder to come up with a truly groundbreaking thesis topic.

Lys’trel learnt a lot from Zash, including how to file her taxes, but in hindsight she can see the many ways that education had been warped to align with the setup for the planned body-theft.

[sith-shenanigans]

Oh, I love that. And I can very much see it as a path Zash’s manipulations could take—hell, she probably would have preferred to take a similar route with Ahene, except that Ahene responded near-invariably poorly when she tried. (And also that too much combat training was an iffy prospect; my Zash was already quite ill by the time she took an apprentice, though she’s spent most of her viewpoint time lying to herself about exactly how bad it is.) So she figured out pretty early that the more she tried to entice Ahene, the more terrified of her Ahene got (and the more Ahene hated her, though Zash picked up on that much less). So Zash resorted to… much more blatant emotional abuse, honestly, though never doing anything that she thought would be perceived as malicious; she put a lot of effort into making sure Ahene didn’t feel safe navigating the galaxy without her guidance.

Which didn’t, uh. Work. Because Zash was really sure that Ahene was so desperate for praise and kindness that she wouldn’t be able to tell that Zash kept undercutting anything that would make her feel safe enough to be independent, because Zash doesn’t really think of other people as people. Zash thinks of people as collections of responses and motivations that will respond the “right” way to things, and can’t imagine someone who’s survived that kind of physical and emotional deprivation not clinging onto the first person to show actual (alleged) kindness.

… And meanwhile Ahene went “my master is using me to fill some kind of emotional need, this is a thing masters do, I should act like I love and trust her even though every nice thing she does is incredibly poisonous.” Because if there is one skill Ahene came pre-equipped with, it’s the ability to shove down her true feelings and act the way someone with power over her seems to want. Not always as well as she possibly could—she’s much more timid and hesitant with Zash than Zash would like—but about as well as she sees as a realistic response.

[themildestofwriters]

Darth Zash taking an interest in their apprentice’s training is also a very good tactic to be able to understand the apprentice. I doubt Zash wanted everyone to know she had cheated death at the hands of her apprentice. Rather, I think she’d want to keep that on the downlow. So, pretend to be her apprentice for a bit, until she can start slipping off that mask, until she can be Darth Zash once again, though perhaps by a different name.

Training is a good way to observe the quirks of your apprentice. Spending time with them is a good way of getting to know them, their personality, how they act, etc. For an emotionally starved Inquisitor who does buy into it, Zash is fool’s gold: her motives are hostile, but her actions would be so fulfilling. A seemingly genuine connection and relationship filled with respect and love and compassion that ends with complete heartbreak because it was all a lie—of sorts: I do believe that Zash, assuming you play your cards right, has genuine affection for the Inquisitor. They just prioritise their own life over them.

Ooh, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I could def see Horak-Mul and Ludo Kressh having a real heartfelt reunion, because so much has passed since they last saw one another, and… to be honest, from my perspective, Ludo Kressh and his side of the war was the “right” side of the war who just so happened to lose. Like, had Ludo Kressh been made Dark Lord, the Hyperspace war would never have happened (or as it happened in canon) and the Empire wouldn’t have fallen as it did.

It'd also help out my Inqui, because it would automatically predispose Horak-Mul to her, being favoured by Ludo Kressh as she was. Also, like. I could totally see Ludo Kressh and Horak-Mul getting absolutely giddy at the idea of destroying the Sadow’een Temple. My Inquisitor is worried about the lost history, but also doesn’t like Sadow, much, either.

As for Adas… Freedon Nadd had the holocron on Onderon, but, after the Naddists were wiped out, it was taken by the Jedi elsewhere. However, how long after the Naddists is what I’m playing with. The general idea I’m working on is that the Adas holocron was stored in the Sith Temple on Dxun, and that it was during the Cold War when Jedi began looking into known Sith locations to pillage and destroy or at least confiscate Sith artefacts—Adas’ holocron being one of them.

In replacing Balmorra’s quest with a quest to Dxun, because it just makes sense for one of Tulak Hord’s treasures to be hidden away there, at the hands of a man who canonically pillaged Sith artefacts and lore (Nadd).

Adas is a cranky man who has high expectations for anyone he trains, so my Inqui has to actually make something of herself before he teaches her what he knows—though, history is free, because there was a long period where none of the Sith who held his holocron wanted to learn about history or philosophy and were instead more focused on how best to murder people with the Force, and he just really wants to learn some history.

Also, I 100% support Ahene getting those axes. At least one of them! Or, if not, give her some Adas imagery during a fight. Dual wielding axes, because she lost her lightsabers, and they were the only thing available!

[sith-shenanigans]

My Zash has been having… a rather terrible time trying to get that information, aheh. She’s doing her best! There are lessons, even if they’re weird ones and sometimes happen at horrible hours because there’s no way Zash keeps a consistent sleep schedule. But in the end she’s largely resorted to keeping Ahene away from people who would Notice Things who wouldn’t write it off as an apprentice coming out of their shell and couldn’t be disposed of.

My Zash also isn’t particularly inclined to bother with the “unnecessary” parts in general—she considers it a point of pride to do the training she does give to her own standards of quality, she just… doesn’t see her paper-doll apprentice as needing to know anything but mission/survival skills and enough social understanding to avoid Incidents and keep from being eaten alive. (And with Ahene, she can’t use the lessons as a bribe very well, though she’ll probably get a better handle on why that’s not been working later.) Hence keeping Ahene—and most of my inquisitors, though not necessarily quite to the same extent—away from Sith society as much as possible, to keep her from making the kind of allies who might realize that someone else was riding around in that meatsuit.

That obviously isn’t ideal for coming into it with connections—but it’s very difficult to pretend to be another person, in person, to someone who knows that person. Especially in a world where there are shapeshifters and Force illusions and ghostly possessions. So Zash has been very on board with Ahene making connections with normal people—who are not making reciprocal two-way emotional connections with Sith, generally, and are easier to get rid of if things go wrong—and very down on Ahene interacting much with other Sith.

(It is also… a thing with my Zash that while she was attached to Ahene in her terrible possessive way, all her genuine affection was predicated on the ability to mold someone in her image—even if literal body theft hadn’t been on the table, I see her as someone who doesn’t really see a difference between caring about someone and owning them. So she did care about Ahene, but only to the exact extent that Ahene was hers, and that would always have fallen apart horribly.)

… Honestly, it’s probably a bit more emotionally rational to be taken in a bit. It is very much Ahene’s trauma that led her to the worst possible conclusion, which just happened to be mostly correct. It has been very not-correct in other circumstances. Like when she reacted with immediate distrust towards Bessiker.

Also! Ludo Kressh was right. I will insist on this forever. (And I am deeply horribly attached to Horak-Mul.)

The axes, alas, are not trying to show up in Ahene’s plot, where she would probably just be very fascinated about history at them. Someone here—I am looking at my warrior—thinks that she deserves a metaphor about being the Emperor’s axe (since Vitiate-as-acknowledged-Sith’ari is a thing in my worldbuilding) and also to hit him with an axe. One of those is happening, one of those is hopefully not.

[ospreyeamon]

You are so right about Zash trying to sneakily keep the Inquisitor isolated. Like, other than the whole visions of glorious destiny thing, Zash chose the Inquisitor as her body-snatch victim because they were a former slave; no known family at the time, most people who knew them before the Academy were probably also slaves who nobody would listen to. Part of why I think that Zash trained the Inquisitor is that the training was a way of managing their social interactions in addition to curating their skill-set. Time spent in lessons with Zash is time not spent out meeting other people.

One reason why she encouraged Lys'trel to study the certification was because it's a huge entry level course taken mostly by non-Sith and it's believable that Lys'trel might not remember any given one of her fellow students afterwards. (Another reason was that Zash didn't want to have to retake that certification herself.)

My assumption about why Zash kept the fact that she had taken two new apprentices secret is that it wasn't actually because she wanted to keep the Inquisitor away from Corrin and Kaal, it was because she needed to keep Corrin and Kaal away from the Inquisitor. Corrin and Kaal weren't in on the body-snatching plot but Zash was planning on keeping them around afterwards. That meant she had to carefully control everything they knew about the Inquisitor – Zash's bestie who knew everything about Zash and who Zash had totally passed on all of her cool ritual knowledge and Sith magic tricks to, who Zash was immeasurably proud of and foresaw leading the Sith into a new age of glory, and who Zash planned on leaving everything to in the event of her death including her two adorable junior apprentices who Kallig was so looking forward to meeting when they arrived back on Dromund Kaas.

It pinged as a red flag to Lys'trel when Grandpa Kallig told her about Kaal and Corrin. Not because it was suspicious that Zash would take more apprentices, but because if Zash and Lys'trel's relationship really was what Zash presented it as being, Zash would have told Lys'trel that she'd expanded their little Teaching-Linage. Lys'trel was certain Zash had a deeply self-interested motivation for taking her as an apprentice and promoting her to Lord so quickly, but she thought it might be that Zash was over her head in the Sith infighting and needed a powerful and loyal ally to survive. The lie of omission signaled it was something more sinister.

@themildestofwriters I very much agree that Zash never would have wanted it revealed that she had stolen her apprentice's body. I headcanon that it's illegal for the living to possess people in the Reconstituted Empire, or even to research how to possess people, because Vitiate doesn't want anyone figuring about how his deal with the Voice works because that would be useful knowledge for people seeking to inconvenience him. (Vitiate's excuse for why it's okay for him to do it is that he has ascended to godhood.)

This provides a Watsonian explanation for Thanaton's non-specific accusations against Zash and the Inquisitor. Thanaton knew that Zash was illegally researching possession but couldn't use that information against her without revealing that he also knew more than was legal about that field of knowledge. Part of what Thanaton knew was about the Emperor's Children, so he needed to be careful that never came out because it would open him up to accusations of treason.

So, Zash plotted the body-snatch very carefully, trying to minimise to risk of being pegged as not-the-Inquisitor while transferring as much as possible over to her new identity. That's another reason for her to butter up the Inquisitor; the closer they seem, the less strange it would be for Zash to write them into her will, enabling her to keep her stuff.

[jesuistrefatugie]

Quick question: Did Darth Zash teach Nox/Occlus/Imperius anything? Or did she just use them as an errand runner?

If not, then that's like running around with a loading rocket launcher and hoping not to trip. Expect the rocket launcher is a shit ton of force energy. And the tripping part is a sudden change in morals/ethics.

[sith-shenanigans]

To be fairer to her than I think she deserves, each act is supposed to cover about a year, so there’s presumably some training going on between each planet.

Zash being Zash, though, I don’t think she was interested in teaching them much more than they needed to a) survive and b) not embarrass her/themself. Because embarrassing themself would be embarrassing her.

Poor Ahene ended up on Balmorra without really even understanding how to meditate properly because everything Zash said on the subject was either baffling or (from her perspective) flat-out counterproductive. And that’s kind of… important. For psychological stability. But she was just kind of going “probably it’s normal that I’m horribly stressed all the time? I am very traumatized, this is probably normal?” Until the holocron of Kel’eth Ur had to help her out. (She’s not a secret lightsider, so his method didn’t help, but he helped her develop one!) She’s still kind of horribly stressed, but now it’s more from the actual trauma and less from the trauma plus not putting her mind in order ever.

Honestly, barring noncanonical holocron theft, the Inquisitor’s best bet for the presumable offscreen training they had is probably Kallig.

(Which is going to be a thing in the fic, though it hasn’t gotten there yet.)

[ospreyeamon]

My assumption is that Zash was fairly generous with her teaching of the Inquisitor, wanting to encourage them to trust her and not bolt out of Imperial space at the first opportunity, but was very careful not to encourage any skill or knowledge that would increase the Inquisitor’s chances of escaping the body-snatching ritual.

Duelling? Zash isn’t planning to take the Inquisitor on in an honourable swordfight. Healing? Provided its things like how to set and fuse bones on the fly rather than any energy-draining techniques definitely – got to make sure the body stays in good shape. History? So long as it isn’t about Tulak Hord’s era and avoids any important instances of possession that should be safe enough. Filing taxes? The structure of the Pyramid of Ancient Knowledge? Etiquette? Dancing? If it distracts the Inquisitor from what she isn’t teaching them, Zash will spend the afternoon showing her new apprentice how to requisition datapads.

But anything related to rituals, the Emperor and his Voice, ghosts, mind tricks, or Sith magic? No way. Maybe the same for literacy if the Inquisitor were unlucky enough to be lacking in the area – that would make it easier for them to go poking around on their own, but if Zash were the one to teach them that might cement the Inquisitor’s faith in her desire for their well-being.

My Inquisitor had a fun time with Zash. They went to the opera together. They hosted a couple of parties together. Zash encouraged Lys’trel to go to college to study a certificate in archival practices, because in another few months once she’s learnt the ropes Zash can secure her an official research bursary. Zash encouraged Lys’trel to adopt aspects of Zash’s fighting style, because really the Overseers pushing her into Makashi had been a form of sabotage. Zash encouraged Lys’trel’s interest in the Jedi Civil War, because the age of Tulak Hord has been picked over for centuries and that will make it so much harder to come up with a truly groundbreaking thesis topic.

Lys’trel learnt a lot from Zash, including how to file her taxes, but in hindsight she can see the many ways that education had been warped to align with the setup for the planned body-theft.