Vitiate & Malgus : The Duty of a Sith to his Emperor
So I know some of you don't like the novel Deceived, and even more of you don't like the novel Revan, but i've picked up on some points I thought were interesting.
300 or so years before the class stories, Vitiate took Revan prisoner, keeping him in stasis and relying on him for visions of the future. (That's another can of worms, but whatever.)
Now Vitiate went to extreme lengths to imprison Revan in a place where - in theory - no one could get to him. He is the sole prisoner on a massive space station in the Maelstrom nebula, a place that could only be reached with the help of a Gree computer. So literally the sole purpose of this space station was keeping Revan.
(We literally have to do TWO Flashpoints to get to rescue him in story mode.)
So who does Vitiate select to oversee this super-secure space station that is so important to him?
The Children of the Emperor? Nope.
One of the Dark Council, the Sith who Vitiate had hand-picked to oversee his empire? Uh-uh.
Instead he picks THIS mother-fucker.
Ah, yes. Darth Malgus. The icon of the game since well before it even debuted. The Empire's champion during the last war. A cautionary tale to women everywhere about the consequences of marrying someone who might one day kill you if they think you make them 'weak'.
(Malgus, of course, effectively delegates the task to Grand Moff Rycus Kilran, but more on that another time.)
Now Deceived is largely told from Malgus' perspective, and at no point does he imply that he has any special relationship with the Emperor. On the contrary, he's frustrated by the levels of separation between himself and Vitiate.
We do know that Malgus spent much of the Cold War in the unexplored regions, expanding the Empire's influence. (Not terribly unlike what Palpatine had Thrawn do, but never mind.)
But it is unexplained why, out of all Sith in the Empire, Vitiate entrusts Malgus with such an important task as Revan's jailer.
(The simple explanation is that this is bad writing, and Malgus keeps showing up because he's iconic. This is probably the case. But heck with that. I'm head-canoning here.)
All of this shows an incredible amount of trust by Vitiate.
And yet - when the Voice is destroyed on Dromund Kaas, its Malgus who attempts to usurp Vitiate.
It doesn't work out for him, but still.
Years later, of course, we meet him again in Onslaught. Republic Outlanders get the following dialogue:
He doesn't say who he's referring to. He doesn't have to.
My thinking is that sometime between Deceived and the class stories, something happened where Vitiate entrusted Malgus with far more than he did with most of his servants. I honestly wonder if Malgus' coup wasn't done on Vitiate's orders.
I doubt they'll ever follow up on this, but it would have been cool if they had.
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