Post by YodaBreaker on Apr 15, 2006 22:19:43 GMT -5
Hi all,
Here's my first attempt at writing a Star Wars story. Constructive criticism is quite welcome, especially as this represents my first time trying to lay out my fiction writing for a non-family audience. I'll be posting new entries into the story irregularly (as time writing on my dissertation permits), though I hope to post once every week or two, and I'll post the complete story here. We'll see how long the story (and/or my and/or your interest!) lasts
UPDATE: This story has gotten too long to update on a single post. To see the whole story, go here.
It is two years after the Battle of Naboo.
Palpatine has firmly entrenched
himself into the Chancellorship
of the Galactic Republic. A tenuous
peace reigns through the galaxy.
Meanwhile, Count Dooku has resigned
from the Jedi Order to protest their
antiquated ways. His disappearance
has both saddened and concerned
the members of the Jedi Council.
Unbeknownst to the Jedi, Count
Dooku has joined the Sith. His
master has assigned him a final
sinister task to complete his
initiation into that terrible cult...
A sleek, roughly triangular ship cut through the atmosphere of Coruscant deliberately. The descent of its obsidian hull slowed as it reached a cloaked landing pad deep in the heart of the glimmering planetary city. Once its landing gear glanced upon the pad, white gaseous hisses emanated from the underside of the ship, easing it onto the urban terrestrial surface.
Regal footsteps echoed down the landing ramp as Count Dooku emerged from the dark bowels of the ship. He gazed upward, still impressed by the immensity of the secret Sith palace that remained undetected by the seemingly blind eyes of the Jedi Council.
His steps took him into into a dimly lit chamber, the end of an endlessly reconfiguring maze of twists and turns that could be stabilized only through use of the dark side of the Force. A darkly robed and slightly hunched figure greeted him there. “Kneel, Count Dooku,” hissed the reptilian voice.
Dooku obeyed wordlessly. He bowed his head, raising his eyes to meet the gaze cast down at him. Only when his eyes met those of the hooded face did he utter, “What is thy bidding, my master?” in his deep, sinister, yet soothing baritone.
The slithery voice spoke again. “I have reports from Kamino that the clones are gestating well. The manipulations of their genome have stabilized, and the first wave of neonates have been spawned. They have been weaned from their nurse droids, and they already show promise in their initial combat exercises.”
“How excellent, Lord Sidious!” Dooku's excitement was palpable; his eyes brightened and his wrinkled face became taut with pleasure.
“Indeed, Count. The clone army will be ready soon enough. And when it nears completion, you will be able to arise from the shadows we now inhabit. It is clear we will no longer require our long-dormant insurance policy. Eliminate it.”
“But, my Lord...” Dooku's impertinent interruption was met with a harsher, firmer tone of voice from beneath the hood.
“This is your final test. Once it is completed, you will have demonstrated your devotion to the Sith arts. You will finally be worthy of a Sith name.”
Dooku knew better than to cross his master a second time. “Yes, my Master. And when he is removed, I shall begin seeding foment throughout the galaxy.”
“One task at a time, my apprentice. Remain focused on the needs of the present.” The voice sounded as if it were shedding a scaly skin of scarcely contained contempt.
“Of course, my Master. What evidence shall you require?”
“His lightsaber would make a worthy trophy. Without it, he will not survive long in that forsaken wasteland.”
“Indeed, my Master.” Dooku nodded gravely in assent. “Then I shall dispatch him immediately. I shall kill that which the Jedi have believed dead for almost two years.”
“Rise,” croaked the gravelly voice from beneath the hood.
Dooku again obeyed, bowing slightly at the waist to the darkly robed figure before turning quickly on his heels to return to his Sith Infiltrator. Soon, nearly all connections between the Sith and the nascent clone army would be forever severed.
Dooku's sinister ship careened noiselessly through hyperspace. The stars streaked by as Dooku contemplated the circumstances that had brought him to this point in his life. How he had warned the Jedi Council that a new menace was rising. How they refused to believe him. How they arrogantly assumed they had destroyed the Sith a millennium ago. How even the death of Darth Maul generated not even an apology to him for the obtuseness of the Jedi.
It became clear to Dooku that the Jedi had outlived their usefulness. Before the Battle of Naboo raged, Dooku sensed a darkness growing on Coruscant. A swirl of dark side energy permeated the governance of the Republic. Many members of the Jedi Order felt its uneasy energies clouding their ability to use the Force, though they insisted that only increased meditation would clarify their minds and push the dark side from them. Dooku became exasperated with this foolishness. He was the most vocal of a minority of Jedi who argued that the darkness must be actively fought against, not passively resisted, to bring it to an end.
Dooku knew that the fastest way to fight the darkness would be to embrace its influence and follow it to its source. However, no one but he was willing to take this drastic step: not his former Padawan, Qui-Gon Jinn; not the other Jedi with whom he had served; not even the Jedi Grand Master Yoda. Instead, he was left to seethe at how the impotence of the Galactic Senate endangered the people of Naboo. The Jedi's Council's insistence at not interfering with “mere politics” further demonstrated to Dooku their obstinate unwillingness to confront the obvious gathering evil.
Before leaving on his fateful mission to resolve the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo, Qui-Gon met with Dooku one last time. Dooku approved of the progress of Qui-Gon's Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and agreed that he would soon be ready to face the trials that would ensure his fitness to become a Jedi Knight. Dooku also urged Qui-Gon to join with him to explore the source of the dark side eddies in the Force once he was free of Obi-Wan. Dooku insisted that they must do so by riding the dark eddies through the Unifying Force, allowing them to predict their flow backward to their source. For Dooku, the present was but the past of the future.
Qui-Gon agreed that the dark source must be located – and quickly – but he believed strongly that they should not “lose” themselves in the dark eddies. Rather, they should embrace the Living Force fully, experiencing each moment and its attendant light or dark energy as it came to them. As the ripples in the Living Force became stronger and darker, they would know that they were moving closer to their source. This path would allow them to stay grounded in their pursuit of the darkness, remaining unclouded by both the active dark currents and the light side placidity they disturbed.
Dooku rebuked Qui-Gon, perhaps a bit too sharply. Once again, he derided Qui-Gon's devotion to the Living Force, which Dooku believed had no power to predict or control future events. Confrontation of and control over the dark energies was what was needed, not casual and ineffectual observation of them. He accused Qui-Gon of succumbing to the antiseptic foolhardiness of the other Jedi, of being unwilling to do what was necessary to stop the darkness. As Qui-Gon turned away in haste to rejoin Obi-Wan, Dooku spitefully hoped that Qui-Gon's Padawan would make a stronger Jedi than Qui-Gon did. Dooku regretted that being his last remark to his former apprentice; it hardly reflected the high esteem in which he held Qui-Gon's devotion to and skill at righting wrongs throughout the galaxy.
Was it guilt over Qui-Gon's death that drove Dooku further down the dark path, then? Or was it his recognition of the ineffectiveness of Qui-Gon's methods of dealing with the Sith's darkness that spurred him to throw himself into the dark Force currents fully? Dooku realized that even now, he did not know precisely why he started tracing the path of the Sith. He only knew when he started down the dark path: when his friend, Sifo-Dyas, refused to join him – to provide him an anchor in the light side of the Force.
After the death of Qui-Gon and Darth Maul, Dooku threw his consciousness deeply into contemplation of the darkness flowing through the Force on Coruscant. He sensed that these shadowy ripples in the Force often lapped against the senatorial delegation of the Trade Federation, which was instrumental in orchestrating the blockade of Naboo. Dooku used his political connections to gain access to the sniveling Neimoidians, drinking in the darkness that flowed over their simpering minds.
As he did, he felt his hatred for the complacency of the Jedi grow. It swelled within him, battering his already tattered loyalty to the Order, eroding that loyalty and washing it away into a sea of anger, resentment, and contempt. His mind became focused on his self-appointed task, to the detriment of all else. His negative emotions spilled onto his youngling learners, causing him to be removed from his instructional duties in the Jedi Temple. His growing apparent instability made him unfit for diplomatic missions. And his increasing propensities toward violence prevented him from settling offworld conflicts with aggressive negotiations.
It was for these reasons that the Jedi Council asked former Council member Sifo-Dyas to speak with Dooku. They had debated the wisdom of sending someone who shared Dooku's agitation against the nebulous dark energies gathering in the Force, who urged that something be done to quell them. However, Master Windu insisted that only someone who shared Dooku's sensibilities and whose training in the Force had been fortified by partaking in the advanced meditations of the Council would have any hope of reasoning with Dooku and bringing balance back to his mind. From his development of the Vaapad style of lightsaber combat, which skated on the razor's edge between light and dark Force use, Master Windu recognized the signs that Dooku was wallowing in the dark side of the Force – and knew that unless Dooku was pulled from it, he would become submerged in it.
Sifo-Dyas agreed readily. He saw his old friend's mental and spiritual deterioration progressing all too rapidly, and he wanted to do whatever was needed to bring Dooku back to his old (if arrogant) self. So Sifo-Dyas approached Dooku to reconnect with his friend after one of Dooku's myriad administrative meetings with the Neimoidian senator named Lott Dod. Dooku found himself relieved by Sifo-Dyas's presence – he calmed Dooku, gave Dooku a harbor from the tempestuous dark Force currents that wracked his psyche. Yet Dooku had grown to fear any kind of placidity, any respite from his increasingly frantic attempts to predict the flow of the dark currents.
Nevertheless, Dooku tolerated his anxiety as he fell back into easy, familiar patterns of conversation with his friend, ambling through the halls of the back rooms of the Senate. At last, he found a sympathetic ear who might listen to his concerns about the dark Force currents, rather than dismiss them or suppress them. As their conversation passed beyond pleasantries and nostalgia, Dooku began feverishly sharing how close his meditations had brought him to the source of the dark Force emanations.
He felt that he had narrowed their source to some member of the Supreme Chancellor's staff. Someone was manipulating the Galactic Senate through the Chancery, and Dooku was intent on riding the intensifying waves of darkness to cut through every staff member there to find their origin, even if they led through the Supreme Chancellor himself.
Sifo-Dyas listened intently to Dooku's frenetic musings. He opened his mind to them, using the Force to permit Dooku's understanding to guide his. The more he opened his mind to Dooku, the more the growing decadence in the Republic became sensible. And with that sensibility came a darkening of Sifo-Dyas's own sentiments toward the Jedi Council's unswerving loyalty to the dictates of the Senate, no matter how foolish or mired in imbecility those dictates may have become.
Dooku's words percolating through Sifo-Dyas's consciousness allowed him to comprehend how the Senate had come to be stymied through the greed of the Trade Federation...how that greed was contributing to the mounting frustrations of other systems with the corruption of the Galactic Senate...and how those frustrations would lead to an anger and hatred that would rend the Republic asunder.
But soon, a whisper of the Living Force called to Sifo-Dyas. Gently, it brought his contemplations away from the darkness in the Unifying Force that was overwhelming Dooku's mind. Slowly, Sifo-Dyas separated himself from the detailed vision of the future that Dooku's charisma helped him weave. Carefully, he guided Dooku back to the present moment, away from the ominous possible future that Sifo-Dyas saw even more clearly than did Dooku. However, when he asked Dooku to join in a simple reharmonizing meditation that he had learned in his time on the Jedi Council, Dooku struck out viciously against him, loosing an unexpected bolt of Force lightning coursing through Sifo-Dyas's body and knocking him to the ground.
Sifo-Dyas staggered back up gingerly but dismissed his friend's discharge of dark Force energies as the price paid by an intrepid explorer of the gathering shadows. He gripped Dooku by the shoulder, which sent a small residual charge through both of them and directed Dooku's attention back to Sifo-Dyas. Sifo-Dyas complimented Dooku on the results of his explorations. He felt the truth of Dooku's assertions that the Chancery was at the epicenter of the dark Force emanations. He also agreed that at least one member of the Chancery must be a Sith, as only a Sith could generate such intense, pervasive, and pure dark side energies.
Nevertheless, Sifo-Dyas questioned the wisdom of continuing to use such a broad search strategy that obviously carried risks of its own, pointing along his body to the lingering wisps of smoke from Dooku's unbidden Force lightning attack. He wondered if the Living Force might have been a better tool to use at that point. Surely, with only a few candidates to choose from, it would be easier to use the Living Force to discern them one at a time than to ride the increasingly dense and impenetrable dark Force currents through the Unifying Force back to their mountingly nebulous source. It seemed to Sifo-Dyas that the effort necessary to squeeze additional insights from the Unifying Force would exact too high a toll on Dooku. Indeed, he believed that it threatened to devour wholly Dooku's tenous balance in the Force, to tip him completely to the dark side of the Force.
Dooku, having recovered quickly from the shock of having nearly unintentionally electrocuted his friend, felt his rage build. He stormed at Sifo-Dyas's intimation that he was not proceeding in the most optimal way possible. His wrath frothed at Sifo-Dyas's questioning of his use of the Force, despite Sifo-Dyas's impassioned protests. His very blood boiled at how Sifo-Dyas's suggested course of action mirrored the foolhardy strategy offered by Qui-Gon what seemed a lifetime ago now.
Dooku's implacable fury caused Sifo-Dyas to back away. In vain, Sifo-Dyas pointed out the dark depths in which Dooku had submerged himself, the ways in which they had limited and perverted his behavior, and his inability to recognize the damage he did – even to his friend, just minutes ago. Regretfully, Sifo-Dyas walked away from Dooku, convinced that Dooku was on a dark path that would lead only to ruin.
As he departed, Dooku's desperate pleas echoing in his ears, he opened his mind one last time to feel the turmoil in Dooku's mind, to try one last time to steady it. He was knocked to his knees by the barbarous red-tinged visions of hooded figures, myriads of white-clad figures, limbs lost, and a burning temple, throughout which a raspy voice rang and cackled mercilessly, a distortion of one that was somehow familiar....
Sifo-Dyas closed his mind abruptly and rose from his knees slowly, shaking his head as his footfalls cascaded through the empty senatorial hallway.
As Dooku relived the simple head shake that conveyed more disappointment than an hour's worth of heated invective ever could, his keen senses detected the otherwise imperceptible shake and shimmy of his ship's exiting hyperspace. Master Sifo-Dyas would soon pay the ultimate price for his desertion that day.
Dooku piloted his Sith Infiltrator through the solar system toward his destination, running a Sith holocron between his fingers. A Sith holocron that he had taken...borrowed...stolen from the Jedi Archives. A Sith holocron that triggered his reminiscence again.
After Sifo-Dyas left him in the Senate halls, Dooku realized that there was some truth to what Sifo-Dyas told him, that his method of applying the Unifying Force was meeting formidable resistance. But rather than abandon the Unifying Force, whose predictive guidance had seen him well through so many decades of Jedi activity, Dooku decided to change the way he used it. He recognized that his current method was alienating all those around him, so he took a different tack. He decided to pore through the Jedi Archives, utilizing the expertise of his friend and former confidante Jocasta Nu.
He appealed to her haughty pride in her knowledge of the ancient secrets of the Sith, persuading her to grant him access to the sealed vault of Sith holocrons. He reasoned that studying the Sith Archives would be the best way to comprehend the mysterious ways by which the dark side cloaked itself from the Jedi. She agreed and set aside a private study room for him, which he occupied for hours at a time, leaving only to eat or sleep. She had not yet heard about the Council's suspicions of Dooku. Or if she had, she exercised her considerable ability not to listen to then when data from the outside world conflicted with her understanding of the order of the universe.
At first, she acted as the embodiment of a persnickety stickler for regulations that nearly all members of the Jedi Order knew the head librarian to be. She supervised his researches tenaciously, tracking each holocron that Dooku examined...for how long he looked at it...what data he accessed on it...forcing him to confine his studies to holocrons containing relatively innocuous Sith legends and credos to avoid raising suspicion. He hid his rageful impatience at her micromanagement beneath a smooth veneer of obsequious obedience and flattery.
Fortunately, his ploy bore fruit within a few weeks. After having Dooku consistently stroke her considerable ego for what may have been the first time in decades, she became increasingly lax with him, eventually allowing him to take Sith holocrons for study without formally checking them out or having them scanned by the security droids. This lack of oversight gave him unfettered and unchecked access to the darkest secrets of the Sith present in the Jedi Archives. The more he studied the ways of the Sith, the more he allowed his consciousness to absorb their malevolent teachings, the more he felt compelled to approach the source of the dark Force currents rather than rip through it by the sheer force of his mediations.
Dooku became intrigued by the Sith doctrines and how they seemed prophetic about the current stagnation in the Galactic Republic. As he clutched a particular Sith holocron, Dooku came to understand that the Sith believed in the use of power as a means toward attaining perfection. The destruction that followed in their wake resulted in the imperfection of others, not from an inherent wish to destroy. The Sith ensured that each life remained strong, rather than allowing weakness and idiocy to corrupt the Force and the life within it.
A heretical thought took root in Dooku's mind. Perhaps the clouding of the Jedi Order's Force sight resulted not from some active dark side machinations, but from the weakness of the Jedi themselves, which was exposed by the increasing dark side Force activity!
The thought enraptured Dooku, eroding decades of training in Jedi ethics almost instantly, replacing it with a single maxim: perfection of the fittest. A maxim that summarized the pure kernel of Sith lore, passed down untainted for thousands of years. And with that knowledge, a flash of the Unifying Force revealed to him the identity of the remaining Dark Lord of the Sith. A Sith in the Chancery would not be satisfied as anything but its head. He would subordinate himself to no one, be the servant of nothing. The Sith Lord must be the Supreme Chancellor: there was no other possibility.
But Dooku's studies convinced him to join the Sith, rather than expose them. The Sith teachings agreed with his sense of self-importance, which his Jedi discipline forced him to bury. They gave him focus, allowed him to comprehend why he had felt so stifled under the Jedi's strict codes of conduct. They liberated him, showing him a way to live to his fullest potential – to rule far more than a few mewling younglings. Yes, the way of the Sith held much greater promise for Dooku, and he would force himself into it, threatening to expose the Chancellor if he did not allow Dooku to be initiated into its secrets.
With that decision, a new equilibrium settled over Dooku's mind. Suddenly, the Unifying Force became clear for him. He no longer had to battle through waves of dark energies to understand the coming storm. Now, it unfolded before him in crystal clarity. And he was at its center. Commanding armies of men and droids. Beating the Jedi into submission. Winning whole sectors of systems to his leadership. Penetrating to the very heart of the Galactic Republic. A smile passed over his face as he leaned fatuously back in his chair, the tension of the last few months released utterly from his body.
Over the next few days, Dooku surreptitiously deleted planets from the Jedi Archives that had been mentioned in the Sith holocrons so that no one would be able to trace his movements. He also removed the Sith holocrons from the Jedi Archives so that the Jedi would be unable to harass the Sith, as they had done for millennia, nearly to the point of extinction. Once he removed the last Sith holocron from the Archives, Dooku strode purposefully toward the Chancellor's office, twisting the Sith holocron between his fingers as he left in a brazen act of defiance. Jocasta Nu never even looked up at him as he walked past, trusting him to return the holocron when he was finished with it.
The same Sith holocron worked through Dooku's fingers as he entered orbit around the planet Dagobah, soon to be the final resting place of Master Sifo-Dyas.
Here's my first attempt at writing a Star Wars story. Constructive criticism is quite welcome, especially as this represents my first time trying to lay out my fiction writing for a non-family audience. I'll be posting new entries into the story irregularly (as time writing on my dissertation permits), though I hope to post once every week or two, and I'll post the complete story here. We'll see how long the story (and/or my and/or your interest!) lasts
UPDATE: This story has gotten too long to update on a single post. To see the whole story, go here.
The Fate of Master Sifo-Dyas
It is two years after the Battle of Naboo.
Palpatine has firmly entrenched
himself into the Chancellorship
of the Galactic Republic. A tenuous
peace reigns through the galaxy.
Meanwhile, Count Dooku has resigned
from the Jedi Order to protest their
antiquated ways. His disappearance
has both saddened and concerned
the members of the Jedi Council.
Unbeknownst to the Jedi, Count
Dooku has joined the Sith. His
master has assigned him a final
sinister task to complete his
initiation into that terrible cult...
A sleek, roughly triangular ship cut through the atmosphere of Coruscant deliberately. The descent of its obsidian hull slowed as it reached a cloaked landing pad deep in the heart of the glimmering planetary city. Once its landing gear glanced upon the pad, white gaseous hisses emanated from the underside of the ship, easing it onto the urban terrestrial surface.
Regal footsteps echoed down the landing ramp as Count Dooku emerged from the dark bowels of the ship. He gazed upward, still impressed by the immensity of the secret Sith palace that remained undetected by the seemingly blind eyes of the Jedi Council.
His steps took him into into a dimly lit chamber, the end of an endlessly reconfiguring maze of twists and turns that could be stabilized only through use of the dark side of the Force. A darkly robed and slightly hunched figure greeted him there. “Kneel, Count Dooku,” hissed the reptilian voice.
Dooku obeyed wordlessly. He bowed his head, raising his eyes to meet the gaze cast down at him. Only when his eyes met those of the hooded face did he utter, “What is thy bidding, my master?” in his deep, sinister, yet soothing baritone.
The slithery voice spoke again. “I have reports from Kamino that the clones are gestating well. The manipulations of their genome have stabilized, and the first wave of neonates have been spawned. They have been weaned from their nurse droids, and they already show promise in their initial combat exercises.”
“How excellent, Lord Sidious!” Dooku's excitement was palpable; his eyes brightened and his wrinkled face became taut with pleasure.
“Indeed, Count. The clone army will be ready soon enough. And when it nears completion, you will be able to arise from the shadows we now inhabit. It is clear we will no longer require our long-dormant insurance policy. Eliminate it.”
“But, my Lord...” Dooku's impertinent interruption was met with a harsher, firmer tone of voice from beneath the hood.
“This is your final test. Once it is completed, you will have demonstrated your devotion to the Sith arts. You will finally be worthy of a Sith name.”
Dooku knew better than to cross his master a second time. “Yes, my Master. And when he is removed, I shall begin seeding foment throughout the galaxy.”
“One task at a time, my apprentice. Remain focused on the needs of the present.” The voice sounded as if it were shedding a scaly skin of scarcely contained contempt.
“Of course, my Master. What evidence shall you require?”
“His lightsaber would make a worthy trophy. Without it, he will not survive long in that forsaken wasteland.”
“Indeed, my Master.” Dooku nodded gravely in assent. “Then I shall dispatch him immediately. I shall kill that which the Jedi have believed dead for almost two years.”
“Rise,” croaked the gravelly voice from beneath the hood.
Dooku again obeyed, bowing slightly at the waist to the darkly robed figure before turning quickly on his heels to return to his Sith Infiltrator. Soon, nearly all connections between the Sith and the nascent clone army would be forever severed.
Dooku's sinister ship careened noiselessly through hyperspace. The stars streaked by as Dooku contemplated the circumstances that had brought him to this point in his life. How he had warned the Jedi Council that a new menace was rising. How they refused to believe him. How they arrogantly assumed they had destroyed the Sith a millennium ago. How even the death of Darth Maul generated not even an apology to him for the obtuseness of the Jedi.
It became clear to Dooku that the Jedi had outlived their usefulness. Before the Battle of Naboo raged, Dooku sensed a darkness growing on Coruscant. A swirl of dark side energy permeated the governance of the Republic. Many members of the Jedi Order felt its uneasy energies clouding their ability to use the Force, though they insisted that only increased meditation would clarify their minds and push the dark side from them. Dooku became exasperated with this foolishness. He was the most vocal of a minority of Jedi who argued that the darkness must be actively fought against, not passively resisted, to bring it to an end.
Dooku knew that the fastest way to fight the darkness would be to embrace its influence and follow it to its source. However, no one but he was willing to take this drastic step: not his former Padawan, Qui-Gon Jinn; not the other Jedi with whom he had served; not even the Jedi Grand Master Yoda. Instead, he was left to seethe at how the impotence of the Galactic Senate endangered the people of Naboo. The Jedi's Council's insistence at not interfering with “mere politics” further demonstrated to Dooku their obstinate unwillingness to confront the obvious gathering evil.
Before leaving on his fateful mission to resolve the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo, Qui-Gon met with Dooku one last time. Dooku approved of the progress of Qui-Gon's Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and agreed that he would soon be ready to face the trials that would ensure his fitness to become a Jedi Knight. Dooku also urged Qui-Gon to join with him to explore the source of the dark side eddies in the Force once he was free of Obi-Wan. Dooku insisted that they must do so by riding the dark eddies through the Unifying Force, allowing them to predict their flow backward to their source. For Dooku, the present was but the past of the future.
Qui-Gon agreed that the dark source must be located – and quickly – but he believed strongly that they should not “lose” themselves in the dark eddies. Rather, they should embrace the Living Force fully, experiencing each moment and its attendant light or dark energy as it came to them. As the ripples in the Living Force became stronger and darker, they would know that they were moving closer to their source. This path would allow them to stay grounded in their pursuit of the darkness, remaining unclouded by both the active dark currents and the light side placidity they disturbed.
Dooku rebuked Qui-Gon, perhaps a bit too sharply. Once again, he derided Qui-Gon's devotion to the Living Force, which Dooku believed had no power to predict or control future events. Confrontation of and control over the dark energies was what was needed, not casual and ineffectual observation of them. He accused Qui-Gon of succumbing to the antiseptic foolhardiness of the other Jedi, of being unwilling to do what was necessary to stop the darkness. As Qui-Gon turned away in haste to rejoin Obi-Wan, Dooku spitefully hoped that Qui-Gon's Padawan would make a stronger Jedi than Qui-Gon did. Dooku regretted that being his last remark to his former apprentice; it hardly reflected the high esteem in which he held Qui-Gon's devotion to and skill at righting wrongs throughout the galaxy.
Was it guilt over Qui-Gon's death that drove Dooku further down the dark path, then? Or was it his recognition of the ineffectiveness of Qui-Gon's methods of dealing with the Sith's darkness that spurred him to throw himself into the dark Force currents fully? Dooku realized that even now, he did not know precisely why he started tracing the path of the Sith. He only knew when he started down the dark path: when his friend, Sifo-Dyas, refused to join him – to provide him an anchor in the light side of the Force.
After the death of Qui-Gon and Darth Maul, Dooku threw his consciousness deeply into contemplation of the darkness flowing through the Force on Coruscant. He sensed that these shadowy ripples in the Force often lapped against the senatorial delegation of the Trade Federation, which was instrumental in orchestrating the blockade of Naboo. Dooku used his political connections to gain access to the sniveling Neimoidians, drinking in the darkness that flowed over their simpering minds.
As he did, he felt his hatred for the complacency of the Jedi grow. It swelled within him, battering his already tattered loyalty to the Order, eroding that loyalty and washing it away into a sea of anger, resentment, and contempt. His mind became focused on his self-appointed task, to the detriment of all else. His negative emotions spilled onto his youngling learners, causing him to be removed from his instructional duties in the Jedi Temple. His growing apparent instability made him unfit for diplomatic missions. And his increasing propensities toward violence prevented him from settling offworld conflicts with aggressive negotiations.
It was for these reasons that the Jedi Council asked former Council member Sifo-Dyas to speak with Dooku. They had debated the wisdom of sending someone who shared Dooku's agitation against the nebulous dark energies gathering in the Force, who urged that something be done to quell them. However, Master Windu insisted that only someone who shared Dooku's sensibilities and whose training in the Force had been fortified by partaking in the advanced meditations of the Council would have any hope of reasoning with Dooku and bringing balance back to his mind. From his development of the Vaapad style of lightsaber combat, which skated on the razor's edge between light and dark Force use, Master Windu recognized the signs that Dooku was wallowing in the dark side of the Force – and knew that unless Dooku was pulled from it, he would become submerged in it.
Sifo-Dyas agreed readily. He saw his old friend's mental and spiritual deterioration progressing all too rapidly, and he wanted to do whatever was needed to bring Dooku back to his old (if arrogant) self. So Sifo-Dyas approached Dooku to reconnect with his friend after one of Dooku's myriad administrative meetings with the Neimoidian senator named Lott Dod. Dooku found himself relieved by Sifo-Dyas's presence – he calmed Dooku, gave Dooku a harbor from the tempestuous dark Force currents that wracked his psyche. Yet Dooku had grown to fear any kind of placidity, any respite from his increasingly frantic attempts to predict the flow of the dark currents.
Nevertheless, Dooku tolerated his anxiety as he fell back into easy, familiar patterns of conversation with his friend, ambling through the halls of the back rooms of the Senate. At last, he found a sympathetic ear who might listen to his concerns about the dark Force currents, rather than dismiss them or suppress them. As their conversation passed beyond pleasantries and nostalgia, Dooku began feverishly sharing how close his meditations had brought him to the source of the dark Force emanations.
He felt that he had narrowed their source to some member of the Supreme Chancellor's staff. Someone was manipulating the Galactic Senate through the Chancery, and Dooku was intent on riding the intensifying waves of darkness to cut through every staff member there to find their origin, even if they led through the Supreme Chancellor himself.
Sifo-Dyas listened intently to Dooku's frenetic musings. He opened his mind to them, using the Force to permit Dooku's understanding to guide his. The more he opened his mind to Dooku, the more the growing decadence in the Republic became sensible. And with that sensibility came a darkening of Sifo-Dyas's own sentiments toward the Jedi Council's unswerving loyalty to the dictates of the Senate, no matter how foolish or mired in imbecility those dictates may have become.
Dooku's words percolating through Sifo-Dyas's consciousness allowed him to comprehend how the Senate had come to be stymied through the greed of the Trade Federation...how that greed was contributing to the mounting frustrations of other systems with the corruption of the Galactic Senate...and how those frustrations would lead to an anger and hatred that would rend the Republic asunder.
But soon, a whisper of the Living Force called to Sifo-Dyas. Gently, it brought his contemplations away from the darkness in the Unifying Force that was overwhelming Dooku's mind. Slowly, Sifo-Dyas separated himself from the detailed vision of the future that Dooku's charisma helped him weave. Carefully, he guided Dooku back to the present moment, away from the ominous possible future that Sifo-Dyas saw even more clearly than did Dooku. However, when he asked Dooku to join in a simple reharmonizing meditation that he had learned in his time on the Jedi Council, Dooku struck out viciously against him, loosing an unexpected bolt of Force lightning coursing through Sifo-Dyas's body and knocking him to the ground.
Sifo-Dyas staggered back up gingerly but dismissed his friend's discharge of dark Force energies as the price paid by an intrepid explorer of the gathering shadows. He gripped Dooku by the shoulder, which sent a small residual charge through both of them and directed Dooku's attention back to Sifo-Dyas. Sifo-Dyas complimented Dooku on the results of his explorations. He felt the truth of Dooku's assertions that the Chancery was at the epicenter of the dark Force emanations. He also agreed that at least one member of the Chancery must be a Sith, as only a Sith could generate such intense, pervasive, and pure dark side energies.
Nevertheless, Sifo-Dyas questioned the wisdom of continuing to use such a broad search strategy that obviously carried risks of its own, pointing along his body to the lingering wisps of smoke from Dooku's unbidden Force lightning attack. He wondered if the Living Force might have been a better tool to use at that point. Surely, with only a few candidates to choose from, it would be easier to use the Living Force to discern them one at a time than to ride the increasingly dense and impenetrable dark Force currents through the Unifying Force back to their mountingly nebulous source. It seemed to Sifo-Dyas that the effort necessary to squeeze additional insights from the Unifying Force would exact too high a toll on Dooku. Indeed, he believed that it threatened to devour wholly Dooku's tenous balance in the Force, to tip him completely to the dark side of the Force.
Dooku, having recovered quickly from the shock of having nearly unintentionally electrocuted his friend, felt his rage build. He stormed at Sifo-Dyas's intimation that he was not proceeding in the most optimal way possible. His wrath frothed at Sifo-Dyas's questioning of his use of the Force, despite Sifo-Dyas's impassioned protests. His very blood boiled at how Sifo-Dyas's suggested course of action mirrored the foolhardy strategy offered by Qui-Gon what seemed a lifetime ago now.
Dooku's implacable fury caused Sifo-Dyas to back away. In vain, Sifo-Dyas pointed out the dark depths in which Dooku had submerged himself, the ways in which they had limited and perverted his behavior, and his inability to recognize the damage he did – even to his friend, just minutes ago. Regretfully, Sifo-Dyas walked away from Dooku, convinced that Dooku was on a dark path that would lead only to ruin.
As he departed, Dooku's desperate pleas echoing in his ears, he opened his mind one last time to feel the turmoil in Dooku's mind, to try one last time to steady it. He was knocked to his knees by the barbarous red-tinged visions of hooded figures, myriads of white-clad figures, limbs lost, and a burning temple, throughout which a raspy voice rang and cackled mercilessly, a distortion of one that was somehow familiar....
Sifo-Dyas closed his mind abruptly and rose from his knees slowly, shaking his head as his footfalls cascaded through the empty senatorial hallway.
As Dooku relived the simple head shake that conveyed more disappointment than an hour's worth of heated invective ever could, his keen senses detected the otherwise imperceptible shake and shimmy of his ship's exiting hyperspace. Master Sifo-Dyas would soon pay the ultimate price for his desertion that day.
Dooku piloted his Sith Infiltrator through the solar system toward his destination, running a Sith holocron between his fingers. A Sith holocron that he had taken...borrowed...stolen from the Jedi Archives. A Sith holocron that triggered his reminiscence again.
After Sifo-Dyas left him in the Senate halls, Dooku realized that there was some truth to what Sifo-Dyas told him, that his method of applying the Unifying Force was meeting formidable resistance. But rather than abandon the Unifying Force, whose predictive guidance had seen him well through so many decades of Jedi activity, Dooku decided to change the way he used it. He recognized that his current method was alienating all those around him, so he took a different tack. He decided to pore through the Jedi Archives, utilizing the expertise of his friend and former confidante Jocasta Nu.
He appealed to her haughty pride in her knowledge of the ancient secrets of the Sith, persuading her to grant him access to the sealed vault of Sith holocrons. He reasoned that studying the Sith Archives would be the best way to comprehend the mysterious ways by which the dark side cloaked itself from the Jedi. She agreed and set aside a private study room for him, which he occupied for hours at a time, leaving only to eat or sleep. She had not yet heard about the Council's suspicions of Dooku. Or if she had, she exercised her considerable ability not to listen to then when data from the outside world conflicted with her understanding of the order of the universe.
At first, she acted as the embodiment of a persnickety stickler for regulations that nearly all members of the Jedi Order knew the head librarian to be. She supervised his researches tenaciously, tracking each holocron that Dooku examined...for how long he looked at it...what data he accessed on it...forcing him to confine his studies to holocrons containing relatively innocuous Sith legends and credos to avoid raising suspicion. He hid his rageful impatience at her micromanagement beneath a smooth veneer of obsequious obedience and flattery.
Fortunately, his ploy bore fruit within a few weeks. After having Dooku consistently stroke her considerable ego for what may have been the first time in decades, she became increasingly lax with him, eventually allowing him to take Sith holocrons for study without formally checking them out or having them scanned by the security droids. This lack of oversight gave him unfettered and unchecked access to the darkest secrets of the Sith present in the Jedi Archives. The more he studied the ways of the Sith, the more he allowed his consciousness to absorb their malevolent teachings, the more he felt compelled to approach the source of the dark Force currents rather than rip through it by the sheer force of his mediations.
Dooku became intrigued by the Sith doctrines and how they seemed prophetic about the current stagnation in the Galactic Republic. As he clutched a particular Sith holocron, Dooku came to understand that the Sith believed in the use of power as a means toward attaining perfection. The destruction that followed in their wake resulted in the imperfection of others, not from an inherent wish to destroy. The Sith ensured that each life remained strong, rather than allowing weakness and idiocy to corrupt the Force and the life within it.
A heretical thought took root in Dooku's mind. Perhaps the clouding of the Jedi Order's Force sight resulted not from some active dark side machinations, but from the weakness of the Jedi themselves, which was exposed by the increasing dark side Force activity!
The thought enraptured Dooku, eroding decades of training in Jedi ethics almost instantly, replacing it with a single maxim: perfection of the fittest. A maxim that summarized the pure kernel of Sith lore, passed down untainted for thousands of years. And with that knowledge, a flash of the Unifying Force revealed to him the identity of the remaining Dark Lord of the Sith. A Sith in the Chancery would not be satisfied as anything but its head. He would subordinate himself to no one, be the servant of nothing. The Sith Lord must be the Supreme Chancellor: there was no other possibility.
But Dooku's studies convinced him to join the Sith, rather than expose them. The Sith teachings agreed with his sense of self-importance, which his Jedi discipline forced him to bury. They gave him focus, allowed him to comprehend why he had felt so stifled under the Jedi's strict codes of conduct. They liberated him, showing him a way to live to his fullest potential – to rule far more than a few mewling younglings. Yes, the way of the Sith held much greater promise for Dooku, and he would force himself into it, threatening to expose the Chancellor if he did not allow Dooku to be initiated into its secrets.
With that decision, a new equilibrium settled over Dooku's mind. Suddenly, the Unifying Force became clear for him. He no longer had to battle through waves of dark energies to understand the coming storm. Now, it unfolded before him in crystal clarity. And he was at its center. Commanding armies of men and droids. Beating the Jedi into submission. Winning whole sectors of systems to his leadership. Penetrating to the very heart of the Galactic Republic. A smile passed over his face as he leaned fatuously back in his chair, the tension of the last few months released utterly from his body.
Over the next few days, Dooku surreptitiously deleted planets from the Jedi Archives that had been mentioned in the Sith holocrons so that no one would be able to trace his movements. He also removed the Sith holocrons from the Jedi Archives so that the Jedi would be unable to harass the Sith, as they had done for millennia, nearly to the point of extinction. Once he removed the last Sith holocron from the Archives, Dooku strode purposefully toward the Chancellor's office, twisting the Sith holocron between his fingers as he left in a brazen act of defiance. Jocasta Nu never even looked up at him as he walked past, trusting him to return the holocron when he was finished with it.
The same Sith holocron worked through Dooku's fingers as he entered orbit around the planet Dagobah, soon to be the final resting place of Master Sifo-Dyas.