Join the insightful, composed and rather good-looking Darth Sidious as he teaches Luke Skywalker the way of the dark side. That’s right! It’s everything a Jedi that just saved the universe wants to know about being a decrepit megalomaniac adept in the dark side, and was too much of a moron to be afraid to ask! Will Sidious have a chance to get it crammed in his eager student’s head, before his prone-to-violence, ticked off and newly force-sensitive twin sister finds him and murders him?
Dark empire is a story/audiobook/comic that was made by Tom Veitch in the 1991. (before the prequels). I don’t own star wars. I’m just reading this thing and laughing at it. The premise seemed ridiculous enough to draw me in. Luke learning the ways of evil as Palpatine’s apprentice. If you are as familiar with star wars as me, evil Luke makes me laugh, very hard. I also wanted something to start me into the EU, but this was probably a poor choice.
It actually seems like surprisingly solid writing to me. I’m pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t feel like filler and everyone is relatively in character. Although I have rarely encountered a Star Wars story I didn’t like, outside of Force Unleashed 2. I will be sure to point out the moments of canon discontinuity, and this should hopefully be a good time.
The medium is also strange for me. I’m just listening to the audiobook MP 3’s, so forgive me if I don’t articulate the setting very well.
The side scroll thing that typically happens at the beginning of every star wars states the obvious: the emperor is dead. It mentions an‘Admiral Thrawn’ who is- I dunno, some other EU guy I probably won’t hear about again. They call the ‘Emperor’s throne world’ a planet they gloriously mispronounce “CoresCANT. (Maybe after the empire took it over, they renamed Coruscant CoresCan’t. That’s pretty evil, my friends.) So there’s a lot of civil wars among the imperials and the rebels are doing good for themselves. Luke and Lando’s ship Liberator crashed on the planet’s surface, so the rest of the gang head out to rescue them.
Luke is inside a dark chamber that was converted from the Jedi temple in Coruscant. Apparently it leads out from the palace. Luke speculates that if his father ever lived in such a horrible place, he must have done so as Darth Vader. WRONG.
Luke: It's dark in here, artoo. And not just any kind of darkness. It’s the dark side.
R2: Beep beep –would have rolled eyes for hammy line if he had any-
Luke: Stay here, artoo, see if you can power up that tech station. See if you can get us some light. I can still feel the dark side here, it’s very power....-falls over- OW. Seriously, artoo where’s the lights?!
R2 activates the Sith Holocron-
Luke: Is that the Emperor?
R2: beep beep whistle . -immediately tries to turn it off before-
Luke: No artoo. Turn it on. I want to listen.
R2: Beep beep beep. -Wonders where his self destruct button is-
Sidious: My attempts create my own version of a device known of the jedi holocron have failed. Oh wait, no they haven’t! Yay! In that case, I will record my discoveries of the dark side and call it the Book of ANGER. Chapter One: If I find out that I’m dead and only left alive inside a holocron I’m going to be ANGRY. –after ranting forever about the dark side- And I have come to realize the dark side is my only ally, the only means to my POWA.
R2: beep beep beep (Okay, wtf was that?!)-
Luke: I can’t stop listening. The sheer evil, the elegant use of A at the end of his words. Is this what my father felt?
R2: -annoyed- beep beep beep. –already plotting the trajectory to the nearest lava planet-
One should seriously consider a drinking game whenever Palpatine mentions Anger. As for Luke’s question, I’m highly doubting Vader, or anyone for that matter ‘felt’ like stupidly staring at Palpatine’s ugly mug for hours on end. Meanwhile, some random imperial guys are looking for rebels but get ambushed by Millennium Falcon. Wedge has a Scottish accent or something, in this. He sounds like Scotty, exactly.
Wedge: We can’t hold out any longer!11
Leia wishes the imperials would wipe each other out, which is of course, loser talk. Leia sets up the weapons, and then mystical magical girl music plays and Leia suddenly becomes one with the force. Without Yoda, or Obi-Wan or anything, she suddenly feels the force flowing through her and kicks all the imperials butts collectively.
When the Falcon lands, they reunite with Lando. He says that randomly Luke ran off screaming something about the dark side of the force, and has been gone for six days. The hell? But then Lando shrugs and says he’s worried about make-shift armies from droid smugglers more than anything else. Suddenly, as if on cue, they are surrounded by droids. The smugglers, ironically enough, try to get at the Falcon. Which surely angers Han and Chewie. The smugglers retaliate by releasing “Cyborgian Battle Dogs” at them. Leia rolls up her sleeves, narrows her eyes and glares at them, and they all run away thanks to her PMS, I mean the force.
Suddenly all the battle droids explode. Luke suddenly comes in, bragging at the simple matter of blowing them all up because droids are no match for the force. A smartass on youtube asked, in that case, why didn’t the Jedi just do that in the clone wars against the droid army? Since most people- myself included- can’t grasp the basic-most of facts that this story was written before the prequels, the hand-wave answer is that Luke is just that awesome. When imperial walkers come on by, Luke reassures men everywhere by explaining that size matters not and makes short work of them too by exploding their batteries (From what I can gather from the .guys screaming the batteries are exploding and the random crashing noise.)
Luke: Yeah, thanks for picking me up sis, but I’m staying on this planet so I can learn more about the Dark Side and stuff. n_n Eh-hehe…is that ok?
Leia: Oh, Luke. n_n Hahaha. GO DIE.
-Suddenly magnetic storm happens-
Luke: Hey look it’s a magnetic storm. ^o^ *runs into it* I’m taking my chaaanceess…!!
Han: We can’t follow him! We have to head back to the ship. Luke can take care of himself. Even if he is randomly batshit insane now.
R2: Beep whistle beep. (Thank the mechanical gods he’s gone)
c3po: WHAT?! OH NO, R2 IS SAYING HE WANTS TO GO WITH MASTER LUKE.
Han: Better leave him then. Don’t want the madness to spread. Get on board, 3po.
R2: Beep beep beep. (FFFFFFF….)
c3po: -walks back on the ship with a troll face-
Rescue operations have been finished, but thanks to strange clues that someone is using the darkside on the planet Luke insists on staying. No one is amused or happy about this. He starts ranting about his destiny and a magnetic storm/hyperspace wormhole/crazy McDeadly spatial disturbance that freaks the ever-loving Scotsman daylights out of Scotty, I mean Wedge, suddenly opens up. R2D2 warns them of the energy storm, but of course they ignore him. Luke screams in true madman fashion that the storm ‘doesn’t want you it wants MEE’. He insists they leave and heads into the storm. They happily abandoned R2 and Luke on the planet to get sucked up like Kirby’s victims.
Luke: Yes, artoo. I know, they are leaving. They made the right decision. I only wonder… have I?
R2: Beep beep. (I hate you)
Meanwhile, some terrified guy is patrolling the area, so you know he’s going to die eventually. They get a call from Ackbar, who tells them of the rebel’s status. They say that ships are mysteriously vanishing from the civil war and stupidly foreshadow that nobody is seizing power, so they are all good and happy for now.
Ackbar: How did the mission to the old imperial home-world go? Is there any news of Commander Skywalker?
Mon Mothma: Yes, but not good, I’m afraid. We received a garbled transmission, but there was too much interference to understand it. I don’t know what to make of it.
-Turns on transmission- {goooooooooooooooood….}-turns off transmission-
Ackbar: …..Magnetic storm??
The ‘pinnacle base’ is some moon somewhere that has ‘sentient avians’ and apparently THAT’S the rebel base now. I dunno- look it up on Wookiepedia or something. A place with sentient avians sounds as weird a place as any. They all go to Emergency Meeting Mode about that magnetic storm. Ackbar says its ‘dark side geniuses’ at work. WUT.
Ackbar: Mon Calamari seems under attack by some diabolical new machines that had surrounded their planet. If only my people were as paranoid about traps as I am.
They are machines more lethal than the Death Star called World Devastators. Hello, Worf Effect, how are you today? Yeah, they OBVIOUSLY aren’t worse than a Death Star, considering a Death star would have blown up Mon Calamari to smithereens by now. Admiral Ackbar explains that Mon Calamari is part of the rebel alliance and opposes the empire and is a nice planet filled with Ackbars like himself so someone better save it god-dammit.
Leia: If there’s one thing I learned from Luke, it is the power of hope and strong will. We’ll save your planet Admiral Ackbar. I just hope there will be nothing ironic about my previous sentence.
Admiral Ackbar: This had better not be an ambush of an unexpected nature (otherwise known as a trap).
