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Welcome
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Nathaniel Reed's
Virtual Edition
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Episode IX : Duel of the Fates
by Nathaniel Reed
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| Following the Battle of Kamino, where General Lando Calrissian sacrificed his life to destroy the secret genesis-factory creating the Bogan, the Dark Side creatures have swept across much of the Galaxy, subjugating it under a cloud of despair and fear. Orchestrated by the Sith Master Darth Monstross and controlled by the twelve fallen Jedi who were once padawans of the traitor Lettow, the bogan can only be killed by flame or by several groups of Jedi Knights acting in 'inconcerto', a dark trait pioneered by Master Alana Seren, where one Jedi lead marshalls the others. In conjunction with the bogan, the Imperial Remnant has successfully re-taken the Rim and Disc territories through the use of hyper-drones, centrally controlled devices stationed at egress points along hyper-lanes that can disable all non-Imperial traffic. As millions of refugees retreat towards the Core Interior, the Galactic Alliance desperately seeks additional vessels to valiantly retaliate. |
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| To this end, Leia Solo leads a delegation to the powerful Baron Rabahht of the Transport Union on Corellia seeking a deal to secure more ships. Unbeknownst to the Alliance, the Baron, maintaining his neutrality in the conflict to preserve his profits, intends to take hostage the delegates and barter them to Darth Monstross for the Sith Lord's favour. As the Baron argues for a tighter deal benefitting Corellia, one of the helmeted Alliance security guards becomes agitated and cynical, and when the negotiations break down, the guard scoffs and removes his helmet revealing General Han Solo ! Meanwhile, in orbit the Alliance cruiser that had delivered the delegation sees a Wraith-type Imperial Star Destroyer arrive to unleash a payload of bogan, and the cruiser moves to intercept. Alliance Captain, Kazan, is further surprised when further cloaking-enabled Wraith vessels begin to arrive ! Down below in Corell City, as the bogan start arriving and causing fear and havoc, Baron Rabahht orders his security staff to apprehend the delgates : a shoot-out ensues, with Leia wielding two lightsabres, one blue blade and one short black sword, fashioned from the black crystal that had been embedded in her on Ilum. Artoo appears on a skiff outside, and cuts through the office window, allowing Han and Leia and the others to flee. |
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| General Wedge Antilles had accompanied Kazan and he takes the Millennium Falcon to fly in to a rendezvous point in Corell City. As Han and the others make their way there, the Baron reaches the parked ship first, and captures Wedge ! A second stand-off between Han and Rabahht occurs, revealing a long-standing personal history between the two of them.... until shots are fired and Rabahht is killed and Han is injured ! At that moment, a bogan, a huge bat-like gargoyle creature, drawn by the deaths and injuries, swoops in above the combatants, and attacks Han with a light-whip, injuring him fatally. In shock and fear, Leia blasts the bogan with Force-lightning, and, against expectations, the bogan falls to the ground dead rather than imploding. With lightning still crackling from her fingertips, Leia moves to her husband's side, and before she realises what is happening, the lightning connects with Han and resuscitates his heart with an electric jolt ! Han is revived but is greatly weakened, and both Leia and Wedge get everyone on board the Falcon ; Leia also loads the body of the dead bogan into the ship's rear cargo hold. The Falcon blasts away and returns to orbit, and as the ship jumps to lightspeed, a fleet of Alliance warships arrive to support Kazan in countering the Imperial presence. |
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| Meanwhile, Leia's brother Master Jedi Luke Skywalker leads a small team of Jedi around a selection of Core Worlds advising on defence strategies against the bogan. Having just left Cato Neimoudia, the Jedi Rangers move on to Serenno. Elsewhere, on the Star Destroyer stolen by General Lando Calrissian from Kessel (who sacrificed his life on Kamino), Captain Teeter briefs Chewbacca and his fellow team of Jedi Wookiees ahead of their mission to infiltrate the Imperial-held world of Kashyyyk to destroy the hyper-drone factory and comms centre. An apparently neutral Trandoshan named Wan Boma had agreed to ferry them in using his freighter, and the Wookiees board the ship. Teeter confirms that the Alliance Star Destroyer, now equipped with prototype cloaking technology stolen from Kamino, will journey to Kashyyyk and await the beacon signals from the Wookiees which will mark out targets to fire upon. |
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| On Serenno, Luke and his Jedi Rangers are asked by the ruling Count to investigate the defences of an industrial quarter of the city. Within the deserted and narrow streets, the Jedi are ambushed by a group of bounty hunters, and although they put up a good fight, the Jedi are captured ; Luke quickly calls on the Force to hide his identity from the bounty hunters, who, it is revealed, had been hired by the Count to capture the Jedi and deliver them to the Imperials in return for Serenno's security against the bogan. |
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| Back at Corellia, the fleet of Alliance warships finds itself entrapped by yet more Wraith Star Destroyers ! A great ring of hyper-drones have been sown about the ships, and a stand-off is now in place. Enroute to Coruscant, a vision of prophecy comes to Leia. Confused by the message, she checks on Han's health, and muses over what to do with the body of the bogan. Since discovering the notebooks of Lord Plagueis on Naboo, Leia, who appears to be infertile, still secretly aspires to bend the Force to her will and create new life. Having seemed to have resuscitated her husband with Force lightning, she is sure she is on the brink of a breakthrough ! |
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| Master Alana Seren, who had been stationed at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant training the Jedi Knights in 'inconcerto', was also liaising with the politicians and generals in Mon Mothma's office. Whilst there, she thwarts an attack on President Mothma by the Sith Lord Darth Kayos, and then pursues her quarry across the Coruscant skyline ! Although a fierce duel ensues and Alana is able to knock Kayos off the rooftops, the Sith Lord's body can't be seen or detected, so Alana returns to the Temple to warn the Jedi to remain vigilant. At the Temple, Alana bumps into Leia and the two old friends quickly bring each other up to speed with what's been going on ; Leia also confides that she might have found a breakthrough with her "little silly experiments", to which Alana responds with concern. In the Council chamber, the Jedi Masters agree that Leia should oversee any further research on the bogan with the help of the 'Young Kaminoans' (a second generation who had been re-created from the scientists' distilled DNA), and to send out Masters Alana Seren and Gri San Wei to search for Darth Kayos' ship since it still had a functioning tracker beacon that had been secretly installed by Artoo on the Kyber moon of Ilum. |
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| The Wookiee mission arrives at Kashyyyk aboard the Trandoshan freighter, but the pilot reveals his loyalty to his race over either the Galactic Alliance or the Imperial Remnant, and, as the other Wookiees with kite-wings leap out of the ship, a struggle breaks out between Chewbacca and Wan Boma. Chewie is forced to flee the ship and the pilot races towards the Imperial citadel known as 'Imperias City'. The Wookiees re-group, and make their way through the upper branches of the huge trees towards the city. When Imperial troopers and Trandoshan slavers attack them, a fire-fight ensues, and although the Wookiees are successful, Chewie tumbles down into the lower and more dangerous vegetation ! As he falls, he shouts to his team to continue on. Deep in the twilight of the mid and lower jungle, Chewie is forced to evade many aggressive creatures. |
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| On Coruscant, Alana and Gri discover Darth Kayos' ship in an old tower in an industrial sector of the planet-wide city. The unoccupied ship has not been left defenceless, and Gri is caught in deadly cross-fire ! Alana checks the rest of the ship and then updates the Council with her news. The Council agrees to send Alana in Kayos' ship to Had Abbadon, a moon of Kashyyyk and known to be the Sith Lords' lair, and set up a vanguard position prior to an attack by the Jedi. |
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| Whilst her ship is being discovered, an injured Darth Kayos forces a cybernetics trader to fashion her a new hand from droid parts. She then makes her way to the secret Sith base in the tower, reaching it after the Alliance personnel have left and Alana had departed. Frustrated, Kayos moves to a more secured area and unveils Darth Vader's old TIE fighter. She contacts her master, Lord Monstross, to update him and seek his guidance. Since Monstross had recently intuited a Force vision implying a new threat from Tatooine, he orders his friend to journey there next and investigate the danger. Kayos departs Coruscant in Vader's TIE fighter. |
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| Meanwhile in the science research laboratories within the Jedi Temple, Leia attempts to channel Force lightning and revive wilted flora and heal her own flesh wounds : although successful, the effort is very tiring. As she makes her way to her private quarters where Han is resting, the Force ghosts Obi-Wan Kenobi and then Anakin appear beside her and warn her of her actions. But Leia is stubborn and remains resolute that her agenda is the right one. When she sees that her husband has recovered sufficiently, she suggests that they both return to the Jedi and Alliance Councils to offer what aid they can. |
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| Alana arrives at Had Abbadon and utilises Kayos' ship to sneak into a hangar at the Sith command centre. The base is operated by a great number and variety of droids since the overwhelming numbers of bogan in the hatcheries would paralyse a sentient person with despair. Affected also by the Bogan despair, Alana valiantly fortifies herself with the Force, and finds a secondary control room to hide in and review the schematics of the base. |
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| On Coruscant, Mon Mothma reveals that, through the special envoy Watto the Toydarian she has learned that the Great Hutt Lord Barrola and his Council currently reside in secrecy on Tatooine : she suggests that the Hutts might have vessels the Alliance could use, but more importantly, the Hutts might be willing to let them utilise the Hutt smuggling routes and enable the Alliance to travel safely around the Galaxy once more. Leia and Han offer to travel to Tatooine and request help from the Hutts. It is agreed, and they retire to the Falcon to plan a safe route avoiding the hyper-drones. |
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| On moon-lit Kashyyyk, the team of Jedi Wookiees review the fortified Imperias City. They scale the high wall and slip through the electric fence, then divert the sentries' attention. They decide to split up, and one team would infiltrate the factory district and plan beacons for Captain Teeter's stolen Wraith ship to target, while the others would scale the high central tower that relays commands to the hyper-drones. Meanwhile, Chewbacca, in fleeing the jungle creatures, has fallen even lower, and in the gassy and hallucinatory swamps at the foot of the huge trees, the Wookiee is easy prey for the vile monsters that lurk there. Suddenly, a figure appears from a vine and grabs Chewie and hauls him to safety in the higher branches ! Regaining consciousness in the oxygen-rich higher foliage, Chewie is overjoyed to see that his rescuer is his old friend from the time of the Republic, Tarfful. The older Wookiee leads Chewie up into the mid section and across to a hidden camp carved into the boles of the huge trunks. There, Chewie discovers a settlement of Wookiees and colonial traders who had escaped the Imperial subjugation of Emperor Palpatine's Order 66, but who had not been lucky enough to escape off-planet before it was locked down. Chewie is surprised and delighted to find that one old couple are none other than Kuro and Connie Solo, Han's parents ! The trader and the anthropologist are equally amazed by the serendipity, and quiz the Wookiee about the son they thought they had left behind on Corellia and had lost for good. |
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| Luke and his other captured Jedi are ferried to a waiting Star Destroyer, and, still retaining his Force-conjured disguise, they are then transported to the Kashyyyk system and Had Abbadon. There, they are put into holding cells along with other prisoners, and discover they are to be prey for the new generation of bogan to hunt in a variety of landscapes in enviro-domes. Even though they are without weapons, Luke encourages them to rely on the Force. Once inside the enviro-domes, they are able to elude and outwit the bogan, and, under Luke's direction, they send a huge boulder into the air and smash through the clear roof that leads to ferocious atmospheric storms beyond. They use the Force to anchor themselves to the ground while the bogan are sucked up to the roof, and then they steadily make their way out to one of the bogans' access hatches. |
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| Han pilots the Falcon along a particularly hazardous hyper-route that severely damages the ship but at least gets them to Tatooine without activating the drones. They make their way to the old Lars farmstead which is now a jawa inn and trading post ; Leia and her brother had used it as a base when they rescued Han from Jabba the Hutt. Knowing that her husband would forever stoke the ire of the Hutts, Leia proposes that she and Theepio travel on by landspeeder to see Jabba's son Rotta, while Han and Artoo can look to repair the Falcon. |
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| On Kashyyyk the Wookiee team that had infiltrated the factory complex is captured, while the team scaling the tower are able to continue unnoticed to the base of sensor dish, where they use their lightsabres to begin to cut into the support girders. Unbeknownst to them, Chewie has formulated a plan of action to attack the City and help his furry friends : using the Force to pacify and corral domesticated and wild animals, at dawn he and the other fugitive colonialists will hide amongst and behind the animals as they stampede towards the city wall. He proposes utilising the wild 'fantomers', indigenous large spider-like creatures that, along with a symbiotic palm-sized parasite, can naturally turn themselves invisible : from these creatures the Imperials have been harvesting the serum that is the originating source for the Wraith ships' cloaking ability. |
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| At the Sith command centre, Alana bumps into Luke and the others ! They embrace and resolve to take the opportunity to attack Drath Monstross ! Luke sends a team of Jedi to the storm-holer control room to re-open an access tunnel through the ever-present atmospheric storms above, and anohter team to a hangar bay to secure an escape ; he and Alana take three other Jedi with them as they seek out the Sith Lord. |
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| At the jawa inn on Tatooine, while Han and Artoo fly to a local town to seek out suitable parts to make repairs on the Falcon, two 'guests' discuss between themselves that Han Solo might staying with them. Hoping to call in the old Hutt bounty, they contact their colleagues in the town that Han has travelled to and ask them to identify him. As Han completes his purchases, one of the bandits makes the confirmation. The Falcon returns to the inn, with the bandits in pursuit on swoop bikes ! |
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| Meanwhile, at Rotta's palace, Leia uses the Force to gain an immediate audience with the Hutt. She identifies some of the Hutts present in the audience chamber as members of the Hutt Council, and asks Rotta to put her plea on behalf of the Galactic Alliance to his Council : for vessels and routes, she says the Alliance will send warships to clear the borders of Hutt space of Imperial ships. Rotta scoffs reminding her that the great Hutts are immune to the bogan despair and brags that no Imperial can contain the Hutts, but Leia persists, and some of the Hutts present join holograms of other influential Hutts to convene a meeting. When her request for help is turned down, she realises that Lord Barrola's hologram was unusually strong and clear, and intuits that he is hidden on the premises ! At that, Barrola himself appears, but as he begins to speak to Leia a dark blur flashes past, and Darth Kayos makes an appearance with her red sword flashing to and fro ! Leia immediately engages the Sith Lord in combat, and the two resume their fight that had begun on Ilum ! |
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| The Kashyyyk Colonialists and Wookiees, including Kura and Connie Solo, attack Imperias City, and break through the wall. Chewie oversees the operation from the back of a huge bird, and is similarly accompanied by others in the sky. As stormtroopers move in to defend the breach, the Wookiees in the air provide covering fire for their friends on the ground. Chewie senses his Jedi team further in the city is in danger, so directs his bird to race across the rooftops and swoop down on the troopers escorting the captives : he frees his team, allowing them to return in the commotion to the factory perimeters to lay their beacons. Before they depart, Chewie asks where the rest of the team is, and the Wookiees point up at the great comms tower in the centre of the city. Chewie races back to the battle at the breached wall, signals for two other airborne Wookiees to join him, and then the three fly to the tower. |
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| On Tatooine, Darth Kayos taunts Leia as they duel, enraging her, and both inflict injuries on each other. Leia skillfully fights with her two swords, the long blue sabre and the shorter black and white sword. She gains the upper hand, and disarms Kayos. Sensing she has lost, the Dark Lord requests a quick kill, but Leia, angry and with her eyes burning yellow, clenches her fist, and the internal organs of her foe are crushed. The audience in the chamber are silenced in shock and respect. With the Hutts' primary threat destroyed, Leia coolly makes her request to Barrola once more. The Great Hutt Lord agrees to let her have vessels and smuggling routes, and Leia and Threepio depart. Outside the palace, they see a sandstorm approaching and blocking their direct path back to the jawa inn, so Leia instructs the droid to travel eastwards and go wide around it. |
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| Meanwhile, at the same time, Han and Artoo are repairing the Falcon at the jawa inn. The two guests had offered to help, and they are working outside beside Han. Suddenly a whine of engines are heard, and Han looks up to see several swoop bikes racing towards them. gunfire erupts, and before Han is able to return many shots, one of the 'guests' whacks him on the back of the head and he falls to the ground unconscious. The bandits arrive, and tie Han to the back of a bike. When they see a sandstorm in the direction of Rotta's palace, they elect to travel westwards around it. |
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| At Imperias City on Kashyyyk, Chewie sees the rest of his team clinging to the high tower. TIE fighters swoop about focused on the breached wall, but one wing of fighters investigates the flashes of light at the tower. As Chewie and the other two Wookiees reach the Jedi team, the support girders under the great relay dish tear apart, and the huge equipment begins to lean ! A salvo of laserfire from the TIE fighters unwittingly slash across the framework too, and the dish above creaks and snaps from its moorings, tumbling to the city far below. The Jedi team leap across to the birds, and the Wookiees fly away unnoticed in the dust and debris. Elsewhere in the factory district, the beacons are activated, and the rest of the Jedi team make their way back to the breach. Meanwhile, the Colonialists led by Kura Solo valiantly hold back the stormtroopers. A computer expert with them is able to hack in to the city computer network, and they unlock all the doors of the slave workers' residences. From the computer schematics Connie Solo identifies where the fantomers are penned, and she resolves to take some of the soldiers with her to free them. |
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| In orbit above, Captain Teeter's skeleton crew identify the coded signals from the city. He orders the cloaked ship to descend to a position above the city where they can accurately fire upon the factories only. |
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| On the grey moon of Had Abbadon, Luke, Alana, and the other three Jedi make their way towards the Sith lair. In a cave network they find a fearsome centipede creature that kills one of the Jedi, but the others are able to pacify the monster with the Force, and push it back down into a side tunnel. The Jedi continue on, and find themselves in a carved round chamber with a far door guarded by two red-robed Royal Guards. They engage in a tense fight, but manage to throw one Guard through the open doorway and down into a lava-filled abyss, while the other Guard retreats along a narrow walkway that leads out to three rock stacks high above the molten flow. The Jedi follow, and are greeted by Darth Monstross and one of the Bogan Commanders, Darth Venom, who had once been a Jedi Apprentice. |
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| Leia and Threepio return to the jawa inn and the Falcon, but find Han missing, and Artoo at a loss to know what had happened. Laying her hand on fresh scorch marks on the hull of the Falcon, Leia calls on the Force to describe to her what happened. Alarmed, she sees visions of the attack on her husband and his abduction ! She gathers the droids aboard, and the Falcon races in pursuit of the bandits. Within moments they catch up with the swoop bikes, and Leia, like an avenging angel of death, leaps from the Falcon and attacks the bandits. She kills most of them and as she advances on the last one, voices urge her to stop : the Force Ghosts materialise before her once more, and, calming her, prompt her to venture into the desert and seek out the people of the sands who might hold the key to what she yearns for. Pacified, Leia gathers Han who is now regaining consciousness, and returns to the inn. There, she pleads with her husband to stay a little longer on Tatooine to allow her to investigate this cryptic instruction : she senses that the answer she seeks - the ability to create life through the Force - lies within her reach. Grudgingly Han agrees but says he will follow in the Falcon, and as he and Artoo complete the repairs, Leia and Threepio, having asked the jawas for a suitable location, head out into the deep desert. Later, Han sees a dark cloud of bogan racing into the desert and towards Leia, and pursues them in the Falcon. He is able to shoot down some of them, but the bogan despair is too much, and Han is forced to briefly land. |
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| The skies above Imperias City blaze with green turbolaser energy and the factories explode ! But the power drain has caused the cloaking facility to fail, and the Alliance's Wraith Star Destroyer hangs impotently above the city. Anti-aircraft gun batteries whir into life and begin to target the underside of the warship. Chewie and the others airborne swoop down to several of the turrets, and manually slice at the gun batteries with their lightsabres. Although they are able to disable many of the guns, the Alliance ship begins to list and dips towards the edge of the city and the jungle beyond. |
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| Back at the military headquarters on Coruscant, the Alliance learns that the hyper-drones have all been disabled, freeing up the space lanes for safe travel once more ! Similarly at Corellia the besieged fleets find that not only have the drones deactivated, but the surrounding Wraith ships are all jumping to lightspeed ! Coruscant immediately orders all available fleets to support the attack on Kashyyyk, and Captain Kazan is one of many rushing to that location. |
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| Luke, Alana - who wields a short black sword similar to Leia's - and the two Jedi advance upon the two Sith Lords and the Royal Guard. A ferocious duel ensues across the three stacks, and the Guard and one Jedi are killed, while the other Jedi is forced to take on Darth Venom single-handedly. Luke and Alana battle Darth Monstross, who wields an archaic but deadly lightmace. On the central command stack sits a Sith holocron, while on the other stacks is a huge Queen bogan and a mirrored occulus respectively, all connected with a line of golden flame. |
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| Leia and Threepio are intercepted by sandpeople guarding their campsite, but Leia boldly and arrogantly calls upon the Force to stall them and allow them passage. In the campsite, she is met by a Tusken, who recognises Padme's Japor snippet once carved by a young Anakin from a tree sacred to the sandpeople. In the tense moment, the Force Ghost Qui Gon Jinn appears. He is clearly already known to the Tusken as he introduced himself to Leia. The former Jedi Master explains to Leia of his role in mentoring her father and how he first learned to retain his identity after death. He urges Leia to follow the Tusken into a cave, where she can meditate with a Shaman of the Whills and possibly learn of the answers she seeks. Intrigued, Leia agrees, and enters the cave. There she finds an ancient lady speaking with a child's voice who asks her to sit and meditate. Leia does so.... and she finds herself in the grey domain of the Netherworld, an after-life where she meets the Force Ghosts of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and her father Anakin. The Jedi Master explains that her grandmother Shmi Skywalker had been brought before the Council when pregnant with Anakin, and the Jedi, scared of what they foresaw, sent her into exile. Yoda apologises for their actions, but warns Leia that the further she goes in this domain the less likely she would return. Leia moves on and meets her adopted parents Bail and Breha Organa with whom she makes peace. She also meets Shmi. But pushing on further, the fog becomes darker, and she sees her parents, Anakin and Padme, side by side fighting with lightsabres against bogan ! Leia ignites her own sword and leaps into the fray, cutting all the bogan down. |
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| In the Sith lair, Darth Monstross calls upon the Force to conjure several images of himself, all capable of fighting, and Luke and Alana are forced to go on the defensive. On Tatooine at the Tusken campsite, the bogan swoop around and the sandpeople retaliate on the backs of sandwyrms, smaller agile creatures related to the infamous Sarlaac. The Falcon arrives and continues blasting at the bogan. Suddenly, a ghostly impression of Leia appears in the air, and she flits between the bogan killing many of them ! On Had Abaddon, a similar apparition of Leia cuts down all the false Monstross images ! In the darkened Netherworld - now Hell - Leia destroys the last of the bogan and frees her parents. A cackle sounds, and she turns and faces Darth Sidious ! |
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| As both Wraith warships and Alliance vessels start arriving in Kashyyyk orbit and fan out in attack positions, the Wookiees in Imperias City make their way to the perimter wall. Connie Solo and the two colonial soldiers locate the stable holding the fantomers and release all but two of them. They then leap on to the backs of these two spider-like creatures and render them invisible, before galloping through the streets back to the breach and their beseiged friends. With the natural cloaking on their side, they are able to surpise the stormtroopers holding the seige, and allow Kuro and the others to escape. In the sky above, the Alliance Star Destroyer is inexorably falling towards the jungle. One of the newly arrived Imperial Wraith vessels races down to make a killing blow, but a smaller Alliance cruiser helmed by Captain Kazan is able to pursue and fire some deflecting shots. Kazan's ship is able to briefly dock against the Star Destroyer's tower, and Captain Teeter's skeleton crew are rescued. As the larger Alliance ship crashes into the jungle, Kazan's cruiser accelerates away, and the lumbering Imperial Star Destroyer is forced to turn around before rising after them. |
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| In Hell, Sidious gleefully explains to Leia that when Anakin had been mortally wounded by Obi-Wan on Mustafar, he had sensed another's whill keeping him alive - Padme's strength of spirit, that had inexplicably and transcendentally connected to Anakin's in that moment when the Jedi had been alone in the Jedi Council chamber wrestling with the decision to intervene against Mace Windu's arrest of Palpatine. Using his knowledge of the Dark Arts, Sidious had taken the life in her spirit and the life that was dying in Anakin and melded them to create Darth Vader ! Now, both Anakin and Leia understand that they had held themselves above the Force, their arrogance had blinded them to the humility required to listen to the Force. But Sidious reveals that by drawing Leia here, he has the chance to connect with Darth Monstross and the two Sith Lords can rule both domains together ! |
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| On Had Abaddon, Monstross is able to knock Alana unconscious and Force-pushes Luke over the side of the stack where he hangs perilously. The Sith Master advances upon Alana with a new Sith pendant in his hands, ready to hang it about her neck and enslave her and her inconcerto powers forever. Still trapped, Luke calls on the Force to re-ignite Monstross' lightmace and injure him. Alana awakens and tries to attack the Sith Lord, but he throws her against the Holocron. Alana's black sword bounces against the Holocron and damages it, and Darth Venom yelps in pain - her Sith Amulet about her neck has suddenly burned her ! Sensing the opportunity, Luke encourages Alana to strike at the Holocron, which she does again and again : as the black blade stabs into the heart of the black Holocron, not only does Darth Venom collapse to the floor, but also the Queen Bogan writhes in pain, and across the galaxy all the bogan similarly and fatally react ! On the Wraith ships in nearby orbit, all the Bogan Commanders - the erstwhile Jedi Knights seduced by the Dark Side and wearing the Sith Amulets about their necks - collapse in pain and die. The Wraith Star Destroyers under their command and crewed by droids all come to a halt. In the Sith lair, a supernatural wind whips up and Darth Monstross is lifted into the golden fire as it disappears into the occulus ! As the gale disappears, the three Jedi embrace in relief. |
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| In Hell, Leia announces that she forgives her parents and intends to leave. Sidious raises his hands to stop her and lightning flashes at her. Darth Plagueis appears beside him and he too sends lightning towards Leia ! She catches the lightning, drawing it in towards her, and then similarly draws in the ghostly bodies of Sidious and Plagueis too ! The Sith Lords disappear into her hands, and then there is silence. Leia takes her parents by the hand and leads them out of Hell. |
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| Across the galaxy people cheer in relief as the Bogan Despair disappears. Above Kashyyyk the Alliance fleet begins to secure the Imperial ships, while on Tatooine a dazed Leia steps out of the cave and falls with relief into Han's arms. |
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| Epilogue : on a green meadow in the Lake Country of Naboo, we see Han and Leia Solo with two toddlers and Kura and Connie Solo beside them, with Luke and Alana and their baby nearby, accompanied by Padme's Naberrie family. The Force Ghosts of Anakin, Padme, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Qui-Gon materialise and are visible to everyone, and Qui-Gon re-affirms that forgiveness and compassion are key. |
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Nathaniel Reed, October 2018 |
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