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The Sith Interregnum
Part I : The Emperor’s Many Hands
[From information in Mara Jade: By The Emperor's Hand, Crimson Empire, A Long Time Ago... (Marvel SW comics), Dark Empire Sourcebook, Dark Side Sourcebook, Star Wars Gamer #5, Star Wars Galaxy Magazine #3, Star Wars Insider #85, Vader: The Ultimate Guide, New Essential Guide to Characters, and New Essential Chronology.]
Upon the second, most famous death of Darth Sidious, the first and only Galactic Emperor Palpatine, at the Battle of Endor, the Sith Order was destroyed. This was hardly the first destruction of the Sith, and it will not be the last. (To my count, the Sith have so far been destroyed six times, but new evidence is always emerging. We do not yet know the circumstances of those events surrounding the reunion of the Jedi Exile and Darth Revan, and have little information for the millennia that passed between Revan and Bane.)
However, this was also the destruction of the Sith that provided the most seeds for our rebirth. While Sidious never broke Darth Bane’s Rule of Two, that the Sith should only ever consist of a Master and an Apprentice, he bent it beyond recognition. From his inception of The Prophets of the Dark Side, before he even became Emperor, to the Sorcerors and Adepts he surrounded himself with on his throneworld of Byss, Sidious created a number of new Dark Side Orders to carry out his Will. In addition to the Prophets, Sidious created the Inquisitorius, Royal Guardsmen, Sovreign Protectors, Dark Side Adepts and a number of Dark Jedi, including several Masters. However, the Order that most resembled the Sith was that of the Emperor’s Hands.
The Emperor's Hands were trained as assassins and spies. The emphasis of their training was on stealth and deadly fighting skills, but also with a strong degree of self-reliance. They were trained to strike unexpectedly and without warning, to know every weapon they might have cause to use, but to never rely on anything but themselves. Their training took every lesson and secret technique available to the Jedi and a dozen other Force traditions, distilled down to its most basic essence, without the trappings of doctrine or ritual. They learned the utility of what worked, separated from the teachings of how these techniques should be used. In short, they were trained with much the same attitude that Sith are trained.
From the earliest Hands, such as Sa Cuis and Sheyvan, to the last Hands, Mara Jade and Lumiya, many of them thought that Emperor’s Hand was a singular position. The term even indicated this, as several were told by Sidious that just as Vader was his right hand, the visible face of the Empire, they were his left hand, performing his Will in secret. Darth Sidious had a great need for this kind of left hand, as since being confined to his suit of Dark armor, Darth Vader was as subtle as a fleet of Star Destroyers. Few of the Emperor’s Hands had any idea how many of them there were, and even today we are not positive of the total number.
The first Hand who learned of his position as one of many was Sarcev Quest, but unlike Sa Cuis or Sheyvan, he did not begrudge just how many Hands the Emperor had. He quickly became the senior Hand, outranking any others who discovered that they were but one of an entire Order. Quest was a flamboyant playboy who used the cover of an indolent noble to spy on various members of Palpatine’s court.
Quest naturally noticed the young and beautiful Roganda Isamaren who began appearing as a concubine in the Imperial court, and when Sidious discovered her to be Force-sensitive, he began training her as a Hand as well. The Sith Lord knew, of course, that Roganda had infiltrated the court after Inquisitor Darys had killed Lagan Ismaren, her brother, in the attack on the Jedi creche on Belsavis. However, he chose to keep her secret and use her to his own ends, rather than kill an assassin with such potential. Between Quest and Ismaren, anyone in the Imperial court who could be seduced, was, and Sidious learned all their secrets.
The next known Emperor’s Hand was not nearly as subtle. Early in the Empire’s history, Arden Lyn was discovered by Imperial agents. She was the first Lady of the Lettow, that group of Dark Side adepts who conquered the Sith species and took the name for themslves. She had been trapped in a trance for thousands of years and found near the end of the Jedi Purge. Inquisitor Darys, High Inquisitor Tremayne and Grand Inquisitor Torbin accidentally revived her with dire results. Darys was killed and Tremayne injured within the first few moments after Lyn regained life. Tremayne was about to strike to kill her when Torbin intervened and cut off her arm instead, so she could be taken prisoner.
Lady Arden was taken to Palpatine, where she was in a vastly different position than most Force adepts brought before the Emperor. She was not a lost Jedi, nor a Force-sensitive raised with Imperial indoctrination, nor a shaman from a primitive planet. She was unaffiliated with the current political divisions of the galaxy, and was twenty thousand years behind on the current situation. From her perspective, she was a Dark Lady who had returned and was meeting the current Dark Lord as a peer, an attitude no one else ever took with the Emperor.
Palpatine found it nearly impossible to treat Arden Lyn as a prisoner, both due to her demeanor and because with her powers, she could not be held captive for long. He had the power to destroy her, but he also realized she had nowhere else to turn, and decided to make a deal with her. He told her about his extensive Sith alchemies, and said that if she would serve as an Emperor’s Hand, he would use his sorcery to find a way to return her lover, Xendor, to life.
Lyn decided to take the offer, at first simply as a way to make her way about the new galaxy around her, but continued to serve Palpatine when she understood the position she was now in. However, after nearly two decades of service, she increasingly suspected that Palpatine was neglecting his part of their deal, and was making no effort to bring Xendor back to life. A year after the Battle of Yavin, after a mission in the Outer Rim, Lyn disappeared, with the intent of finding her own disciples to help her destroy Palpatine.
In the intervening nineteen years, between the establishment of the first few Hands and the departure of Arden Lyn, the Emperor presumably trained other Hands, but we only the name of one. We know a few years before the Battle of Yavin, Roganda Ismaren fled back to Belsavis when she discovered that she was pregnant. The child was that of Sarcev Quest, but as she was known by then as one of Palpatine’s favorite concubines, the suspicion of having the Emperor’s child was too much and she chose to simply disappear rather than risk her life by staying at court. To fill this vacancy, Sidious trained Jeng Droga.
Little is known of Droga’s early life, but he was well-known as the most loyal of all the Emperor’s Hands, and even Sidious trusted him as hatching no plots to overthrow his Master. Within a few years, Droga was placed at the head of the Emperor’s Hands, supervising even Sarcev Quest, who had held a similar position for nearly fifteen years. Quest began developing allies among the Imperial Council that advised the Emperor, and putting himself in a position to take power, should Palpatine and Vader become vulnerable.
However, this left the Emperor with assassins at his disposal, but none of the subtle manipulation and information gathering to fulfill the other purpose of his Hands. To this end, he began training Mara Jade, leading to her becoming Emperor’s Hand a year before the Battle of Hoth. Mara Jade was one of the Hands who thought she was the only one, not knowing that Sarcev Quest and Jeng Droga were both far more exerienced, and ignored her in their struggle for power.
The following year, an operative sent by Imperial Intelligence to infiltrate the Rebel Alliance was nearly killed at the Battle of Arbra. Shira Brie was shot down by Luke Skywalker while on a mission during which Rogue Squadron was infiltrating an Imperial outpost as a TIE squadron. However, with the extensive training and drug therapy she had received, along with her latent Force powers, she survived and became the cyborg named Lumiya. Darth Vader personally directed her rebirth, and presented her to the Emperor as a new Hand. First, she needed to be trained, a task Vader undertook personally to secure her loyalty as his new apprentice. She was taken to the demolished throneworld of the ancient Sith Empire, Ziost.
Then Arden Lyn reappeared, a few months before the Battle of Endor, allied with Grand Admiral Zaarin, who was attempting a coup by kidnapping Palpatine. As Arden Lyn was one of the few Force adepts who could hope to present a challenge to the Emperor, she led the mission to capture him. However, she was thwarted by High Inquisitor Tremayne and the Emperor’s pilot, Maarek Stele, who was then discovered to be strong enough with the Force to warrant his training as an Emperor’s Hand.
Shortly afterward, both Zaarin and Lyn were tracked down and killed, so that at the time of the Battle of Endor, the remaining Hands were Sarcev Quest, Jeng Droga, Mara Jade, Maarek Stele and Lumiya. When Palpatine apparently died, each had a different response. Sarcev Quest implemented his plans to take control of the Imperial Council, and allied himself with Sate Pestage when the Emperor’s Vizier made his bid for power. Mara Jade was arrested by Director Ysanne Isard of Imperial Intelligence, and shortly escaped to backwater planets to hide from the authorities. Maarek Stele was disgusted by the back-stabbing plays to gain power after the Emperor’s death and fell in with Baron Soontir Fel, joining the infamous 181st TIE Squadron, the Empire’s answer to Rogue Squadron. Lumiya was still training on Ziost, and decided without Vader or Sidious to guide her, she now had the responsibility of continuing the Sith tradition. She searched the ancient tombs of Ziost, and was taught the ways of the Sith by the spirits there, and a Sith holocron they gave to her.
The only Emperor’s Hand to keep the position after Endor was Jeng Droga. At the moment of Sidious’ death, Droga was commanding Palpatine’s personal shuttle, the Emperor's Shadow, on the way to Endor, only a few systems away. Sidious reached out to the closest trusted companion he had, and transferred his spirit into the Hand, not destroying Droga’s spirit in the process, only keeping his own alive. Despite the care Sidious took, Droga still briefly lost all sanity, killing all those around him and damaging the Emperor’s Shadow until it crashed into the oceans of the planet Kaal.
Eventually, Droga made his way to Sate Pestage, who was able to use Dark Side sorceries to save Sidious’ spirit from the Dark Warrior’s, and transfer it into a waiting clone body. Jeng Droga continued to faithfully protect his Master, and remained the only Emperor’s Hand from then until Sidious’ final death, seven years after the Battle of Endor.
Well before Sidious' return, less than a year after Endor, Lumiya emerged on the galactic scene, allied with various rogue Imperial factions who saw her as the new Vader. She called herself Lady Lumiya despite having only begun her Sith training, and attempted to avenge both her Masters by killing Luke Skywalker. When a new invading race called the Nagai appeared, she joined her Imperial factions with them, and began leading a new war against the Alliance, keeping them from making an effective assault on the Core Worlds, now being horribly mis-managed by a clone of Pestage.
The Alliance eventually made peace with the Nagai by agreeing to help in their fight against the Tof, a species from the same area of space as the Nagai, who had attacked them ferociously and drove them away from their homeworld, resulting in the invasion. When the Nagai no longer supported Lumiya’s war against the Alliance, she began supporting the Tof. However while brutal, the Tof had no strategic skills and were quickly overwhelmed by the combined forces of the Nagai with the Alliance. Lumiya had no choice but to escape and present herself to Director Isard, who had since taken control of the Empire.
Isard recognized what a resource she had in Lumiya, and immediately began using her to secure Imperial resources taken by the rebels, and sent her on a hunt of Mara Jade. During this time, Lumiya took on two apprentices, a Force-sensitive stormtrooper also trained by Vader named Flint, and a former Royal Guardsman named Carnor Jax, but then disappeared when she failed to kill Jade before Isard was deposed from power.
It is always suspicious when such an important figure as Lumiya simply disappears without a trace. The other former Hands were accounted for: Sarcev Quest had joined the Imperial politics with a place on the Council; Roganda Ismaren had hidden on Belsavis to train her son; Arden Lyn was apparently dead; Maarek Stele had returned to being a TIE pilot; Mara Jade fell in with Talon Karrde; Jeng Droga remained at his Master’s side. Lumiya simply disappeared with two apprentices, both of whom would reappear later, but offering few hints of where the Sith Lady was herself.
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Lord Scourge
(( Main Administrator ))
Dark Sith Lord of the Council, Historian to the Empress
Master to Vulpine, Sith Apprentice
Under the Dark Patronage of Lady Lumiya
"You truly are evil."
-Abel Peña, Star Wars EU writer, to me
Last edited by Lord Scourge on Fri Mar 24, 2006 12:49 pm; edited 1 time in total
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