V.1-C.25│Jedi Order I│

Coruscant.

A lot had happened to the Jedi as the invasion of Naboo continued and after it had finished. Two key factors in particular were of the most importance.

The incoming entrance of the supposed Chosen One from a prophecy only told to the Jedi, Anakin Skywalker joining their Order and one of the well respected of the Jedi had left. Disappeared this Jedi had.

Dooku who had left the Jedi Order disappeared, no where to be found.

Born into a noble family on the planet Serenno, he was the heir to vast wealth and the noble title of Count. Dooku was taken by the Jedi Order as a child and apprenticed to Thame Cerulian. As a Jedi Knight, he took Qui-Gon Jinn as his Padawan and later trained Komari Vosa.

Dooku was a respected instructor in the Jedi Temple and one of the most renowned swordsmen in the galaxy, surpassed only by Grandmaster Yoda and equal to Master Mace Windu.

Dooku had been steadfast in his loyalty to the Order for the entirety of his long lived life. He was 70 years of age after all and had spent nearly seventy years as a Jedi, but a disastrous battle on Galidraan shook his faith in the Order and the Galactic Republic.

He fell under the influence of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine of Naboo, and left the Jedi Order. After learning that Palpatine was secretly the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, Dooku turned to the dark side and became a Dark Lord of the Sith himself, replacing Darth Maul as Sidious's second apprentice.

His new master bestowed upon him the Sith title of Darth Tyranus.

Only having recently left, Dooku had gone into consideration about his future and what he would do now he had joined Sidious. Reclaiming his birthright as Count of Serenno and his vast fortune, Dooku would conspire with Sidious to force the galaxy into a war that would bring the Sith to power.

"Even though I knew that the Senate was corrupt, the Council was fallible, and Jedi training methods far from perfect, I remained with the Jedi Order for twelve years after Galidraan." Dooku had once said.

"Why? Because I still believed that I could accomplish some good as a Jedi. I thought I could bring about some positive changes, right certain wrongs, and do better than maintain the status quo. In short, I was an utter fool."

People had noticed, within the Order that Dooku had been more withdrawn after the incident on Galidraan and the battle on Baltizaar. He refused to accept any more missions from the Jedi Council and became concerned about prophecies he felt were coming true about dark times unfolding across the galaxy.

While he discussed his concerns with many of the Order's most prominent Jedi Masters.

Dooku's growing disenchantment with the Jedi way was sensed by Senator Palpatine, who had been watching Dooku for some time and had plans that required someone with Dooku's reputation, skills, and financial resources.

Palpatine, even before the Battle of Naboo that had recently come to an end, had held several meetings with Dooku to feel out his opinions and cultivate him as an ally. Dooku's behavior and beliefs as a Jedi had previously been within the scope of Jedi orthodoxy.

However, Dooku flirted with the belief that the dark side of the Force could be called upon without personal corruption as his discontent with the Jedi Order grew.

Dooku had a close relationship with his own Master, Master Yoda along with his Padawan's and had heard of what Qui-Gon had suggested. The Sith were back. He had condemned the Republic senate publicly, but not to the extant that it was so widely known because his Padawan learner he had ages ago had lost a hand.

This upset him but at least Qui-Gon Jinn was alive.

Shortly thereafter, Dooku resigned from the Jedi Order, retired to Serenno, and claimed his family title of Count, left vacant by the death of his brother, while his nephew, Adan, and his sister in law went into self-exile on Alderaan.

He neither gave a reason for his decision to leave the Jedi in his public announcement nor did he provide one when summoned before the Jedi Council to explain his actions.

Why would he? He had seen the corruption and there was nothing stopping its spread. Nothing he could do as his words fell on deaf ears and no eyes to see as the Jedi was blinded.

Dooku's abrupt departure surprised and disturbed the Jedi Order. As a Jedi Master who had voluntarily resigned his commission, Dooku became part of the group later known as the 'Lost Twenty.'

In over two thousand years, only nineteen other Jedi Masters had walked away from the Order, and among those Dooku was considered the most bitter loss. The Jedi commissioned a bronzium bust of Dooku as it was created to join the other sculptures of the Lost Twenty in the Jedi Archives.

[]

Coruscant.

Supreme Chancellor! Palpatine had been extremely happy, gleeful in fact that he had finally gotten one step closer to achieving his goals.

'Manipulating those fools in the senate was easy. So very easy, and the Queen, the Queen was oh so easy to manipulate as well.' Sidious stews in his thoughts.

Padme had been directed carefully by Sidious so he could become the Supreme Chancellor, he had orchestrated the Naboo blockade but what he did not expect was for the Queen to be so bold. To be so against what he wanted, even if he has what he needed.

He had spent the last six months cultivating the queen's trust, knowing she would heed him better than Ars Veruna would have. It was all for this moment, when, in a crisis, she had no other choice than to rely on him.

Quite insidious just as his Sith name would imply.

He had also come across a new apprentice to make up for the one he had unfortunately lost. How very sad he was to lose someone so close to him.

'Not. Maul was a good apprentice for the time, but was lacking in what I wanted. What I needed and his usefulness came to an end.' His new apprentice, Darth Tyranus is quite the powerful Force-user. He basically has little to do and train him with, he has all the basics already.

What Sidious would need to do however is further corrupt his mind, as he remembers a conversation he had with the Count.

"I declined to be a member of the Council in order to devote myself to diplomacy, and look how that has turned out. The Republic is sliding deeper into chaos." Darth Tyranus had told him.

"You're one man against a galaxy full of scoundrels." Sidious had replied with honeyed words.

"One man should be able to make a difference if he is powerful enough." Then Tyranus said something that had peaked his interest, and Sidious had used to his full advantage to slowly turn Dooku away from the Jedi.

It is unfortunate that he could already see some signs that Dooku is not an appropriate student for him. In fact it was not himself that had discovered the potential in Darth Tyranus, it was his very own previous master, Darth Plagueis.

Sidious' master had once rambled on and on about his own failures due to the meddling of Darth Tyranus. Plagueis envisioned and had wanted to create intersystem dissent in the Expansion Region.

Though Plagueis had no plans to replace Palpatine as his apprentice, Palpatine's reckless assassination of Senator Vidar Kim had brought to Plagueis' attention the possibility of Palpatine getting himself killed or exposed. As such, he viewed Dooku as a potential apprentice should Palpatine succumb to such a fate.

This trait was something Sidious took on himself and further expanded upon it, by leaving behind his former apprentice Maul to the metaphorical wolves.

Both Plagueis and Sidious had also toyed with the idea of indirectly turning Dooku to the dark side and using him to create a schism within the Jedi Order. However, when Plagueis introduced him to Sidious, it was that relationship that would eventually become pivotal to the progression of the Sith's Grand Plan.

Shortly after the victory of the Naboo and Gungans from the Trade Federations invasion, Palpatine took Jedi Master Dooku to a diner in The Works to discuss personal business over a meal.

The two of them had been introduced by Ronhar Kim shortly after Palpatine had become a Senator, and had formed a friendship based on Dooku's admiration of Palpatine's policies.

To Dooku, it appeared as though Palpatine championed the underrepresented and underprivileged peoples of the Outer Rim, and in fact believed that Palpatine was largely responsible for the Outer Rim worlds receiving any representation in the Senate at all.

Having previously agreed with Palpatine that the Republic had to be torn down before the galaxy could be saved, and immediately recognizing the political capital that the Naboo Crisis had provided Palpatine, Dooku voiced his suspicion that Palpatine had been complicit in the invasion of his own homeworld.

Dooku expressed his approval of Palpatine taking full political advantage of the situation, regardless of how it had come to be. When the topic of Dooku's impending resignation from the Jedi Order was broached by Palpatine, Dooku told his friend that he was now more resolved to leave than ever, but not for the reasons that Palpatine suspected.

His interest had been raised however as he had come to discover a rather unique boy, Anakin Skywalker.

For, though he had taken little issue with the Jedi Council's decision to interfere in the Naboo Crisis, he informed Palpatine that a young boy, Anakin Skywalker, had been brought by Qui-Gon from Tatooine and was suspected of being the prophesied Jedi Chosen One.

Palpatine was completely shocked at this revelation; he had personally encountered the boy in Amidala's retinue, and had even given him a spare bedroom to sleep in during Amidala's stay at his senatorial suite. Yet despite Anakin's one-of-a-kind potential in the Force, Palpatine had sensed nothing.

While Palpatine's interest in Anakin was fairly academic for the time being, Plagueis nearly panicked when Palpatine informed him of Anakin's existence. Years before, Plagueis had attempted to coerce the Force via midi-chlorians to spontaneously create life, and he had ultimately failed to do so.

More than that, however, Plagueis believed that not only had he failed, but that his actions had caused the Force to react in such a way as to counter the Sith's tampering with it.

If the boy, who had been born at around the same time as Plagueis' failed experiment, was indeed the Chosen One, he could be the embodiment of the Force's opposition to the Sith. As such, while Palpatine did not particularly care that Anakin had come to the attention of the Jedi, Plagueis was adamantly opposed to the Jedi training him.

He immediately ordered Palpatine to instruct Maul that killing Qui-Gon Jinn was now of paramount importance, as Jinn was essentially acting as Anakin's sponsor within the Jedi Order. Without Jinn backing the boy, Plagueis hoped the Jedi Council would simply send him back to Tatooine.

Unfortunately this did not come to pass, and would not have succeeded originally as well.

Another thing to take of note was the death of his master. Sidious had been planning for a long time now already that Plagueis had to die, one way or another for him to truly take the reigns as the one and only true Sith Lord.

The night before the election, Damask made his first public appearance in years, attending the premiere of an experimental Mon Calamari piece at the Galaxies Opera House with Palpatine. After the performance and late dinner at the Manarai, the two Sith Lords retired to Damask's penthouse in the Kaldani Spires building to celebrate Palpatine's imminent triumph.

There, Palpatine plied Plagueis with wine while rehearsing his chancery acceptance speech slated to be delivered the following day before the Senate.

Plagueis soon fell into an alcohol-induced sleep, and Palpatine saw his chance. With his master's guard completely down, Palpatine blasted Plagueis' transpirator mask with Force lightning, shorting it out and waking him; being inebriated and half-asleep, however, the Muun could do nothing to stop his apprentice.

Palpatine took this opportunity to thoroughly deride, mock, and otherwise disparage Plagueis, telling him that for the whole of their relationship the apprentice had ever manipulated the Master, playing him like a pawn.

And throughout the relentless derision, Sidious sent forth additional blasts of lightning, causing the Muun immense pain as he slowly suffocated.

Adding insult to injury, Sidious lambasted Plagueis for his role in Palpatine's own warped conversion, hatefully accusing him of manipulating a 'confused boy' into murdering his family.

Strangely, but perhaps merely reflecting that early psycho-emotional conflict and trauma, Palpatine then expressed to the senior Sith his genuine gratitude for the teachings that Plagueis had, over the years of their association, passed on to him.

At the moment that the stricken Muun finally succumbed to death, Sidious having only just proclaimed himself the embodiment of the long-prophesied Sith'ari, felt a monumental shift in the Force, which he interpreted as the dark side anointing him as the tool it would use to take over the universe:

The exultant Sith Lord, however, then felt another tremor, or 'vague awareness' of a power 'greater than himself' that was 'shading his sense of triumph.' He suspected that it was perhaps Plagueis reaching out from death to vex him, or simply the aftershocks of his own rise.

Sidious reasoned that neither was the case, though he would not discover what exactly the foreboding feeling was until later.

'Although I had accomplished a lot, there is still a lot to go before I can truly succeed in all my endeavors.'