Katana_Geldar posted:

---

I thought retcon week was in August, good to see it back though!

---

BobaMatt posted:

---

I don't think anybody's done this yet, but I've been meaning to.

Why Legacy #18 Doesn't Actually Confirm Anything About Vergere We Didn't Already Know.

For the purposes of this exercise, we'll assume that everything Lord Krayt says about Vergere, everything he recalls about her, is the truth, and it all happened as he said it did. At absolute worst, he is lying by omission, but this is unlikely. I will analyze everything Krayt does say.

DARTH KRAYT: There were claims she herself was a student of Darth Sidious and fled the Galaxy when her attempt to kill him failed, but lies and truth were only means to an end for her. As I was to learn.

This is Krayt's first bit of narration about Vergere, and also the first indication he doesn't really believe her.

VERGERE: I sense a darkness in you.
HETT: And I, in you. Help me. We'll escape together.

Vergere sensing a darkness in Hett is obviously not surprising, nor does it contradict anything we know about her philosophy on the Force. Hett sensing darkness in her should not be surprising, as we all know what any right-thinking Jedi thinks about Vergere's approach to the Force. Just because she doesn't believe in the dark side doesn't mean she's immune from it. Hett's line is also telling: the darkness he feels in her leads to feelings of kinship. She doesn't deny her darkness, true, but then she doesn't know anything about A'sharad Hett, yet, so why reveal anything about herself? What she does know about him now, though, is that he likes the dark side. Useful.

VERGERE: Escape is out of the question. Would you be free? First, you must free your mind.

A powerful dark sider would be very receptive to Sith teachings, one can assume. If what she has to offer is run of the mill Sith-hood, then the bit about freeing his mind may not be necessary.

VERGERE: Accept your pain. Allow it to feed your dark anger -- learn to invite its grip.

Essentially no different from her torture of Jacen, except here she makes explicit references to the darkness of it all. (Still no mention of a dark side, of course, just "darkness in you" and "your dark anger.") Why reference darkness if she's not a Sith? Because Vergere is a teacher, and the only things she knows for sure about A'sharad Hett right now are that he's Sharad Hett's son, and that he's more than okay with darkness.

KRAYT: Her manner was oblique at first, full of half-truths, deceptions, and denials, but my Sith trained senses could see past her evasions. She claimed to have been trained by the Emperor -- Darth Sidious -- himself.

He sifted her lies from truth, he says, and yet still says "she claimed to have been" instead of "she was." Krayt does not believe her, and he only brings up her Sith-hood when he's on the topic of lies. What's more, he makes reference a bit earlier to her frequent visits, but leaves out everything she says to him except that she trained with Palpatine. The fact that she mentions knowing Palpatine is likely meant to impress him and give her credibility. We don't know what else she's been telling him.

KRAYT: Vergere taught me to use the agony of the Embrace of Pain to open myself to the dark side.

This one's sticky, but it's not necessary that this is actually what Vergere said, only that this is what she was actually doing; that is to say, it's possible that even though Vergere may not have believed using the Embrace of Pain would lead Krayt to the dark side - as she doesn't believe in a dark side and used the Embrace of Pain on Jacen Solo - it doesn't change the fact that that's what she was, in effect, doing.

KRAYT: Power without purpose is meaningless. The galaxy is chaotic. Order must be imposed because it will never be chosen.
VERGERE: The Vong spies speak of a new Jedi Order being created by the son of Anakin Skywalker -- by the son of Vader.
KRAYT: The Jedi will not do it. A new order of Sith must be created in secret.

When Krayt speaks of order and peace in the galaxy, Vergere speaks of the Jedi. Krayt is the one that brings up the Sith, and it's to disagree with Vergere's argument that the Jedi are the road to order. Again: Vergere suggests to the budding Krayt that the Jedi can restore peace and order from chaos.

KRAYT: My Order will be many but they will be one. The Order itself above all. Power magnified by its focus.
VERGERE: That will take time and Skywalker's Jedi will grow stronger. Lord Bane said that power cannot be shared. That there must be only two -- one with power and the other to crave it.

Vergere's line here will naturally be cited as Sithly, and Krayt may well have taken it that way, but I'd like to offer an alternate paraphrase: "Don't be silly. By the time you do that, you won't be able to beat Luke's Jedi anyway. Besides, we all know that the Sith don't work like that, so stop this nonsense about Sith and listen to me."

KRAYT: When they began, the Sith were many. Bane changed the rules and changed the Sith -- now I will change them again!"
VERGERE: "You cannot follow my path if you are walking your own. When I find my disciple perhaps I will share your philosophy with them. And now -- goodbye.

Again, it will be said that she abandons him because he will not follow the Rule of Two. I posit that she abandons him because she realizes nothing she says is going to make him change his mind. Word choice may be important here, too: John chose the noun "disciple" rather than the very Sithly "apprentice." It connotes deeper teaching, and what's more it connotes that it is her own teaching that she's sharing, not another's.

In conclusion, nothing in this issue proves that Vergere was following some sort of Sithly agenda.

---

beccatoria posted:

---

Though it does occur to me that Vergere teaches Hett and he chooses to use the dark side to survive the Embrace of Pain. So, the next Force user we know she has access to, what does she do? Take away the Force. So that Jacen didn't have the ability to use the dark side to survive.

I'm not sure if we can attribute a motivation to that, but certainly it's a change in operating procedure that I would very much like to look at as learning from her previous experiences. It almost looks as though she doesn't want Jacen to learn the same things as Hett learned.

---