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May The Invisible Hand Be With You - (Star Wars CK2-Style Quest)

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[X] Plan: This is what Ciaran would do.
-[X] Use public outrage to bring down Armand and cripple Republic Intelligence by embroiling them in controversies that will disrupt their ability to function.
--[X] Fake a CI assassination of deserters going horribly wrong and use various news outlets to stir up a controversy.
-[X] Then kill Armand, taking advantage of the heightened public scrutiny to ensure his downfall is noticed by everyone with a holonet connection.
--[X] Have the assassin wear the stolen CI armor and be "discovered," creating the illusion of a traitor within the ranks of Republic Intelligence.
-[X] After Armand's death, have someone act as a Cryptanalysis Department whistleblower and break the news about the actions of the Covert Ops troopers, making sure to implicate as much of the command structure as possible so that Armand cannot be used as a convenient scapegoat.
 
A/N: The third of a trio of AU omakes featuring certain characters' backstories being swapped. The others are The Invisible Reflected and Hearthworlds.

To Destined Syzygy
​
960 ARR (40 BBY)

...By this point the Trade Federation had an iron grip on hundreds of star systems. No one could muster the political will to oppose it - certainly, not the newly elected Chancellor Finis Valorum. Along with a few other megacorporations, such as the Techno Union and the Intergalactic Banking Clan, it effectively dominated the Rim faction in the Galactic Senate. For all its power, though, these megacorporations' appeal to raw profit made their motives relatively easy to deduce, and their policies comparatively open to manipulation. Of course, to play a game of manipulation on such a high level required a combination of piercing intelligence, complete ruthlessness, galaxy-wide political influence, and Force-based precognition. So far as the galaxy knew, the only beings who could have met all those criteria were a few Hutts if they were secretly Force-sensitive.

In reality, of course, the Order of the Sith Lords was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the megacorporations' greed.

The deals privately cut by the Sith with the megacorporations were always aided by the fact that the Sith's true motives were inconceivable to its executives. As a prime example, when Hego Damask II offered to purchase several facilities on the Techno Union planet of Mustafar, the Union's shareholders gladly agreed, as the world was remote and largely worthless. A reasonable read would have been that the facilities would have been used as a testing range for some secret project of Damask Holdings or, more likely, a business associate thereof. In a certain sense that was indeed true. For Hego Damask II, secretly the Sith Lord Darth Plagueis, had allowed his apprentice Darth Sidious to train a specialized Force-using assassin....

Damask Holdings Western Reaches Accounting Center ('abandoned'), Mustafar

"Again," Sidious told her. "And faster, this time."

Asajj did her best to obey. She knew she was fast enough the first time, and the anger that provoked drove her onwards through the Makashi kata; and the knowledge that that was why Sidious was making her do it was a self-awareness that made her angrier still. Every movement was slight, and filled with endless malice. Spite, aimed at anyone who got in the way - aimed at the entire galaxy, really, most certainly including her master.

Maybe that meant it was unaimed. She didn't care, anyway.

It was a shallow, cutting anger today. Deep hate was for Shii-Cho and Niman. A shallow anger, tempered with a touch of pride. What did it matter what Sidious thought - he was the past of the Sith, and she would be the future.

Her movements took her along the narrow ridge, lava bubbling to either side. Asajj pointed her anger at the lava, at its incessant gurgling, and immediately realized she'd made a mistake. The Force thrashed around her uncontrollably, as uncertain as the lava, and her movements lost precision. She did her best to let self-hate guide her, to grip the Force with that and make it - but that was wrong too.

With a howl, Asajj broke from the kata and cut downwards, searing a line in the rock. Breathing heavily, she jumped up to the ledge above with only a token completion and, seeing a fitting finale, smirked at her master.

She knew she'd be tortured for it, but at that moment that didn't matter.

"Disappointing," Sidious said, surprisingly calmly. "You have become more and more of a disappointment lately, Asajj. You allow yourself to be controlled by the Dark Side, rather than controlling it."

Asajj forced herself to nod. Because Sidious was right, of course. To a certain extent, yes, she needed to let her emotions run free - not to do so was the way of the Jedi. She needed to follow her fear, and regret, and above all anger, for they were part of who she was.

But sometimes, she needed to do things for which passion got in the way.

"I understand," she said.

"You do not."

And suddenly, faster than Asajj could think, Sidious moved. He jumped, cutting with his lightsaber, grazing the skin of Asajj's face, and then suddenly he was gone and - Asajj took a moment to realize what was happening, even though she could see clearly through the Force that it was bad - the whole facility was collapsing.

"You are weak!" Sidious yelled, like thunder itself. "And I have no need for a weak apprentice - the Sith have no need for a weak apprentice!"

The complex was crumbling around her. Fear spiked in Asajj's chest, inviting her to run - but to where? The entire base -

No, this was a test of her mind. Sidious wanted to kill her, in destroying the base; but he'd certainly left an escape route for himself. Asajj jumped, bouncing off the walls, to try and keep up with him.

Lightning flashed around her, and Asajj knew pain. A glimpse, though - a glimpse of her erstwhile master cackling as he sent it down. Rocks were flying -

No. She wouldn't let herself die today.

She saw Sidious's shuttle now, and pouring all her hate and disgust into her feet, made the jump. Sidious laughed, because she was nowhere near close enough, and the walls trembled with his joyful fury.

She hated it. She hated Sidious's grin, his arrogance, his certainty that he alone understood the Sith. Her admiration for him, appreciation of his power, of his kindness to her when she had deserved it - all of it melted away, in that instant.

Asajj jumped across the chasm. Sidious's shuttle, as she poured her derision towards her master into her power, flew towards her.

She landed perfectly, the cockpit opening to let her in. She'd never flown this particular shuttle before, but she let her self-satisfaction guide her fingers, along with a smidgen of basic logic. The shuttle accelerated, climbing hard and banking around the collapsing pillar Sidious was attached to.

"So long!" she said as she pushed a pedal and climbed sharply, into the clouds of smoke.

For a few moments, she flew among them, her anger quickly being displaced by shock. What had she done? She'd left Sidious for dead - had betrayed the Sith - no, he'd betrayed her first -

"Well done," suddenly came a voice she hadn't been expecting to her again, and she gasped as she turned to see her dead master walking into the cockpit from behind. "A move even I hadn't expected, though admittedly you barely came up with it in time."

"How - "

"I have my ways, Asajj," he said with a smile. "Now, do you want to keep piloting this thing, or shall I?"

"Down there - "

"A test."

"Do the tests never end?"

"No," Sidious said, an evil light in his eyes. "The examiners change, but the tests never end - not until we have destroyed the Jedi, and left the Republic on its knees."
​
*​

Neiex District, Omwat

The pyramid rose before Obi-Wan Kenobi, blue stone glimmering between the trees.

He found it hard to believe no one had found the structure before his landing, even in its dilapidated state. For one, it was a big enough monument of rock; but more important than that, really, was its pull. It was like a beacon to him, resonating with peace and reason.

His family's shuttle had come down so close to here, a wreck of which Obi-Wan had been the lone survivor, but right now Obi-Wan could barely feel the scar of that loss before the pyramid's serenity. Three thousand years old, four? It was ancient, either way, and not built according to any known Omwati styles of architectures.

Out of place. Like him.

An alien infant, falling from the sky. Who could blame the scientists for their curiosity? And Obi-Wan, too, had spent his childhood comparing himself with the Omwati. The books that would have promised him superpowers did not come true - he was unusually strong and tough, true, but not by that much; his pink skin and dark, rough hair were only of aesthetic note; and as to his mind and erudition, he all too often felt like a hopeless idiot, when compared to his peers, albeit those peers were admittedly the children of some of the world's greatest scholars. His greater talent, he knew, was his bond to the Force; few individuals with such a strong innate presence had been recorded in the world's history. Perhaps that was why it was here that his family had crashed.

The temple had not been opened to the public, which he was eternally grateful for. Archaeologists, of course, had charted every corner; but they had left the ancient structure intact. He walked down the staircase, intentionally not looking right, to where the scar left by the shuttle's descent had not yet healed, and then took the turns he remembered through the corridors of the ancient temple, between the cave-ins, and finally, opening the final door with the Force, to the room known as Sanctum 3.

The cuboctahedron lay in a place of pride on the desk. Obi-Wan touched it cautiously, and the holographic image of the gatekeeper shimmered into being.

"Hello, Master Pharan," he said, though he knew the ancient Jedi was not truly there. The holocron retained some imprint of him, but not a true intelligence.

Pharan was far more different from Omwati norm than Obi-Wan himself. His bipedal form was finned, his head bulbous and fishlike. The rest of the temple's technology had long ceased being even semi-functional, but when he had pulled the holocron out of the rock that had grown to encase it, it had worked immediately.

"I am Master Pharan," Pharan said, "Keeper of the Archives for the Omwat Temple, and gatekeeper to its High Holocron, which you now hold. What is it you would like to hear of, young one?"

"Of lightsabers," Obi-Wan said, having considered his questions and how to phrase them on the way. "Of their history, in particular. Why did the Jedi choose a short-ranged weapon in the first place?"

"For several reasons, particularly reaction speed," Pharan explained. "A lightsaber is Force-resonant, which matters a great deal; it can cut through anything, it is weightless, and all in all, its melee capacity is superior to any other known weapon. It has only a single flaw, which is its short range. But in combat, it is easier by far to protect against a single great weakness than many lesser ones."

Obi-Wan nodded. For a brief time they discussed lightsaber combat - a topic of purely hypothetical interest, for now, as his attempts to construct the traditional weapon of the Jedi had produced no success at all, even with the holocron's advice.

"Obi-Wan!" Lei ran in with an outraged look on her face. "You know you're not supposed to come here alone."

"There's no other place in the world where I can find this sort of peace. And the holocron - "

"Is a priceless relic. The things it has taught us about pre-Cataclysm times have revolutionized everything related to history. But it is part of the heritage of the entire planet, not yours alone."

"And yet I'm the only one who can use it." Well, that wasn't quite true - there were a few Force-sensitive Omwati who could access its outer layers. But it resonated with the user's strength in the Force, and Obi-Wan's was the greatest in the world.

Lei sighed, coming up to him. She was one of his closest mentors - when Obi-Wan had been younger, he'd seen her as an adoptive mother of sorts. But he was an adult now, even if only barely, and the restraints of fame chafed more than ever, and so he had to come here.

"You've already learned so much," Obi-Wan pointed out. "About the Republic, the Jedi, the Sith.... And I've been keeping notes, don't worry about that."

"I'd have been disappointed if you weren't," Lei said. "And despite what the 'net would have you believe, the chances that the Republic is still around...."

"Are slim," Obi-Wan said. "I know, I know. This is ancient history, not the civilization I was born into. But it's still... something."

"We'll find out soon enough ourselves," Lei said. "That was what I wanted to tell you, before you wandered off. Tev finished his hyperdrive reconstruction. Says they have a working version."

"Really?!" That meant -

"It'll take a few years to ensure safety," Lei said, "but soon enough you'll be able to - we'll all be able to - return to the stars."
​
*
​
The Black Proop, Morvogodine orbit

Maul broke free the moment the pirates were gone.

He'd broken free before, from worse bindings. He'd been a slave for as long as he could remember, but unlike some - unlike most - he had never accepted it. And the pirates' restraints were... well, Maul suspected that they had wanted to save credits. They were relying on the tracker, either way.

But now two-thirds of the crew was gone raiding some unfortunate or other, and Maul had been left in the hold. He silently offered to unlock the others - a twi'lek girl and an elderly human - but they shook their heads. Maul left them - no time for dead weight.

This was far from his first escape attempt, but he'd every intention of making it his last.

The tracker beeped in his neck, but no one in the skeleton crew responded. Maul crept through the hallways he'd mentally mapped over the days of transit, trying to balance speed with silence. Perhaps it was luck that no one noticed him before he reached the escape pods, or maybe he really was that good - he genuinely wasn't sure. But at the pods, he saw a chandra-fan on the walkway above. The pirate leveled his blaster, and Maul, desperate, froze, prepared to charge, desperately hoping that the blaster would fail, considering -

The pirate slipped and Maul, not one to doubt his good fortune, leapt for the pod and punched in the detach sequence. Two shots whizzed past him, but then the latch was closed and, within moments, Maul was falling to the living surface of Morvogodine.

It was Maul's second successful escape attempt. He had no interest in being recaptured again, but as the pod splashed down in a rather malodorous bog, he had to admit he hadn't properly planned out his next step. True, he could find civilization, but - what then? Going on intuition generally worked well enough, but as he wandered through the bog, putting maximum distance between himself and the pod, he sullenly wondered whether he should have grabbed more from the ship. He could try to find work, but here in Hutt Space, even on a world with a hutt population of exactly one (the local crime boss, who had a genetic immunity to the fungus that generally kept hutts from settling here), his tracker would certainly be noticed.

Which was when he heard distant rustling, and a man calling out for someone named Sheeka.

Maul crept closer. He was a good fighter - training for the Toydaria arenas had seen to that, and roughly a hundred scraps had given him practical experience. If he could knock out whoever this was and take his stuff -

The speaker was a human male, dressed in some pretty impressive armor. And armed, too. But he was walking arrogantly enough that Maul couldn't resist the temptation. He leapt at the man from ambush, his staff rapidly striking the blaster from his belt, trying to get a hold of something.

It took approximately five seconds for Maul to find himself dangling by the collar from the stranger's hand.

"Want to tell me what that was about, kid?" he asked.

"Er...."

"I'd suggest you do so quickly."

Maul swallowed and decided that, on balance, he'd prefer to stay alive and had no time to come up with a lie. To his surprise, the stranger laughed at the prospect of being robbed. "If you could've pulled it off at, what, fifteen," he said, "you would've earned it. Runaway slave, I'd wager? Where'd you train?"

"Here and there," Maul said, slightly unnerved at how easily he was being read. "Mainly the Toydarian arenas - Hypro, Kazenoto."

"You're not bad," the stranger said. "Come to think of it.... You want to tag along? Not the best of first impressions, but you can fight, and you're not a complete idiot, so that's already better than half my partners. You'd get a share of the pay, and I'll get you out of - who owns you, anyway?" He shrugged at Maul's explanation. "Well, that's not going to be a problem then. Anyway, I suppose it's about time to take on an apprentice, and it does get lonely sometimes... so long as you don't try and kill me again, of course. I'm giving you a big favor, and I need to know I can rely on you."

Maul assured that he could. This was the best break he'd gotten in - possibly ever (if the stranger was being honest). He wasn't about to waste it.

"Alright then, kid," he said. "What's your name?"

"Maul."

The stranger reached out and shook Maul's hand. "Jango Fett, bounty hunter. Now let me get that tracker out, and then we'll get going. The galaxy isn't giving us anything for free, after all."
​
*​

Jedi Temple, Coruscant

Ciaran Parsa walked through the Temple silently, as usual, but in a state of mind far more confused than usual.

As per her training, she opened her doubts to the Force, and let it flow through them. The Temple was in full bloom, light from the clear day above was refracted throughout the great complex, and above all, the vast flows of people were filled with joy and wonder and contentment, Masters sharing tales, Knights awaiting missions, Padawans training for the future, Initiates learning and playing.... Light, the light of an entire galaxy, concentrated in this one great beacon. When she had been younger Ciaran had not appreciated that, as she had too rarely been outside the Temple to recognize it as unusual.

The exercise helped, as it was meant to, in clearing her anxiety. But it did nothing to ease her befuddlement.

She had been selected as a Padawan; she should have been happy. For that matter, she was happy, and excited, and all that. She was good enough to get picked, she knew. She was an excellent student, one of Katarn Clan's best, and while she did not have Devan's martial ability of Roron's strength in the Force, she had done well enough in the various contests and trials; she had that knack for making friends, though admittedly also a weaker knack for making enemies. Ciaran did her best to remain self-aware - to understand the galaxy and the Force, it was necessary to understand the lens one viewed them through - and so she did not fall to false humility.

But even if she had known a Council Master would choose her to be their Padawan, she would never have predicted it would be Mace Windu.

"Enter," the voice of the Korun master came as she came up to the door.

The door was unlocked, and Ciaran opened it to step in. Mace Windu was standing, facing the door and - due to the room's geometry - also facing the window overlooking the western slope of the Jedi Temple. Coruscant stretched outside, in all its greatness and madness.

"You have received my summons," Windu said, without moving.

"I am honored that - "

"Stop." Windu turned his glare at her. "Be honest. None of this will work if we are not honest with one another."

Ciaran knew that, of course, or should have known. She suddenly felt far smaller than she normally did. Perhaps it was Windu's Force presence - like a towering citadel, magnificent and stark but built unerringly in the anticipation of conflict.

"I am honored that you are considering taking me as your Padawan," Ciaran said. "But I am also uncertain as to why."

"To be precise," Windu said, "you expected a more down-to-earth master to select you. Perhaps one famed for subterfuge, such as Master Poof."

Ciaran hesitantly nodded, only slightly unnerved at being read so easily - this was Master Windu, after all.

"The Jedi are, above all, guardians." Ciaran blinked at the sudden change of subject. "What do we guard?"

Ciaran knew her answers were obvious and trite, but after a moment's reflection she recognized they were true anyway. "The beings of the galaxy," she eventually said. "The Republic. Above all, the will of the Force."

"The people and institutions of the Republic, certainly," Windu said. "Would that some Senators remembered that.... The will of the Force, although its interpretation is of course a separate issue. What did you not mention, that you should have?"

Ciaran took a few moments to realize. "The Order itself." She calmed herself, relaxing in the Force while fixing her present, to remain oscillating but untangled among the currents. It would not do to embarrass herself now. It would not do, either, to sink too deeply into deliberation.

"If the Jedi Order did not devote some resources to self-perpetuation, it would not have endured. What is the Dark Side?"

"The use of the Force in a certain fashion, driven by extreme emotion - particularly anger - and selfishness."

"A fine answer, but rote. Good. You will experience true Darkness in time, I think, but it is better for it to be when you are ready. Four years ago, before Master Jinn departed to Bandomeer, you said four words to him. Why?"

"...I don't remember." She truly didn't remember, didn't even remember what the words were.

She knew the story, of course, of Master Jinn's hardfought survival against his former, fallen Padawan. She had cowered in the dark with the rest of Katarn Clan, wondering at the battle raging in the Temple - of course, in truth it had been a hunt and not a battle, and Xanatos had been driven to suicide in the end, by the madness of the Dark Side - and occasionally, perhaps, sneaking out to try and catch a glimpse. Perhaps. Probably not, at least as far as the Masters knew.

"I see," Windu said, sounding wistful for the first time in the conversation. "Unsurprising, perhaps. Four years must still be an eternity to you.... What is the thread that connects all this?"

The blocks turned over in Ciaran's head, swiveling into position before epiphany struck. "Xanatos," she said. "A fallen Jedi, the Order turned against itself. The egoism of the dark. It was difficult for Master Jinn to face him, surely, and so much easier for Xanatos. I said something to Master Jinn that helped shore up his mind, against the game that Xanatos was playing. Pure coincidence, perhaps, or the will of the Force." The last sentence she added quickly, trying to avoid excessive arrogance if she was wrong, or for that matter if she wasn't.

"Your will as well." Windu shook his head. "You do a disservice to your younger self, by denying her importance. I do not think she understood the magnitude of what she was doing, but she was more than a puppet for the Force. So many things began on Bandomeer.... Master Jinn barely had it in him to fight his fallen apprentice. When confronted with the true face of the dark, he struggled like few Jedi ever had to. But he won. Those are the moments the galaxy turns on, and only by perfection in every moment can we ensure perfection in the ones that really matter."

"You will see darkness as my Padawan," Windu continued. "Throughout the Senate, among the populace, and in our own hearts. You know my skill with a lightsaber, and I will seek to pass it on, but martial skill - though essential in these days - is not virtue, nor is it the main business of any Jedi. Why did I choose you, Ciaran?"

"Because you think I can learn to hold on to the light," Ciaran answered quietly. "Even in the void between the stars."

And because he'd had a vision, or something like it, and had understood that the void was coming for them, that some pillar of the Republic - and perhaps more than one - was swiftly decaying. Some arising emergency, of a sort Ciaran couldn't quite fathom. Not fear, inside Windu's heart, but simple appreciation for the magnitude of what he was facing.

"Indeed," Windu said, finally motioning Ciaran to sit down. "Indeed. And, alas, you will have to."

"The Great Peace has lasted for nearly a millennium," Ciaran pointed out.

"And if we stop doing everything to protect it," Windu said, "we will see war again within the year."​
 
Well, @Soulful100 have you already thought what rewards are you going to ask for the Full set?

You have already accumulated either 33 +10 omake bonus or 22 questions for each individual piece, but IIRC you were going to ask for an extra reroll for the full set.

Another thing that would be extremely useful would be to have a second permanent Sienar option, I would help a lot with the backlog of projects and I´m sure that @Dr. Snark will give an extra boon for 11 fanart.
 
Fanhunter696 said:
Well, @Soulful100 have you already thought what rewards are you going to ask for the Full set?

You have already accumulated either 33 +10 omake bonus or 22 questions for each individual piece, but IIRC you were going to ask for an extra reroll for the full set.

Another thing that would be extremely useful would be to have a second permanent Sienar option, I would help a lot with the backlog of projects and I´m sure that @Dr. Snark will give an extra boon for 11 fanart.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
He started when he learned that this project would net a 3rd reroll.
 
I'm not sure what I love more, the Rancor in a top hat, or us as the devil on Yularin's shoulder.
 
You absolute madman. Awesome.

I think my favorite has to go to Thrawn, Grievous, and HK-47 doing M.C. Hammer's "Can't Touch This" as a group.
 
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