Saga Saga - ST Saga - Legends On the Creation of Monsters [UDC X Response]

Title: "On the Creation of Monsters"
Author(s): vader_incarnate
Timeframe: Saga (generally)
Characters: all of them, but especially anyone with Darth in their names
Genre: Weird.
Summary: Responses to Ultimate Drabble Challenge X.

==

INDEX:

Week 1: Sidious ST (below)
Week 2: Tyranus PT (link)
Week 3: Luke, the Sun Lord AU (link)
Week 4: Vader OT (link)
Week 5: Vader OT (link)
Week 6: Order 66 (link)
Week 7: Lady Lumiya LotF (link)
Week 8: Luke, the Broken AU (link)
Week 9: Disaster Lineage Cheese Shenanigans (link)
Week 10: Yoda and Obi-Wan OT (link)
Week 11: Leia ANH AU (link)
Week 12: Yoda and Dooku PT (link)
Week 13 & 14: Luke, the Kyber Crowned AU (link)
Week 15: Modern Parent Trap AU (link)
Week 16: Vader OT (link)
Week 17: The Black Queen LotF AU (link)
Week 18: Luke and Vader RotJ (link)
Week 19: Luke/Mara Fluff Chaser (link)

==

1. Prelude

Spoiler: TW because Sidious is a creepy, if platonic, child groomer.

Sidious has always loved children. Not in the saccharinely sweet way, nor in the carnally criminal way, though.

No, Sidious loves … guiding them. Molding them. The young teenaged queen of Naboo had been too old for this, but young Anakin - so eager to please, so eager to love - had been ideal. And his Mara, his Hand, had been even younger, even better.

So when he hears that one of his clones has a daughter, of all things, he shivers with anticipated pleasure at the prospect of shaping this prelude to his own immortality. Bring her to me, he commands.

2. Bygone

The galaxy - the cursed Skywalkers most of all - has moved on and forgotten the Sith. Thinking of him as a historical footnote, a relic of a bygone age.

But Sidious endures, and Sidious persists, and Sidious waits with unending patience and watches while it all falls apart around them. The core of democracy is rotten and putrid - he has always known this - and it brings him nearly as much satisfaction to witness the impending collapse of this New Republic as it had to engineer the collapse of the Old. Because this time they have no one to blame but themselves.

3. Impend

The impending arrival of a blood relative brings with it an earnest regret that he hadn’t set up a breeding farm when he had the chance - before the genetic instability of the remaining clones made that pathway impossible. The primary ingredient in Sith alchemy is blood, and none could be more powerful than that of a direct relation. The ill-fated exsanguinated creatures from the Kaminoian and Spaarti cloning chambers had donated their blood and anguish to his research and power, but the brutes’ unnatural origins had been too different from their source, and the experiments had yielded no useful fruit.

4. Descend

He doesn’t notice the descent into madness as such. But flesh was ever an imperfect vehicle for the chaotic energies of the Dark Side, and brains are but blood and flesh and electrical synapses - even his. So it should be no surprise that as his limbs and body rot and putrefy, his mind would do so in parallel. But Sidious feels reality slipping away from his grasp, inky blackness invading the periphery of his once formidable intellect, and feels terror; not the terror from others that feeds his power and Darkness, but from within his own soul. Find the girl.

5. Arise

By the time the new Skywalker boy kneels before him, past and present and future have become so homogenized that it takes him several attempts to recognize what he sees in this newest black cloaked servant. He sees the grandfather kneeling on Mustafar, the treasonous uncle kneeling on Byss, before realizing that - no, this is the princess’ child, and by the will of the Force, he has found a servant whose obsession matches his own. The girl is the key, must be the key, that will allow him to see the ascent of his Final Order. “Arise, apprentice,” he purrs.

 

Love how you tell the story from Sidious

 

lol, it's so good to have you back, Elli

This is just perfect, it goes to the heart of Palpatine's character so concisely

He would

This is such a beautifully worded line

I can just see him gloating over this...

Welp, good thing indeed that that idea didn't occur to him. And leave it to you to think of it

I am torn between my innate delight upon seeing a word like "exsanguinated" used well and my "oh God, not again" reflex after Vi went the vivisection route

Just such beautiful writing, it makes me happy to read *chef kiss*

I'm running out of ways to say "this is just delightfully beautiful writing from a technical standpoint, while also making a story that I had considered beyond repair actually interesting, what even"

Again, this is just so perfect: perfect Palpatine characterization, perfectly expressed, a perfect blend of canons

He's such a user I mean, I know Sith are, but dang, Sidious is ever at the top of the heap

I've seen TRoS exactly once. The only reaction I had beyond boredom, eye-rolling, and confusion was a brief moment of glee over Wedge's cameo. I have no desire to ever watch that movie again. My complete indifference to it was what spurred me to write again, so that was good, but as a movie and a story, I considered it an utter failure. So imagine my surprise upon realizing that you not only wrote drabbles about it, but that I loved said drabbles. How, Elli? You were such a good writer even as a teenager; I feel so lucky to get to read mature writing from you, because it's everything I ever thought it would be. I hope you have lots more inspiration, because I want to read it all

 

I'M HERE!! It's been a week, let me tell you, but I'm finally here, and I'm so excited you're doing this challenge, Elli!

I literally laughed out loud when I read these.

SO CREEPY. But also, I like the alliteration and wording of "saccharinely sweet" and "carnally criminal".

This amuses me greatly, imagining Palpatine's annoyance that those damn Skywalkers have moved on.

I'm going to be repeating myself in these comments I'm sure, but this is just great writing in general, and you've perfectly captured Palpatine's twisted thought process and his arrogantly confident voice. I love it.

This is all creepy and horrifying and perfectly in-character, plus well-written! (I have to agree with Gabri on the use of "exsanguinated".)

(You probably haven't gotten this far in EtF yet, but I have a Sith doctor OC who I think would have gotten along famously with Sidious... )

This is just a perfect line, and I love the matter-of-fact reflection on bodies as imperfect vessels for the dark side.

I kinda love this? Palpatine gets old and senile, and it's almost... normal? That terror from within his own soul at losing his mind, what makes him him... that feels like a very relatable fear for someone his age (or the age he appears to be, idk) to have. Look at you go, Elli, giving the Big Bad some surprisingly relatable depth.

Gotta echo Gabri again, this was an excellent blending of canons. Even though I mostly pretend these days that the ST doesn't exist (except for when my kids want to get into a discussion about it ), these drabbles did such an amazing job of taking a storyline that was clearly tacked-on to the ST, and making it interesting and compelling. So well done.

 

He's a great villain! And even though I'm not a huge fan of the sequels, I understand the impulse someone might have to bring him back, because - great villain.

I had the drabbles written and was struggling to come up with an overarching theme I could commit to for twenty weeks and decided that "the Sith" were a broad enough umbrella to play under.

This is the one that flew straight out from my fingertips into the keyboard, and the rest just flowed easily out from there. Because I guess at some point my brain noted, "hmm, Palpatine has a weird thing about kids, and if it wasn't SW, it'd be even creepier."

It did occur to him! Just a little too late. But it really should have occurred to him earlier, because he is an evil sociopathic space necromancer and I am not, at least as far as I know, and he should be able to come up with his evil plans himself. But maybe a breeding farm would be a bridge too far for Disney.

The title of the thread comes from a book that Legends!Palpatine wrote about Sith alchemy.

There are two particular words in this set of drabbles that I'm just really proud of having used. "Exsanguinated" is one because what a WONDERFUL SAT WORD, I love it and am somewhat tempted to invent excuses to use it more. (Similarly, "defenestrate.")

And then from the last drabble "homogenized," because I was just fighting so long to remember that word and was so happy when I landed on it, and was so happy I was able to recontextualize a word I mostly associate with milk.

Welcome to my private meta headcanon that Sidious' descent into madness and his sense of reality slipping is in fact the Star Wars canon changing because of new Disney ownership.

Word. The movie had so many interesting ideas buried deep in it, but way down deep under dozens of layers of wtf-ery. It's kinda a rehash of DE, but ... even worse, somehow. And we all already know how I feel about Dark Empire.

I really wanted to like the sequels. But with all the flaws of the PT, at least Lucas knew where he was going with the story. The ST had a lot of good moments and great characters, but they were so disjointed, and there was so much unexplored territory.

But actually maybe "let's give ALL THE SHIPS A PLANET DESTROYING SUPERWEAPON" is in perfect keeping with the tradition of the old EU.

Finding appropriate words to allude to but not spell out what the latter phrase implies was a journey and I'm glad you appreciate it.

Someone told him that Ep I-IX are called the Skywalker Saga instead of the Sidious Saga and he rages at the injustice.

He's a pompous evil thesaurus, and I highly endorse writing from his perspective at least once because it's incredibly fun. I headcanon him with a really rich and interesting vocabulary which is super fun to write.

If not being a high schooler anymore has taught me anything: dude, aging is absolute body horror. (And pregnancy, but we're not going to explore that here today. ) People who aren't evil space wizards don't have as many options to fight it off, but it's absolutely weird and terrifying, and maybe raging against the dying of the light is actually a perfectly reasonable human impulse?

Although I came to the realization recently that by being Palpatine's granddaughter Rey is absolutely a Disney princess, and I now have a great mental image of Sith Imperial Princess Rey in a floofy dress that I will absolutely never have a chance to incorporate anywhere. But now she lives in your head too.

 

You know, I input "Sith Imperial Princess fluffy dress" into an AI art generator, and I don't hate it.

 

Lol, the real reason Sidious returned for Ep. IX, right here.

Never say never, Elli...

Okay, you kinda have to write this story now. Or maybe some drabbles?

 

I don't remember this detail, but perfect title is perfect

They're both great words. I haven't seen "exsanguinated" in so long that I had to pause and think about what it meant. (Then it was all "omg not again." I'm sorry; Vi traumatized me )

I mostly associate it with milk too

Still giggling over this, and tempted to write a crack fic about it

Couldn't agree more. I appear to be one of the outliers in that I honestly love TLJ as a standalone AU, but it has its own problems and I wouldn't want it as canon anyway, and the ST as a whole is just all over the place and working from a deeply flawed foundation to begin with. I completely ignore it, canon-wise. Everything's fanfic now, canon is what I say it is

lolol don't encourage them

I fully support this, Palpatine is fun to write and he 100% has an amazing vocabulary. Like Werner Herzog's character in The Mandalorian. "Pompous evil thesaurus" is such a glorious turn of phrase

*nods sadly* Just wait until you're my age, whippersnappers

Seconded And now I'm remembering your old fic where Mara bought Luke skintight leather pants as an anniversary present

 

To be fair, I've never used "exsanguinate" in any form, and I actually had to look it up.

 

Don't you play innocent. Remember that whole "his own blood blooming like the petals of a crimson flower" or whatever? BECAUSE I DO (You're going to be so proud of her angsty weirdness when you catch up, Elli )

 

Thanks! I'm still getting my sea legs, but it's good to be back!

I'm almost done with "Black King," except I wrote my Luke and Mara into a corner I'm still trying to write them out of, and then I got sidetracked by a description of the architecture.

I have this idea that one of the reasons Bail kept Leia away from Couruscant wasn't just because she was Anakin's daughter but also because he had an inkling that another talented Force strong child would be absolute candy to Palpatine.

The evil equivalent of that old teacher at the local elementary school who never retired and keeps telling you how much you look like your mom/aunt/older sister. Or to cross reference another fandom, the evil equivalent of everyone at Hogwarts telling Harry how much he looks like James.

She jumped into another fic I had planned. Just jumped straight over from tab to tab.

You know, that's one of the few fanfics I wrote way back when that I don't actually have a digital copy of. Might have to rewrite the thing.

My fics have two themes: "that time Luke turned to the Dark Side" and "complete crackfic" and I'm overdue to write something in the latter category. Or maybe a crossover

 

Week 2: Tyranus.
(Or, welcome to the Dooku feels I didn't know I had.)
(Or, installment two of the pompous evil thesauruses. Relatedly there's no pompous evil thesaurus tag available for some reason.)


6. Battlefield

In the aftermath, Dooku retrieves their dead and dying from the battlefield and burns them. He can entrust no one else with this task, to know the rituals of the Jedi and appropriately consign their spirits to the Force.

It isn't longing that he feels. He isn't seeking to reconnect with the acolytes of his abandoned path in their deaths as he could no longer do in their lives. He takes no comfort from honoring the burial traditions of a corrupt and decaying Order he has already committed to destroying.

No.

His eyes gleam gold with righteous fury; nothing else.


7. Opponent

He offers truth because he craves a legacy, but Qui-Gon's boy is blinded by the lies of the Jedi and can only see him as an opponent.

He is, but there are greater threats.

The Jedi Order is stagnant, and has been for centuries. They are complicit in the cumulative evils that the Republic tolerates and even fosters: slavery and war and corruption. Both must be razed to start afresh.

His Sith Master craves only power, and in his single-minded focus Sidious will only destroy, but never build.

It is lonely to be the only man who sees the truth.


8. General

The phrase "Jedi General" never fails to set Dooku's lip to curling. The moronic and oxymoronic title is a heresy to the Light they claim to serve, and it disgusts him though he now serves that Light's antithesis. War is Darkness, and they are willfully ignorant not to see it.

He had previously harbored a faint hope that Qui-Gon's boy would see it differently, would understand the Clone War for the trap it was. But that particular apple had rolled and rolled from that once beloved tree and has been lost to the ideology of the Jedi.

Still, he craves.


9. Knight

Their "knights" are getting younger with each passing year and each passing battle, until it no longer brings a thrill to watch life bleeding from this latest set of eyes, and the reaping becomes simply mechanical. Or perhaps he grows older, and the widening gulf between him and this newest crop is the result of the Darkness eating away at his spirit and body as the lightning flows through.

Yet somehow Dooku remains the villain while they put lightsabers into the hands of these literal children and send them to battle him with fragile shields constructed from idealism and belief.


10. Ceasefire

When the Negotiator sits across from him to discuss the terms of a ceasefire, the atmosphere is thick with unspoken words, so thick they verge on becoming physical - as if he might pluck truth and regret and yearning and understanding and even forgiveness from the air if he simply reaches out.

“And if this fails, I have no qualms about stabbing an octogenarian,” Kenobi says mildly, a fine teacup raised nonchalantly to his lips. And Dooku finally sees what Qui-Gon must have liked about him.

For the barest instant, he imagines he hears Qui-Gon’s voice, echoing down through the Force.

 

Magnificent characterizations and lyrical narrative descriptions!
I love especially "Battlefield". I almost believe Dooku's assertion about righteous fury.
This line in Ceasefire:
For the barest instant, he imagines he hears Qui-Gon’s voice, echoing down through the Force.


Somehow, he still feels... something about/towards Qui-Gon, as it would be incredibly hard not to.

 

a great insight into Dooku and why he was that Jedi and becoming a Sith

 

THE TRAUMA IS REAL

You'd better create it on ao3, Elli. The world needs it

Well, now, there's a mercy I wouldn't have expected Dooku to give

Ah, there you go But really, I can see that. He was a Jedi for a long time; no matter how much his thoughts and feelings have changed, it would be hard to discard it entirely, especially if he's in that position, where the fallen Jedi have no one else to follow those rituals and the lack could eat at him.

I love the phrase "Qui-Gon's boy". I don't want to go the shallow, black and white route and say that the Jedi are hypocrites with the "no attachment" mandate, because there's more nuance to it than that. You can be truly attached to someone and still be willing to place a greater good ahead of your personal feelings, and be willing to accept loss when it happens. The point of the mandate was that Jedi can't be so attached that they go all dark side like Anakin for the sake of that attachment - and let's be honest, the Jedi aren't actually wrong. The mandate surely arose because of the incredibly dangerous potential if even one Jedi went the wrong way (again, exhibit A: the Chosen One). But I think the Order of Dooku's time had begun to turn toward the simplistic interpretation of this rather than accept the nuances, and fool themselves into thinking that they didn't really care at all, or that they couldn't. Remember how easily Luminara would have written off Barriss. It doesn't mean that Luminara didn't genuinely care for Barriss, but she clearly felt that it would be wrong for her to even try too hard to save her life. Obviously neither Anakin nor Luminara represent all Jedi, but the overall feeling of "we can't love anyone" is shown by so many of them to be a falsehood by their words and actions, and too many couldn't face up to the complex shades of gray.

I'm kind of getting lost in the meta - there are no easy answers here, not for the old Order nor for Luke's new, nor any other era. But very few, if any, Jedi really didn't care about others, no matter what lip service they paid to the principle of non-attachment, and I love how you show that with how Dooku thinks of Obi-Wan.

Perfectly in character. And I think that Dooku was right about some things and wrong about some things, just like most people, but he would absolutely believe he was the only one who saw the truth.

An example of Dooku being very right

Yeah, I love the Jedi in general and they for sure didn't deserve genocide no matter how hidebound they'd become, but the child soldier thing - that's real hard to get past, that they ever for a single moment considered that appropriate.

Such gorgeous writing, it is a thing of beauty, let me drink it in

LOLOL Obi-Wan, you genteel chaos gremlin, I love him so much

 

I will oblige! Once I get these up on AO3, lol.

I said "welcome to the Dooku feels I never knew I had," but I totally just finished listening to the "Dooku: Jedi Lost" audioplay before writing this, and that one also gave me all the feels. He's an interesting character, even knowing he's set up as a foil to Vader, because unlike Anakin he was raised by the Jedi since infancy, and it's an even more integral part of his identity.

In Stover's novelization he calls Obi-Wan "practically my grandson," and even though he immediately after goes into a snooty racist rant about non-humans, I thought that was really revealing, that he was still craving connection. Like in Vi's drabble thread - Sith are still, y'know, people, and they need those connections.

I think in a happier AU where the Sith didn't exist, he and Anakin could get along so well and talk about the corruption of the Senate together.

I liked writing this one, because - on the one hand, he's totally right, using child soldiers is bad. On the other hand, his justification is: because it's not fun to kill them anymore! You could just NOT KILL THEM, DOOKU.

I love that phrase. And I enjoyed the opportunity to inject some levity into these heavy feels.

 

Speaking of injecting levity - I'm still working on this week's set, but please enjoy these crack!drabbles I've concocted in the meantime. First is Dooku and Yoda, and then a conversation between Luke and Mara.



(Bonus Crack! Drabble) Kneel

Everything on Geonosis had gone according to plan - until Yoda hit him with the stick.

It had been so fast, but suddenly Dooku was falling and kneeling on ominously crackling knees that were far too old for this.

Dooku realized in horror that he could feel his ears turning red as he was instantly transported to his boyhood at the Temple.

"Hmmph! Taught you better than this, my young Padawan," he hears the little goblin mutter. "More productive ways there are, to change the Order, hmm? Joining the Sith, an extreme overreaction this is! Can change a system, without destroying."



(Bonus Crack! Drabble) Overtake

"Luke, what are you doing? It's the middle of the night. Why are you reading … ancient Sith texts?"

"Mara, according to this translation - take a look at this, would you? 'He who overtakes the Sith Master whether in combat or in guile shall inherit the mantle of Master.' "

"Okay, I get it."

"So the way I see it - Vader killed the Emperor, right? And when I took off my father's helmet, I technically - "

"Skywalker. So you think the book says you're the current Sith Master … by technicality?"

"I'm saying it's a possibility."

"Go back to sleep, Darth Farmboy."

 

Eep I neglected to reply to some readers, I'm sorry!

In the RotS novelization, Dooku calls Obi-Wan practically his grandson, and I love that. But also, I wrote these before realizing that he'd already turned to the Dark Side before Qui-Gon's death, so I wrote them with the idea of redemption specifically on the table.

Thank you! I just finished the audio play Dooku, Jedi Lost which was a really interesting deep dive into his character in the current canon continuity.

 

Dude, I have the most ridiculous things happening out in my plot bunnies Google Doc, where all my Star Wars brain bugs go to cross pollinate.

I love this feedback because ... that was absolutely not intentional, and you're absolutely right that's a great summary of this set. O_O

Thank you!

I feel like I go in cycles of "angst angst angst CRACK angst" repeat and I think we're in the crack phase.

 

And now BACK TO THE ANGST.

Remember the time I said that my fics come in two flavors: that time Luke fell to the Dark Side or complete crack!fic?

Don’t worry, I brought receipts:

Up there’s my crack!fic, and now I’m pulling a Viari and resurrecting a wildly depressing AU I started 12 years ago where ... Luke fell to the Dark Side after RotJ goes wrong. Today’s Sith is Darth Sol, aka the Sun Lord, from my old fic “Luminescence.” It’s old enough where the old thread on JCF was truncated, but it’s on AO3 and FF.net. I'd repost it, but the universe it inhabits is both under heavy reconstruction and massively WIP and not really ready to be shared yet.

This set is really a culmination of all my current favorite things including but not limited to: dark Luke AU, extended kintsugi metaphor, reassigning actual bits of SW dialogue to different characters, and stealing my favorite parts of the ST.


11. Inlay

The Sun Lord was Emperor in all but name - therein lay the trouble, because no one knew what name to give his wife.

So he could offer no title, but on their wedding day his gift was a lightsaber, the hilt inlaid with golden runes that matched the molten fire of his eyes - banked, in her presence, but never extinguished.

"There is an artform," he explained, smiling, "of repairing shattered vessels with precious metal, making them whole again."

The blade was bright cerulean, and borrowed blue danced in his eyes.

"You are my precious metal. Binding my broken parts together."


12. Partake

It was broadly known that the Sun Lord preferred not to partake in the frivolities of the Court. Still, he had been expected at this frivolity, and his absence was noticed.

Mara didn't expect him to find him sitting alone in his quarters, grinning foolishly.

"It was twins. She had twins."

"Who?"

"My-" and here, he returned to the world, amber eyes suddenly laser focused. "A relative," he caged, guarded once more. He loved her, but didn’t fully trust her.

"You have relatives?"

"One. Three now, I suppose," he amended, standing and straightening his collar. "It's not important. Let's go."


13. Withdraw

"You disapprove."

"My lord?"

“When have you ever called me that, except when you disapprove?”

“I surely don’t know what you mean, my lord.”

“Don’t treat me like a fool, Mara. I can sense your withdrawal.”

“... she's just a girl, Luke."

"She's a girl now, but she won't always be."

"But she won't be a weapon unless you make her one. And she doesn't deserve that. No child does."

“With her blood -”

“Her blood doesn’t matter!”

“Her bloodline, her heritage will determine her destiny. As mine -”

“No, I don’t believe that. That was your choice, not your -”

“Enough. We’re done.”


14. Outrun

Han was used to waking up in the middle of the night, but for the kids, not Leia.

But that night she sat bolt upright, tersely said, "He's made a training bond."

He was instantly awake. "With his wife? We've expected -"

"No, but -" she turned sharply towards him. "Jade's leaving. She's trying to outrun him. We have to help."

The Millennium Falcon found the Sun Lord's wife drifting in a disabled Z-95 Headhunter above Coruscant airspace. When she came aboard, she was idly rubbing her stomach. Han recognized the gesture.

Leia stepped forward. "Welcome to the Resistance. I'm General Organa."


15. Undo

"If you're watching this, I've left.

"I'm sorry, Luke. I would undo it all if I could. But I can't be the gold that binds you together when my edges are jagged, too.

"I thought that with time we would sand away the sharp parts of ourselves, and just - fit together. Like a puzzle.

"I know I'm not a good person; I married a Sith. But you crossed the line I didn't know I had.

"You're more than your blood, Luke. And so is Rey. I have to believe that, otherwise -

"It doesn't matter.

"You won't find me. Don't try."

 

How utterly fascinating! She's the thing that holds him together and yet ... there is a line that can be and was crossed. In all realities they are each other's sanity and soulmate... But here, they cannot be together.

 

Y'know, L/M has always been my OTP, but honestly that universe that I'm building is really dark - but even so my 'shipper heart wants to say, "they cannot be together for now." Who knows?