Lord Vader/Anakin Skywalker and I met today to discuss haunting the Rebel Scum. He says that the event sounds enjoyable, though he can't drag anyone down to the underworld as he has "returned to the light side", whatever the kriff that means. But he apparently has various ideas on how to strike fear into the hearts of the living, which would be very much in the spirit of the event. All in all, the meeting wasn't as terrible as I feared. He was respectful of my ideas and while he concluded with his usual threatening "Don't fail me, Admiral", I'm beginning to think that's just how he says goodbye to me.
I've been thinking a great deal about Lord Vader lately. On one hand, he filled my days with endless terror and stress. On the other hand, he did appreciate me in times when no one else seemed to. There were also a few times he snapped the necks of officers who were cruel to me. I overheard him telling one of them, "No one makes Admiral Piett cry except me."
So, you see, things have always been rather complicated with him.
I've only just learned that having a landspeeder driver's license was under "optional but recommended criteria" to operate a Star Destroyer. This would explain the blank stares of the piloting crew when I asked if we'd checked our blind spot before crashing into adjacent Star Destroyers (which happened on a weekly basis). This would also explain why parking a Star Destroyer took up to 6 hours.
(I'm not even referring to the Executor. Granted, no one knew how to parallel park the Executor but I think that was more the result of her being 19,000 kilometers-long.)
For once, the Imperial command is in unanimous agreement. We have decided against getting involved with the Emperor’s Sith Eternal Fleet (or the “Final Order”, as he sometimes calls it. I do wish he would pick a name and stay with it.). While the Emperor will always hold a special place in our hearts, it’s clear that his strategic judgment has declined. In my opinion, this was already clear during the Battle of Endor. A number of us are also offended that he replaced us so quickly with the so-called First Order, who plagiarized our aesthetic.
So, Grand Moff Tarkin declared that we will stay out of the Emperor’s scheme on Exegol. We have sent him a polite letter stating this and requested that he immediately return our Star Destroyers to the afterlife. I suppose this could be considered a coup. A posthumous coup, perhaps the first in history.
In spite of this, my afterlife is more strenuous than ever. I have accepted new leadership responsibilities commanding our hauntings for the Summon a Vengeful Imperial Ghost Program due to pressure from Grand Moff Tarkin. The program has grown increasingly popular amongst disheartened living Imperials. I am happy that they are so passionate about vengeance, but it is hard work to fulfill these requests.
For instance, I’m fully booked for requests to write bloody messages on refresher mirrors of former Rebels. Apparently, I have the most legible handwriting out of anyone in Death Squadron. So, Tarkin transferred many of those requests to me. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve written “YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID” or “I’M COMING FOR YOU” on various reflective surfaces. I understand that these are classic eerie messages, but I do wish I got a little more variety.
I have also been resisting multiple séance calls from my mother. It is very unpleasant for spirits to resist séance, and I consequently have a dreadful headache. I’m beginning to wonder whether I ought to simply answer the call, let her holler at me for being a terrible admiral and an even worse son, and then be done with it. But I resent those kinds of confrontations.
I believe I am managing all of this stress reasonably well, all things considered. Sadly not everyone agrees. According to Max, I’ve been snappish. I believe this was in reference to me yelling at Venka to go jump out the airlock due to a delay processing the summoning requests. Maybe I was a little harsh on him, but I need to hold my crew to high standards.
After the incident with Venka, Needa sent me an article on the “psychological concept of displacement”. He can be very presumptuous at times.
In theory, I will have a day or so of reprieve in the future. Imperial Fleet Appreciation Day is approaching, and Tarkin says we will have the day off. However, I do not know when exactly this holiday shall take place. I have never quite gotten a firm sense of time in the afterlife, so it is difficult to tell. I could have sworn the holiday should be tomorrow, but when I asked Tarkin, he scowled at me and said I had the dates confused.
I hope the holiday comes soon, whenever it does. I have plans for an AT-AT soirée with Max.
I contacted my mother for help out of miserable desperation. Having found no other way to return to the afterlife, I had no choice.
Per usual, it wasn’t a pleasant phone call. She was upset with me for interrupting her Axxilan soap opera, and even more upset to hear that I had fallen out of the afterlife. She then subjected me to a lengthy lecture on how I ought to be more responsible.
“This is just like that time you wound up stranded on Endor,” she said. “I thought you’d have learned something from that.”
I tried to explain to her for the thousandth time that the Endor incident was the dirty work of my nerfherder ex-boyfriend in the ISB sought to have me eaten by miniature bears after we quarreled over his poor taste in music. However, she refused to listen. She’s never shown me any sympathy concerning my relationship woes, particularly concerning Chief Inspector Brek. I believe she fancied having a son-in-law in the ISB and was awfully bitter when that didn’t work out.
In the end, she reluctantly agreed to give me and my fellow undead officers a lift from this accursed planet of Exegol. However, she stated that she will not be coming until tomorrow because she has evening plans and wants to teach me a lesson of some sort.
“It’ll give you some time to think about what you’ve done,” she told me.
I asked her whether she needed the coordinates to Exegol, but she said it wasn’t necessary.
“I’ve been there a thousand times, Firmus,” she claimed. “I used to go there on a weekly basis before you were born.”
I tried to ask her what business she had on Exegol all those years ago, but she cut off our connection before I could finish my sentence.
At the end of the call, Needa patted me on the shoulder and said “she seems nice”. I swear, I wanted to slap him. I know the man has good intentions, but he absolutely cannot read the room. That’s what got him killed to begin with. The moment that his shuttle arrived on the Executor, I told him Lord Vader was in a foul mood and wouldn’t take well to apologies, but Needa refused to listen, and we all know how that story ended.
And so, I found myself left with another 13 hours to spare, stranded with the likes of Motti and Jerjerrod. Even under the present circumstances, they are pretentious as ever. Jerjerrod wrote a bloody poem about Exegol, for the love of the Emperor. I believe he claimed it was a sonnet. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never liked poetry, especially not Jerjerrod’s. The opening line was “the dead speak!”, and I walked out before he could recite the rest. I know he’ll hold this against me later, but for now, I cannot be bothered to care.
Hoping to spare myself the dreadful poetry, I decided to wander the barren landscape as a forlorn ghost, as one does to pass the time. This proved to be very bad for my emotional state, and I soon found myself with even more worries than I’d started out with, which says something. Seeing as this exercise had done no good for me, I decided to return back to the others, only to realize that I had become lost.
I then realized that my aimless wandering had gotten me into a predicament tantamount in suffering to Jerjerrod’s poetry. By virtue of being an uninhabited planet, Exegol has very few landmarks. Fortunately, my many years in the Imperial Navy thought me a thing or two about navigation. Eventually, I was able to find my way back using the angle that the starlight formed when reflected in a pool of my own tears. (Grand Moff Tarkin thought me how to do that, although he usually used the tears of others.)
Upon my return, Motti ridiculed me for getting lost while Jerjerrod mostly made passive aggressive remarks about how it was rude to walk out on his poetry recitation. Needa and Max were relieved to have me return safely, though Max was a bit upset with me for wandering off.
“You could have been accosted by Rebel exorcists for all I know,” he said. “We all hate Jerjerrod’s poetry, but that isn’t an excuse!”
I’m touched that he worries about me, though I think he’s being a little too paranoid. It isn’t as if I’m some fragile little thing after all. I did survive under Lord Vader all those years.
I must say that this Obi-Wan Kenobi fellow is getting on my nerves. I had a terribly unpleasant encounter with him which was entirely unprovoked. You see, I was simply minding my own business, daydreaming about blasting Rebel cruisers, when I saw his blue ghost swooping down towards me. He then proceeded to accuse me of luring Anakin Skywalker down the wrong path and called me a “temptress of the Dark Side”.
Among many wild contentions, he blamed me for encouraging Lord Vader’s murderous tendencies which have – according to Kenobi – gone so far as to alter the physical appearance of his Force spirit. I assume Kenobi was referring to Lord Vader’s inflammatory eye condition. I do not know how I might have caused such a thing, and given that I have no ophthalmological training, I doubt I could make the eye condition any better or worse. (That said, I did with the Imperial Medical Bay on the subject, and they believe it is some form of post-mortem jaundice. They aren’t sure how one could develop such a condition post-mortem, but at any rate, it certainly isn’t my fault.)
I tried to tell Kenobi that I have only ever done my duty to the Empire and that, if anything, Lord Vader is usually the one who demands my presence. I also tried to explain that Lord Vader is an adult. In fact, he’s older than me. As such, he has the right to choose for himself who to affiliate with and what actions to make in life. I doubt I could influence him even if I tried. If I did, I might have been able to save poor Needa from strangulation.
Sadly, none of this convinced Kenobi. He told me to keep away from Anakin. Considering that Lord Vader typically seeks me out rather than the other way around, I told him that was unlikely to happen. Kenobi only shook his head and went off sulking.
Since then, I’ve seen him watching me angrily from a distance. He’s given me quite a shock a few times. It’s a wonder he and Lord Vader don’t get along better saying as they both seem to love brooding and frightening me.
I’ve considered bringing up the matter with Lord Vader, but I think that can wait. I have far too much stress already to worry about an angry Lord Vader on top of everything. Given their history, I doubt Lord Vader will take well to this news about Kenobi. I can’t blame him. If one of my friends pushed me into lava, I doubt I’d ever forgive them either.
Frankly, it’s absurd that such a thing even happened. I’ve had my fair share of rows with various acquaintances, but not once has a fight ever ended in dismemberment and volcanic burns. I can’t imagine any of my colleagues ever doing such a thing, not even Motti (although he did push me into the trash compactor once by accident). I wouldn’t have believed the tale if Lord Vader hadn’t had the scars to show for it in life.
Of course, I doubt Kenobi will listen to any of that. For now, I can only hope he’ll tire of these antics and leave me be. I’m far too tired for this.
I had an interesting seance session with Armitage Hux, Brendol's son. He is better company than his father but has some serious misconceptions about the Empire and, quite frankly, I find him a little whiny. He discussed how he has a "serious Skywalker problem". When I asked him exactly what said problem entailed, he said that his current Supreme Leader Kylo Ren tracked mud into the bridge, smashed a console and non-lethally Force choked an officer.
Back in my day, Darth Vader would smash the skulls of officers into consoles and track their blood into the bridge. Force choking was considered a matter of life. No one enjoyed it, but no one complained about it to the level that the First Order generation does, and I doubt they even experience it nearly as often as I did. I thought to tell Hux that, but I figured that would sound insensitive.
Really though, if he summons me again to complain about trivial matters, I don't know what I'll do.
I ran out of excuses for avoiding Anakin Skywalker/Lord Vader and finally agreed to have lunch with him. I’d assumed he meant “lunch” figuratively, as ghosts don’t typically eat. However, I greatly underestimated the amount of food offerings his grandson left at his helmet. This was the first full meal I’ve had since my death.
Besides the food, however, our meeting was exceptionally awkward. He asked me why I looked so frightened. I told him it was because when we were alive he kept slaughtering officers and threatening me saying “Don’t fail me again, Admiral.”
“I was just joking, Admiral,” he said. “I was never truly going to kill you. I thought you knew that.”
“My Lord, how was I supposed to know when you were choking everyone else who failed you?” I asked.
“That was just Ozzel and Needa…” he said.
“It was not just Ozzel and Needa,” I reminded him. “With all due respect, my Lord, you had a reputation long before then. And Needa was a close friend of mine.”
“That’s why I accepted his apology.”
He then told me he enjoyed having lunch together and that I should invite Needa and Veers next time “just like old times”. (I remember the lunch meetings he spoke of. I never ate anything during those meetings. I was too frozen with fear and focused on holding back tears.) I told him I’d try to do so. He smirked and said “Don’t fail me again, Admiral.”
I’m going to go curl up in a pocket dimension and weep.
In a strange twist of events, it turns out that our Star Destroyers were not pilfered by the Rebel Alliance. Instead, it appears they were stolen and frozen by our esteemed Emperor Palpatine, who is, oddly enough, still amongst the living.
Now, the fact that the Emperor lives has been known to the deceased Imperial community for some time. That said, none of us ever really found the need to visit him. I feel a tad guilty about it now, considering that the years clearly have not been kind to our poor Emperor.
We found him sitting around cackling to himself in the cavern system, not far from the lake of frozen Star Destroyers. It seems he’s been dwelling on the desolate planet of Exegol in the Unknown Regions for the past thirty or so living years. Apparently, the “abundance of dark side midichlorians”, to use his words, prevents decomposition on this planet and has wonderful anti-aging effects. I suppose this would explain why none of us have started decomposing yet. However, I can’t say that our Emperor is great proof of the planet’s anti-aging effects. His fingers are half rotted off and he looks awfully haggard, though I suppose that must be part of being over 110 years old.
The Emperor then rambled on to explain how he was grateful to us for “donating” our Star Destroyers and how the fleet would be perfectly preserved in ice. I tried to explain to him that being submerged in frozen water would ruin the Star Destroyers and that we would very much prefer to have them sent back to the afterlife, but Palpatine didn’t seem to be paying attention.
He then attempted to order me to serve as fleet admiral of his frozen Star Destroyers. I respectfully declined. The Emperor did not take kindly to my answer. Fortunately, his attempts to electrocute me had little effect saying as one cannot electrocute ghosts. Upon realizing this, the Emperor simply started cackling again and muttering about how the frozen fleet was all part of “something special” he had planned for the Rebellion.
It was then that our group came to the unanimous decision that it was best to leave the Emperor to his ramblings. Both Jerjerrod and I have had exceptionally negative experiences with the Emperor’s “special” plans and have no interest getting involved in them beyond the grave. Perhaps Grand Moff Tarkin can visit the Emperor and convince him to relinquish our submerged Star Destroyers. Until then, I only hope he will not be too lonely.
Now, we are faced with the dilemma of returning to the afterlife. If we cannot decompose on this planet, our only way back is via exorcism or transport to a planet where we can rot naturally. The trouble is that it’s awfully hard to order a space cab as a ghost. It’s difficult to make contact with anyone among the living for that matter.
I fear that I may have no option but to contact my mother for assistance. She’s rather skilled with séance and exorcisms. However, she will undoubtedly view this incident as a failure on my behalf and nag me about it during our future séance sessions. Furthermore, she’s hated Jerjerrod for being a “corrupting presence” ever since he brought me to a cabaret on Tinnel IV many years ago. I doubt she’d react well to his undead presence now.
Max thinks that I’m being silly and ought to have called her ages ago. He says he’d like to meet her. Now, I understand that Max is a bit of a thrill-seeker when it comes to perilous situations. I understand he wants to prove that he’s daring and fears nothing. But this is my mother we’re talking about. Until I met Lord Vader, she was easily the most terrifying person I knew. She makes Grand Moff Tarkin seem warm and fuzzy by comparison.
My point is, Max does not know what he’s saying, and therefore, I shall not call my mother unless I absolutely must. That said, I do not know how much longer I can last like this. Motti and Jerjerrod have been getting awfully handsy with each other, and Needa has been getting on my nerves. I feel a tad mean saying the latter, but if he tries to make small talk with me about the weather one more time, I might just snap. The weather is bleak and foggy on this planet, just as it has been since we arrived. That’s it. There isn’t anything to talk about.
This is why I miss my pocket dimension. What I wouldn’t give to curl up there now with a warm blanket and a copy of The Imperial Guide to Love and Probe Droids.
