Saga - PT Episode I - A Golden Age

This is the first part of my rewrite of Episode I. It's an AU story which takes the few elements I like from the prequels and mixes them with the implied backstory from the OT. The first part is below. I will post the others if there is interest. I'm all ears!


STAR WARS EPISODE I: A GOLDEN AGE

The planet Alderaan is a peaceful member world of the Old Republic.

This monarchical world’s sovereignty is threatened by an imminent invasion of Mandalorian Supercommandos, battle-bred clones who have subjugated star systems across the galaxy on the orders of Warlord Taung.

In Aldera Castle, seat of the Alderaanian royal family, King and Queen Organa confer with their loyal guardian General Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kenobi advises that the King and Queen stay behind on Alderaan while their daughter Alice, a Princess by birth and a Senator by choice, goes to another planet to stay with his half-brother Owen.

Through him Alice can find a way to Coruscant where she must make the case for a Republic military intervention on her home planet. Alice brings out her astromech counterpart N4, a droid of her own design. General Kenobi inputs the coordinates of Owen’s cantina into N4’s memory.

The enemy bears down on Alderaan. An ion cannon outside the Castle brings down one of several Mandalorian battleships, slamming the big vessel into the side of a mountain range. The alien Supercommandos descend from their landing craft and advance towards the Castle. General Kenobi rallies a defensive force of Royal Guards, the Organa family’s sworn protectors, to fight the Supercommandos.

Alice and N4 take a secret passage to a hangar bay underneath a waterfall. The pair take off in Alice’s personal diplomatic cruiser, a sleek silver craft, while two armies fight for control of the Castle.

Kenobi beholds the glint of Alice’s ship fleeing the planet and issues a fallback order to his few remaining Royal Guards. The Supercommandos flood the Castle. Then the clones are joined by their commander, the dreaded Xanatos, a mysterious high-ranking fighter loyal to Warlord Taung. The quiet, severe conqueror is clad in battle armor and a spiked helmet. Xanatos removes his helmet to reveal a Human face covered in elaborate tattoos. He orders the freezing of the King and Queen in a block of carbonite.

As a squad of Supercommandos drag away the pleading monarchs, Xanatos greets Baron Thul, a nobleman from one of the royal houses opposing House Organa. The traitorous aristocrat confirms that his hired assassin has followed the escaped young Senator to the planet Fornax.

The ringed planet Fornax is a backwater world largely consisting of farmers and some merchants, ignored in galactic politics due to its rule by the repulsive Mehjan the Hutt.

Alice's cruiser comes out of hyperspace and works to blend in with an orbiting convoy of merchant ships. A fighter emerges from high orbit soon after and tracks the Princess' ship.

The assassin's ship opens fire on Alice’s cruiser, blasting an engine. N4 does damage control in the drive compartment as Alice pilots the ship away from the civilians, diving into the fiery rings of Fornax to elude her attacker. The assassin's ship disengages combat and reactivates its cloaking device.

Having veered wildly off course, Alice makes an emergency landing far from her intended destination. After the descent, Alice discovers that N4 has been shattered to pieces. She collects his scattered parts in a linen bag and opens the rear hatch of her crashed cruiser.

Outside Alice sees a ring of jewels gleaming along a skyward arc, the planet’s so-called fiery rings, and fields blanketed in tall sheaves of wine-red wheat.

Cursing her poor luck, Alice trudges through the fields with N4’s parts slung over her shoulder, slowly making her way in what may or may not be the direction of the spaceport containing Owen’s cantina. She hears a rumbling buzz-like noise from high above. She stacks N4’s parts in a tall pile to get a better view above the wheat sheaves, where she sees a skyhopper spraying a chemical onto the bountiful fields. Alice waves her arms to get the pilot’s attention, hoping that it is not an automated craft.

Her efforts pay off as the skyhopper glides to a stop in a nearby clump of wheat sheaves. The cockpit door opens to reveal a young-looking man with brown hair and a deep gaze. Alice expresses her relief that he was willing to pick up a lost stranger. The pilot tells her she doesn't need to be lost any longer. He introduces himself to Alice; his name is Anakin Skywalker.

To be continued.

 

Anakin flies Alice back to his home, a hut on a rock overlooking the wheat fields. He offers her a few spare parts with which to rebuild N4. During the course of this task Anakin reveals that he has ambitions of being a star pilot and traveling the galaxy.

Alice fits the final piece of N4's chassis into place and, before activating the droid, tells Anakin that if he can get her to the spaceport cantina he can finally get off this rock.

Alice reactivates N4. The droid is at first antsy about the presence of this new man, but Alice calms down the energetic little droid. N4 shows Alice and Anakin the location of Owen’s cantina in the Hutt-controlled spaceport. The three climb aboard Anakin's skyhopper and fly towards Mehjan City.

Cut to the mountains of Alderaan’s capital province. Kenobi and the surviving Royal Guards have built a makeshift command center out of the crashed hulk of the Mandalorian battleship.

A royal scout tells Kenobi that the Supercommandos have expanded their holdings to the Museum of the Light, where millennia of artistic and scientific achievements are on display.

The Jedi Knight undertakes a solo mission into the complex, beyond the reach of even the scouts, to see what the Mandalorians are building in there. He stalks his way to the gates, stealthily evading a Mandalorian six-legged battle tank flanked by a squad of Supercommandos.

Kenobi influences the weak mind of a gate guard to make him believe that he is Xanatos. The clone lets Kenobi enter the Museum and inside he beholds the heinous project underway inside the complex: the Mandalorians are building a new Spaarti cloning machine.

The first cloning machine was built on the distant planet Mandalore. Another machine constructed in the midst of the Core Worlds would surely enable the Mandalorians to overrun the Republic!

To be continued.

 

Welcome to ff writing! This has a very intriguing and riveting start. Cool that the enemy consists of Mandos and plans involve clones and that Alice meets Anakin I hope this continues.

 

Cut to the rooftops of Mehjan City on the planet Fornax. A fightercraft stands perched on three leg stalks atop an adobe edifice, its humanoid robot pilot peering down at the busy streets. This is IG-66, the assassin droid hired by Baron Thul to "take care" of Alice.

Anakin’s skyhopper touches down on a landing pad with meticulous care and accuracy. The party gets out of the vehicle and the young man tosses a credit chit over his shoulder into the green hands of a Rodian station attendant.

Inside the bar there are a variety of strange aliens chatting, drinking, and dancing their free time away. Alice goes up to the bar and asks the barkeep if she can speak to Owen Kenobi. The bearded twenty-something man chuckles and corrects her: "The name's Owen Lars. How can I get you and your man started?"

Alice blushes at the suggestion of Anakin being "her man". Anakin nervously scratches the back of his neck. She changes the subject by telling Owen that his brother is in grave danger on the planet Alderaan.

Owen gets a lot more serious upon the mention of his brother Obi-Wan. He brings Alice, Anakin, and N4 upstairs to see a friend of his who is laying low from Mehjan the Hutt: a Bovorian male named Savori Pem.

Pem tells Anakin, Alice, and N4 that his spice freighter bound for Coruscant has been impounded by Mehjan the Hutt because he refused to give up a portion of his cargo to the crime boss. There was a firefight which took the life of his chief navigator, and Pem has been hiding with Owen ever since.

Anakin proposes that the party get into his skyhopper and drop in on Mehjan's hideout to steal the freighter back, after which he will navigate the spice freighter to Coruscant.

Pem takes them up on their offer and the party walks downstairs to Owen. Alice tells Owen of their agreement with Pem and Anakin implores Owen to help them in their quest. Owen agonizes that though he cares about his brother, he still has a business to run.

Owen's deliberation is cut short when he spots an armed droid entering his bar: IG-66. The assassin robot aims his arm-mounted blaster at Alice's back. Owen shoves her and Anakin down and pulls out a blaster hidden under the bar.

Owen shoots first. A firefight erupts between him and IG-66. Bar patrons frantically scramble for cover as Owen ushers Alice, Anakin, Pem, and N4 down a trapdoor behind the bar. IG-66’s head is shot off in the chaos. He keels over and a chest-mounted monitor displays a radial countdown. Owen disappears down the trapdoor escape just before the droid violently explodes, destroying the cantina.

Cut to Aldera Castle on the planet Alderaan. Xanatos rests on the Marble Throne of Alderaan, a small salamander-like creature letting out a croak sound atop his armor-plated shoulder: the rare Ysalamir. A Supercommando Captain enters the chamber and tells Xanatos that he was logged as having entered the Museum of the Light.

Xanatos is told by Baron Thul that it must be Obi-Wan. The evil lord smiles and says that the name is very familiar to him. Xanatos tells the Supercommando Captain to order his troops to disperse from the Castle, save for the captain himself and his squad of Honor Guards.

Thul exclaims that this is a mad move, that Obi-Wan will be able to lead his forces to retake the Castle. But Xanatos refutes the Baron by telling him that Obi-Wan must be captured alive. The Jedi Knight has a place in Xanatos’ plans.

To be continued.