Nightmare Fuel / Wilhuff Tarkin, Hero of the Rebellion

• The story's very idea: Wilhuff Tarkin as a member of the Rebellion... without altering his character that much. He proves that he can be just as horrifying as his canon counterpart and he just aimed his sociopathic tendencies against those who deserve it.
• Order 66 is bad enough... but then there's the fact that it's an official order to deal with a potential Jedi rebellion, so seeing Clonetroopers going after Ahsoka (who's not a Jedi anymore) after receiving it actually manages to unsettle Tarkin.
  • After the mind control chips were deactivated, the Clonetroopers nearly mutined. And the fic makes clear there's billions of them around, all heavily armed and well trained.
• Tatooine is a Single-Biome Planet, specifically a Thirsty Desert. It had a drought.
  • During the drought, Tarkin caught Jabba's men trying to extort a "water tax" from the inhabitants. Tarkin had them stripped naked and hanged to dry as a warning against similar stunts.
    • It's later found that the conditions of Tatooine are the result of the Rakatans leaving a device to make sure it wouldn't recover after their Orbital Bombardment over 25,000 years ago.
• Tarkin's first instinct after his son is killed: commit genocide on the supposed culprits. Thankfully, he reigns himself in... and then figures out the real murderer was Darth Vader and Palpatine either gave the order or authorized it.
  • Galen Erso is just as terrifying when it comes to his daughter's safety, being willing to kill everyone on the Death Star just to get to Tarkin and Krennic, the people he blames for seperating him from his daughter Jyn. Once Erso figures out Tarkin's real loyalties and that Palpatine is ultimately to blame, they become friends over this.
• At one point, a large group of Tusken Raiders prepares to attack Anchorhead, presumably to murder and torture its inhabitants, and the main force of Tatooine's Imperial garrison is too far to stop them... so Tarkin does his thing, and sets a plan that ends with Luke Skywalker and Tarkin's niece Rivoche getting the Tuskens trampled by their own Banthas.
  • The plan almost fails due something unexpected: A'Sharad Hett, a Jedi survivor, and leader of those Tuskens.
• Jabba the Hutt manages to be just as terrifying as Tarkin:
  • As mentioned above, when Tatooine was in the middle of a drought, he ordered his men to collect a water tax just to show off his power over the planet.
  • The Tusken Raiders hate all settlers, and messily murder anyone trying to take their sacred wine. Yet, they give said wine to Jabba. The fact nobody knows why (he mediates between the Tusken and the settlers and keep the later group away from the formers' sacred grounds and the Tusken show their gratitude by giving him their sacred wine) only serves to leave them wondering how.
  • He casually found evidence that Luke and Leia are Anakin's children. Good thing he owes him and considers them having inherited his favor...
  • And with all of the above, he's quite pragmatic about things, making him that much harder to take down.
• It's played for laughs, but a Stormtrooper has figured out that Luke is Anakin Skywalker's son. Thankfully she's under Vader, who is lenient enough to not care (and she doesn't tell him Luke is Anakin's son and not nephew), so the Inquisitors don't come after him...
• The Pius Dea, an ancient extremist religious movement that, for a time, controlled the Republic, and despised aliens. They were so loathsome that, millennia later, other human supremacists are still appalled by them, and Tarkin covertly pointing out the Empire is using their methods is enough to leave even Stormtroopers unsettled... with the lone exception of Imperial High Admiral Octavian Grant, who considers the Pius Dea era as the greatest days of the Republic.
• The fact some Rebels are actually criminals using the Rebellion as a cover and to get heavy weapons, and that are willing to steal funds for hospitals for their goals.
  • The demise of one such group of Rebels, wiped out by an Imperial task force Tarkin set on them.
• R2-D2 and C-3PO have a gruesome reputation, apparently having almost driven an Imperial admiral insane. And they keep a stash of illegal blasters to plant on people they want to get arrested by the Empire.
• After learning of the Mnggal-Mnggal Tarkin agrees that the Death Star is a legitimate solution to deal with the planet it has corrupted... and is surprised to find out there's a second planet that the Death Star should be used on. What planet is just as horrifying remains unknown as of this writing.
  • The chapter where the above happened showed an Abominor (a member of the Killer Robot race that drove the Yuuzhan Vong into evil and hating droids) that had grown planet-sized being easily shut down by the Imperial Navy, so it has to be worse than a planet-sized Killer Robot.
• Tarkin's reaction to the discovery of Project Starscream.
• The truth about Barriss Offee: the one who bombed the Jedi Temple was a Separatist clone infiltrator with all her memories and personality that hadn't been activated yet - meaning the real one would have likely done the same thing. The clone eventually recovered her sanity... but the original has fallen and joined the Inquisitors.
  • The fact there were multiple Separatist clone infiltrators, with the first wave being infamous for their tendency to fall to Clone Madness. These clones are a third of the reason the Clone Wars got their name, the rest being the two clone armies (the Republic's Clonetroopers and the Morgukai Shadow Army).
• Darth Vader destroying Malachor V. By accident. In short, he had a Villainous Breakdown close to a Dark Side weapon, and that was the result.
• To fill the Separatist ranks, the author decided to borrow characters from Disney and Disney-affiliated works... and the first to be mentioned is Rebo from Saturno Contro la Terra, that, as the author reminds in the Spacebattles thread, started his invasion of Earth by killing the entire population of Oslo as a test for his impending assault on Moscow. He's also been reinvented as a warlord of the Tof, a race from Legends so infamous for their warlike tendencies they were a valid justification for increasing the size of the Imperial Navy.
• Bioweapons are so terrible that official research facilities come with a plasma bomb embedded so that if there's a leak they can burn it before it can endager the planet. And of course, Lost Prince Memorial in Sizhran City on Falleen was a hospital illegally moonlighting as a bioweapon facility, and they accidentally released a flesh-eating bacteria that Grievous was too decent to use when they found out Darth Vader was coming to inspect them and they tried to destroy all evidence before Vader murdered them all.
  • Upon being informed, Haxim, King of Sizhran, invoked General Order 1, that is to have the Imperial Army isolate the city and giving them full authority to do anything including Orbital Bombardment to contain the contagion, fully knowing he was likely going to die.
  • The Imperial chief medical officer verifies that if the contagion isn't dealt with immediately the entire planet is a goner and orders an orbital bombardment, knowing he'd be killed... And the planet's governor countermanded the order because he was getting paid by someone from the city. Thankfully, Darth Vader was already in orbit with his Star Destroyer and promptly sterilized the city before executing the governor.