Now it was my turn to gloat. "Oh, Sidious. You never did show much interest in learning about Force illusions. Perhaps you should have spent less time rehearsing your monologue and more time practicing. Now, I'm afraid, it's too late." I fastened my Force grip tighter around his heart. By now the organ was unable to pump blood at all, muscles desperately twitching and fluttering. If he had been born a Muun, one of his other two hearts would have picked up the slack and he might have been able to resist. But alas, evolution had a sense of humor when shaping the human species. Sidious' legs buckled and he collapsed to his knees. He snarled up at me, struggling for breath as his face started to take on a bluish cast.
— Darth Plagueis
Written by YeahOkayCool on AlternateHistory.com, The Unabridged Memoirs of Darth Plagueis the Wise is a Star Wars alternate timeline.
The point of divergence is simple: Darth Plagueis kills Palpatine at the end of the Darth Plagueis novel by James Luceno.
What follows is a rather different story to the one we all know.
Can be found here
, and is mirrored for non-AH.com members at Sufficient Velocity. The version on AH.com has since been closed due to the author being banned, however.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- A God Am I: Plagueis and the "sovereign will" he believes to be the hallmark of a true Sith Lord.
- Above Good and Evil: Plagueis believes in the idea, claiming that what makes one person better than another is how much their actions benefit him.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- Jabitha Hal is recruited by Plagueis and becomes his new apprentice, Darth Borea.
- Padme Amidala is a leading member of the Rim Liberation Front. Well, maybe; she might be an imposter.
- Gial Ackbar is also in the RLF, though he's stated to be more of a My Country, Right or Wrong example.
- The Ageless: Plagueis, after conducting extensive experiments in attempt to directly control midi-chlorians.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Averted, forming the story's divergence from Legends continuity.
- A Man of Wealth and Taste: Plagueis is said to be well-dressed in the Darth Plagueis novel. It's nearly written word-for-word in the form of an uncharacteristic Shout-Out - "A Muun of wealth and taste."
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear in-universe whether the "Amidala" leading the RLF is the real person or a body double who pulled a Kill and Replace. Out of universe, YeahOkayCool is unwilling to reveal it.
- Ascended Extra: Jabitha Hal, a human/Ferroan hybrid. She debuted as a brief supporting character in The New Jedi Order, but had little in the way of character development or impact. Here, she becomes Plagueis' new apprentice, Darth Borea.
- Asshole Victim: Palpatine. Plagueis was genuinely willing to share power, but instead Palpatine tried to get him drunk and kill him in his sleep.
- Badass Bookworm: In the Legends continuity, Plagueis disappeared for twenty years, holing himself up in his lab and working around the clock to better understand midi-chlorians. In this story, he puts this knowledge to good use by figuring out how to influence the midi-chlorian analogues that make up Yuuzhan Vong biotech and escape his torture in the Embrace of Pain.
- Bastard Understudy: Borea, like all Sith apprentices.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Averted for Jabitha. While the Embrace of Pain brought her to the brink of madness, it was her rescue by Darth Plagueis that really began her fall to the dark side.
- Big "WHAT?!":
- Plagueis' mental reaction to Zho Krazhmir stopping him for a conversation in the middle of a fight.
- Also his mental reaction to Dooku nominating himself for Chancellor.
- The Chessmaster: Plagueis is a skilled one, given that he was the one to plant the clone army idea in Sifo-Dyas' mind so well that even Sifo-Dyas forgets that Plagueis was the one who suggested it.
- The Chosen One: Both Plagueis and Borea are anxious and obsessed with Anakin Skywalker.
- Convenient Coma: Rune Haako ends up in one after being wounded during Nute Gunray's assassination. He wakes 13 years later during the tail end of the Rim-Core War, informing the Jedi about the (unknown to him) deceased Sidious' involvement in the Trade Federation's blockade of Naboo.
- The Corrupter: Plagueis does this with Jabitha to create a new, loyal apprentice. And, while not to the extent as Palpatine did in canon, he's also slowly gaining influence over Anakin as well.
- Continuity Cameo: A lot. Moreso even than Luceno himself.
- Continuity Nod: Tons and tons, on the verge of Continuity Porn. Like Luceno, YeahOkayCool gets an A+ for effort.
- Cute and Psycho: Jabitha is a sweet, friendly teenage girl who loves plants, starships, and getting into trouble... who also happens to be Darth Borea, Plagueis' Sith apprentice and a merciless assassin.
- Dating Catwoman: While her job is to manipulate him for the Sith agenda, Plagueis notes that Borea seems to have developed feelings for Anakin. It's mutual, and they eventual consummate a Relationship Upgrade.
- Dead Man's Switch: Plagueis and Dooku both claim to have one ready to expose the other's corrupt dealings, in case of an assassination. Plagueis discovers Dooku's (a hologram confession of his crimes, implicating Plagueis in them) and manipulates it to frame him as being Darth Sidious.
- Decapitation Strike: The RLF attacks a conference of the galaxy's Mega Corps which wipes out their entire leadership.
- Didn't See That Coming: Dooku nominating himself for Chancellor catches Plagueis totally flatfooted.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: The fic's primary divergence is this, as Palpatine unfortunately didn't get Plagueis drunk enough and is killed in retaliation.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- The execution of Nute Gunray's assassination plays out fairly similarly to that of John F. Kennedy.
- The Siege of Kalee, which drags on indefinitely due to the Republic facing an irregular war against guerrilla insurgents, has been compared to similar such wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam.
- Double Agent: Nom Anor becomes this, agreeing to serve as Plagueis' mole among the Yuuzhan Vong after witnessing his power.
- Eldritch Abomination: As a child brought into being by the Force itself, Anakin is one — at least to Plagueis' Force-sight.
- Elite Mooks: The Thunderclap Commandos, special clone troops made from Yuuzhan Vong DNA and used by the RLF specifically to fight Jedi.
- Emperor Scientist: Plagueis is a lethal combatant and seeks to conquer the galaxy like all other Sith, but he puts particular emphasis on the esoteric nature of the Force.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Dooku confronts Plageis after figuring out that he's a Sith and was the one who killed Palpatine. However, not knowing Palpatine was a Sith, he assumes Darth Maul was Plagueis' apprentice and that Palpatine was a mundane Corrupt Politician who Plagueis was planning to use as a puppet to rule the Republic through but was killed for not playing his part after Maul's death.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Just as he saw Sidious as a surrogate son before his attempted betrayal, Plagueis comes to see Darth Borea as a daughter figure. And unlike Sidious, Borea reciprocates that feeling.
- Eviler than Thou: In Plagueis' view, Alto Stratus is this to the other RLF leaders, as while they're only rebelling out of political pragmatism or loyalty to their homeworlds, Stratus is an utter fanatic for the RLF's cause.
- Evil vs. Evil: Plagueis vs the Yuuzhan Vong scout teams.
- False Flag Operation: Dooku bombs the Senate, killing the Chancellor, and implicates the RLF for it, in order to convince the Republic and Jedi to take a harder stance against the rebels. For now, it appears to have failed, as both groups realize that the evidence seems too convenient to be true. In the meantime, however, it's successfully opened the path for Dooku to nominate himself for acting Chancellor.
- First-Person Smartass: Darth Plagueis' narration falls into this a lot, especially when Senators or Jedi are nearby.
- For Want Of A Nail: Plagueis stays sober enough just before Palpatine's attempt on his life that he sees it coming and kills him instead.
- Frame-Up:
- Plagueis uses his connections to frame Chancellor Farr for embezzling funds from a relief organization and diverting them to an RLF-aligned group on his homeworld, thus leading to his impeachment and weakening the Republic even further.
- After Haako reveals the Sith's involvement with the Trade Federation, Plagueis has Zam Wesell impersonate Dooku in a forged video which portrays him as confessing to being Darth Sidious.
- He Knows Too Much:
- Why Nute Gunray is assassinated by Plagueis.
- After Wesell helps Plagueis in his framing of Dooku, on top of having previously killed Gunray for him, he decides she's too much of a loose end and orders her death.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite ending up with someone other than Padme, Anakin still ends up fathering twins.
- Mythology Gag: When Anakin and Jabitha are reunited on Bothuwai, he's wearing battle armor, the description of which sounds a lot like Darth Vader's.
- Orbital Bombardment: The main tactic of Ackbar's Perlemian Blitz campaign. He jumps his fleet into a system, and proceeds to deliver Death from Above on every visible military sight on the planet, allowing his forces to then land and steal and/or sabotage all the infrastructure they can, before then fleeing the system to rinse and repeat somewhere else.
- Praetorian Guard:
- Plagueis has his Sun Guards, as per canon.
- After Dooku becomes Supreme Chancellor, he replaces the office's contingent of Senatorial Guards with a handful of personally-selected Jedi bodyguards. The media takes to calling them "Chancery Knights".
- Purple Prose: Plagueis often slips into long, verbose metaphors on Sith philosophy and metaphysics while writing his memoirs.
- Pyrrhic Victory: The Battle of Outer Hapes is this for the Republic — they destroy most of Ackbar's fleet, ending his blitz, but in the process lose a significant number of their own ships. Plus, the blitz has already devastated a vast swath of Republic territory.
- Red Baron: Anakin becomes known as "the Black Knight" during his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Probably because of the Vader-esque armor he wears.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After he's led to believe that Jabitha has been killed, Anakin takes his clone battalion rogue and begins slaughtering his way through Bothan space.
- Secret Police: The Political Security Service serves this function for the RLF.
- Shout-Out: During one conversation with Anakin, Plagueis comments "You may very well think that, I suppose, but I couldn't possibly comment."
- The Siege: The Siege of Kalee, which apparently lasts for nearly the entirety of the Rim-Core War.
- Single-Minded Twins: Anakin and Borea's twin children border on this, due to a combination of their Force-based Twin Telepathy and how early in development they are meaning that their thoughts and emotions keep mixing.
- The Social Darwinist: Plagueis, like most Sith, believes that the strong should rule and the weak exist only at the mercy of the powerful. Borea takes his lessons to heart and puts them into practice by hunting down and killing a Hutt slaver. Rather than capture his slaves by force, he quietly poisoned a colony's water supply with horribly addictive chemicals and sold the colonists into slavery when they couldn't pay for the "treatments" for their chemical dependency. In Borea's mind, the Hutt never gave his captives a fair chance to prove themselves strong or weak, and therefore deserved to die.
- Take That!: When story commentators brought up the possibility of Darth Maul still being alive, like in Canon, YeahOkayCool made it perfectly clear that Maul is dead in this universe, and that no amount of "handwaving or space voodoo" is going to change that.
- Villain Team-Up: Plagueis eventually, by chance, encounters Nom Anor and is convinced to tentatively take up a loose alliance by means of opening a backchannel to share information. Plagueis is aware that their different goals mean they'll probably end up opposed to each other later, but for now is going along with it out of curiosity.
- Wacky Marriage Proposal: Anakin proposes to Jabitha in the middle of a war zone, after she's just talked him down from a grief-induced madness.
- We ARE Struggling Together: The Republic's reaction to Anakin's Roaring Rampage of Revenge is heavily divided between the Jedi and their political allies wanting to bring him back in before he goes fully to the Dark Side, a purely military faction which wants to try him for desertion, and a group led by Tarkin who want to let him keep doing what he's doing.
- Wham Line: Dooku: "I therefore, with the blessing of the Jedi High Council, put myself forward as interim Supreme Chancellor for the duration of this crisis."
- Wild Card: Dooku, after discovering Plagueis' identity, plays along with being his ally while pursuing his own agenda.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The Rim Liberation Front, which has the stated purpose of freeing the Outer Rim from the tyranny of the Core.
