Ever since I first read this post by @lectorel about a soulmark au during the clone wars, I’ve had these thoughts bouncing around in my head because I don’t think ending the war would be that easy.
-a group of separatists that have numbered soulmarks try to petition their leaders to stop the fighting because more clones are dying every hour but of course Dooku won't listen because he and his master are running a long con, not a war of principal
-they’re real mad about not being taken seriously and think about leaving the separatists and starting their own splinter group
-but then someone of some authority on the Sep's side has a numbered soulmark that isn't faded and they decide they aren't going to wait around for their soulmate to be killed by this terrible war that's gone on for too long anyway
-they find a hacker and get them to reprogram the droids under their control
-now there's a bunch of clankers kidnapping clones instead of fighting them
-there are a lot of clones so it’s going to take a while to find the separatist leader’s soulmate so he has his hacker try to work out a way to spread the kidnapping program to the whole droid army
-in the meantime he sends the ones that aren’t his clone to the group who was protesting
-but most of those clones aren’t exactly happy with their soulmates. Yes, they’re happy to have met them, but they have a war to fight and people to save and a job to do
-probably at least some of the separatist protestors just want their soulmates to be happy and help sneak out some of the clones who want to leave
-the as of yet unkidnapped clones don't like this new droid behavior. What are the seppies doing with their brothers???
-kidnapping gets much more difficult once the clones know what’s going on
-some clones are injured in the next attempt and one of them gets a concussion
-he wants to return to his job but his soulmate begs him to at least see a doctor first to make sure he’s ok
-and so head scans are done on a clone by a doctor that isn’t Kamino approved and the chip is discovered
-more clones are asked to be scanned and some agree and it turns out they all have a chip???
-and so the guy who started the kidnapping gets his hacker to find out what’s up with these chips
-and of course Order 66 is just one of many terribly incriminating orders on these chips
-basically everyone is horrified that a computer chip can force living beings to do things against their will
-maybe they’d start a smear campaign against the Republic/the Chancellor/Kamino
-If Anakin caught wind of this you know he would insist on an investigation because there’s not much he hates more than slavery
-in any case, someone on the republic side would find out its true
-it’d be this huge scandal. The senate would be in meltdown
-Palpatine would have a bunch of back up plans to cover his ass so no one would be able to point fingers at him and it would be this big mess about who’s to blame
-but he wouldn’t be able to use the chips without becoming incriminated
-in the midst of it all, Padmé, Mon, Bail, and friends would be working to actually help the clones
-they’d probably find a big group of doctors volunteering to remove the chips
-and their advocating for clone rights would start to be actually effective because the public view would be swayed
-someone please help me figure out what happens next
-I just really want the war to end and the senate to give the clones their own planet
(Sorry for any poor grammar/spelling. I don’t usually do things like this.)
Thanks to @imgonnahityouwithmypointeshoe and @dogen-boole-blog for listening to me ramble about this a couple weeks ago and @squusemonster for telling me to write it down.
