#instead of some convoluted murder plan or scheme. so. it was just unfortunate but it's no one's fault exactly cats hunt mice naturally

[mihai-florescu]

"Why did they make little john a murderer" she's a cat. Youre never gonna guess what cats do

[bellatrixobsessed1]

A Flame For A Cabbage (Part 14)

Sneaking into the boiling rock is much easier than expected. All it takes is a long and convoluted plot. Such is easy for Azula to come up with. Really, all she had to do was put on a false mustache and claim that her name is Jake, from State Farm, there to update them on company policy. Everyone knows that State Farm is the insurance company used by the Boiling Rock. But Azula does not like such simple thinking. Instead she had come up with a much grander scheme. She journeyed deep into and past a plethora of boobytraps until she came to a lost tribal society. A society that owns the last few dragons in the world. Her world anyhow. They were kind enough to allow her to borrow dragons red dragon, free of charge. Azula, however, felt a sense of kinship with the blue dragon.

The tribesmen had clicked their tongues, tsking. But they said that she could take the blue dragon, all she needed to do was part take in a ritual sacrifice. Being that, according to mother dearest, she is the spawn of Satan himself, this was no big deal for Azula. Unfortunately they were not expecting to do a ritual so soon so they did not have all of the necessary alter tools. So it was that Azula had to journey to find the special dragon atheme. She searched each of the four nations but came up empty handed. She knew that she needed to enter a different dimension.

Unfortunately, Bosco had been in charge of all interdimensional and alternate universe travel--since his death glitches in time and space have been far and few in between. So Azula made her way to the Foggy Swamp where she met with the witch doctor, who informed her that witch doctors and necromancers are not the same thing so he could not  resurrect Bosco. But the witch doctor was kind enough to point her in the direction of the Foggy Swamp necromancer.  Feeling optimistic, she had knocked on the woman’s door. The woman said that she would help resurrect Bosco, but she was all out of ritual candles.

So it was that Azula journeyed back to the Fire Nation to pick up several ritual candles. But they were all out of black wax. However, the candlemaker was willing to make her a special order if she could procure an item for him. Azula had nodded and asked him what item he seeks. The man said that he needed some protective paper. Easy enough, Azula had thought, forgetting that the virus had left toilet paper in short supply.

After combing through dozens of stalls and finding them baren of toilet paper, the merchant decided that she would have to break into the palace and steal some from the Fire Lord’s stach. She had tried to bribe the guards but he wanted a free cabbage. By all means that was easy enough but Azula never sells her cabbages for free. Instead she seeks out an unlikely alley.

It had taken a lot of searching, but finally she found the hideout of team avatar. Upon asking for help, Katara threw several items at her including a crowbar,  a ceiling fan,  a spare tire, a walrus, and an electric stove. “You killed Aang!” She accused. And it was a true accusation. And so Azula informed her, “if you help me break into the place to steal toilet paper, I can go to the candlemaker who will make me some ritual candles to take to the necromancer will summon Bosco for me. And while she is resurrecting Bosco, she can resurrect that arrow-headed cabbage killer, Aang.”

Wholly confused by the whole situation, Katara agreed to help Azula break into the palace. “Here, you can borrow our Toph. That ought to get you in.” She had lifted the blind earthbender up and handed her to Azula.

Azula thought that it would be smooth sailing from there, but she was wrong. The Earthbender said that she would only help if Azula could make her see. So Azula tried seeking out Christ. But Azula is an unholy creature, according to her mother, and so it did not work. What she did not know is that all she had to do was go to confession and then she would be forgiven. But Azula is afraid of confessing anything so she chuckled nervously and accepted that it was a hopeless cause. Toph had laughed and said, “man, I’m just messing with you, I’ll help.”

With that they broke into the Fire Nation palace and stole a few rolls of toilet paper as well as the Fire Lord’s toothbrush. Sie cried out in frustration because it was actually his toothbrush.Toilet paper in hand, Azula returned the Toph and fetched the Katara. Katara followed her to the candlestick maker.

“I promised you enough black candles for one ritual!” The candlestick maker had noted. But Azula is intelligent. She had planned for this, “which is why I brought you two rolls and the Fire Lord’s special bedazzled roll!”

The candlestick maker’s eyes had lit up and he procured the black candles. So the cabbage merchant and Katara journeyed back to the foggy swamp where the necromancer lit the candles and resurrected Bosco and Aang. Aang muttered an apology to Azula for destroying her cabbages so many times. Azula faintly thought that she should have apologized to him for murdering him, but apologies are dumb. And for people who are wrong. Azula is, in fact, always right 100% of the time. The merchant and Katara parted ways. Bosco, thankfully was a slave to the necromancer who summoned him was forced to obey her commands. So he had to help Azula with her interdimensional travel. Unfortunately, the author forgot what Azula was supposed to fetch so she had to scroll all the way back up. Azula used this time to file her taxes. With her taxes done and out of the way she journeyed through several dimensions similar to her own but not the same and found the super special, magically sinister, dragon atheme. Having accomplished this she sought out Mai and her Kenu Reeves knife, fought Bosco, and banished him back to the other side. She returned the Kenu Reeves knife, but only because it was along the way to the tribe.

She arrived at the tribe and set the dagger before the tribesfolk who gathered around it and said, “ooo, ah” and “wow that’s so purtty” and “ain’t she a beauty.”  They put the dagger aside and began the ritual which consisted of doing the soulja boy twice and the macarena once, followed by the cha cha slide. EVERYBODY CLAP YOUR HANDS!!! The closed the ritual by creating their own hybrid variation of all three dances. Satisfied, the blue dragon accompanied Azula to the Boiling Rock. Thank spirits that they have State Farm insurance, because they were about to need a good neighbor. For the dragon had punched through the window and placed Azula into one of the cells. “Watch my cabbages.” Azula requested of the dragon.

“I will if you bring me two cheez-its.”

With that promise in mind, Azula sets out on her real mission.

“Hello, Suki.” She greets.

Suki flips her off before apologizing and saying, “sorry I mistook you for someone else.”

“Who?” The merchant asks.

“That guy who put me here!”

Azula nods. But she has no more time for discussion. She needs to find Iroh now.

.oOo.

“I'm telling you it wasn't me!” Vows the guard.

“Save your breath! I know you were working together. You threw Chit Sang in the very cooler they used to escape. It was all part of your plan.” Says the warden.

“That didn’t even happen.” The guard points out. And he is right. But now the warden feels all awkward so he decides that he will keep pretending that he is right, despite knowing very well that he is wrong. Before he can begin reveling in his wrongness the door opens and someone enters. “There's someone to see you.” Informs a less troublesome guard.

“Who told you to interrupt me?” The warden snaps.

“I did.” remarks princess Sie.

“Princess Sie, brave and powerful, Princess Sie!  It is an honor to welcome you to the Fire Nation's most exemplary prison.” He backpedals. “I didn't realize you were coming.”

Sie enters the room and takes notice of the guard being interrogated. “Who is this?”

“He's a guard who was involved in a recent and feeble escape attempt.”

“What escape attempt!?” Asks the guard with more ferocity. With no real defense, he resorts to a harsh, “Quiet, you!”

Sie folds his arms. “You're wasting your time. Zuzu isn’t around to try to help Sokka break his father out of prison.”

The warden turns around with a look of shock and befuddlement. He does not realize what has transpired, dear reader. You see, in Ozai choosing not to acknowledge the eclipse, the eclipse had never happened. It had been skipped. But this has caused a horrific rift in time. It was in this chapter that Zuko was supposed to break free, but with the opportunity lost, the void had sucked him in and claimed his existence. Perhaps one day he will emerge again.

Presently, the warden looks at Sie. “How do you know?”

“Because I'm a people person.” This is not why. It is actually because he saw the void claim Zuko and he has seen enough bizzare happenings to know how it works. But, ‘I’m a people person’ sounded so much cooler.

.oOo.

Azula sits in her cell feeling like a complete and utter moron, but she knows that the absurd deeds that she is doing serve a greater purpose and she has never been one to shy away from a task. So,  without thinking too much, she makes another hideous and obnoxious screech. She has been going for pterodactyl but she is not practiced enough to manage that yet. So she is only able to manage a brontosaurus screech.

It serves its purpose, for Iroh responds back. They have been communicating like so for the better part of the day. By the next morning each and every guard is equipped with a pair of ear plugs (the higher ranking guards get air pods). It is to her advantage for they, having their air pods in, don’t hear her slinking out of her cell.

She takes a moment to think of her cabbages because we have gone several paragraphs without mentioning them once. After listing off the anatomy of a cabbage in her head, Azula proceeds down the hall and finds Iroh’s cell. She gives a faint brontosaurus call to let him know that it is her before opening the cell.

“Here, take this.” Azula hands him a top hat and a wizard cloak. Azula, though off screen, has managed to acquire a guard uniform. She leads Iroh out of his cell. No one questions it because she looks like a guard. But really, she is a cabbage merchant. The top hat and the wizard cloak aren’t strictly necessary. They just make Iroh feel cool™. They please him. Suddenly the plague begins to retract.

The two confidently march out of the prison, Azula wearing gucci shades and Iroh wearing pimp shudder shades. Iroh had found himself a gun holster and is now packing! This would have worked out well and it would have looked so cool™, had the blue dragon not taken off. Azula had not been able to get her hands on any cheez-its.

Azula still isn’t worried. She looks at her new business partner. He gives a cool™ wink and pulls out his gun. He doesn’t have a chance to fire it when Hakoda shouts,  “wait! Who's that?” You see, Hakoda was beginning to feel left out, this was supposed to be his time to shine.

“That's a problem. It's my sister and her friend.” Says Zuko as he emerges from the void. But he is different. Changed. His abs have abs and his eyes have a haunted look (and somehow they also have abs). Momo has abs too (but we already knew that). Iroh got abs in prison. Azula has abs. Literally everyone has abs right now. Everyone has abs except Haru who only has a mustache. Nothing else. Just a mustache.

Sie looks up at the gondola that Iroh and Azula are riding as they make their escape. Unfortunately the bit about abs had not been long enough for them to escape unnoticed. Sie decides that this is it. This will be the moment that he gets rid of that pesky merchant and her meddling cabbages.

.oOo.

Offering a guard no word of warning, Sie snatches a set of handcuffs from his belt. But it doesn’t matter because that guard is only a background character and everyone knows that background characters don’t have feelings. TyLee, happy for the opportunity to pretend like she is at the circus again, dashes up the cable.  Sie blasts himself with a wave of green fire onto the gondola.

Azula is there. Iroh and Zuko are there (but they are not talking; everytime Zuko tries to speak Iroh ‘hmmps’ and turns his back). Hakoda is there. And for some reason, so is Suki. No one knows how Suki managed to get up there. She hadn’t even been a part of the breakout. No less she declares how excited she is for a rematch against TyLee.

“Me too!” Says Zuko. He looks over at Sie, who he has actually been getting along with rather well lately. He realizes that it is actually Azula who needs to fight the princess Sie. His fight is with Iroh. He knows how it will end. It will end with him in tears. And then Iroh crying for making him cry. And then he crying harder for making Iroh cry. And then Ursa crying for leaving her family behind and losing so much free entertainment.

Sie strikes first, kicking an arc of fire at Azula. The cabbage merchant dodges the attack. She wishes that she had her cabbages to throw. A hole in the sky opens up and her cabbage stall drops onto the gondola. Like a kid on a seesaw at the park, Suki is catapulted back to Kyoshi island. She is not happy that she didn’t get her rematch. But she is glad to be home, she had left the stove on.

Sie snarls, why did things always come so easily to that vile merchant. Nothing ever comes easily to him. He is just regular old princess Sie and his father expects so much from him. No less, he keeps blasting green fire at her. All the while TyLee is jabbing and swiping at the air, not realizing that her opponent is no longer there.

“I don’t need you Zuko, I have cool™ sunglasses now.” Iroh remarks.

“But I need you, uncle.” Zuko replies. “I made a mistake.” Sie was being supportive and everything, but Ozai! Ozai is a beat. A toilet paper shrouded absolute fiend. “I care about you, uncle.”

Iroh readjust his shades, “Did I ever tell you the story of the old man and his pet rabaroo?”

Zuko shakes his head and prepares himself for a long story with a confusing metaphors. Instead, Iroh relays the tale of the two lovers but with a rabaroo and an old man instead.

Hakoda doesn’t ‘do anything because he has stage fright and the guards have taken to watching the scene unfold with bowls of popcorn.

Sie does not have stage right, he kicks more fire at Azula who begins her magical girl transformation. “I don’t think so!” Sie declares before doing the unthinkable. He takes one of her own cabbages and throws it at her, knocking her to the floor, which is actually the roof because they are on the gondola, not in it. So the floor and the roof are technically the same thing???? Sie does not have time to contemplate the circumstances under which a roof can become a floor, for he finally has the upperhand.

“There's the warden! I see him!” One of the guards points out through a mouthful of popcorn. Sie shudders, he knows that something is going to go astray. Nothing ever just comes easily for him.

“Cut the line!” The wardan hollars. Unlike Suki, he is in the gondola for a reason. He likes to read sappy romance novels and shonen manga on his breaks. He is fine with everyone knowing that he likes romance novels, but no one can know that he is a weeb so he hides in a random gondola on his lunch breaks.

“He wants us to cut the line” Says the guard.

“But if we cut the line, there's no way he'll survive!” Declares the guard next to him. The first guard does not know why this one is shouting as they are sitting right next to each other.

“Shhhh!” hisses a third guard. “I’m trying to hear the movie!”

The first guard jams the gondola system with the nearest object he could find, which, surprisingly, is a mechanism specifically for emergency braking. The abrupt halt causes the merchant’s stall to teeter precariously. Sie smirks but the stall does not fall.

“WOOOO HOOO!” Aang shouts as he sails by on his glider. “I’M ALIVE AGAIN! WHEEEE!” The gust of wind that follows him, pushes the stall closer the the edge. Azula is twitching anxiously and Sie is watching smugly.

He swoops down a second time, this time Momo follows. Momo, who is still unapologetically jacked, only nudges the stall and it finally falls over the edge.

Azula’s eyes seem to narrow, but she doesn’t even have time to shout, “my cabbages!! Before TyLee exclaims, “they’re about to cut the line!”

Sie does not have time to relish in the cabbage merchant’s visible distress. “Then it's time to leave.” For once things go according to plan and her blasts himself onto a gondola that just so happens to be approaching. “Goodbye, merchant.”

“They're cutting the line! The gondola's about to go!” Zuko notes.

“Come on nephew, we will cry at each other later.” Iroh gives a particularly loud pterodactyl screech. The sky splits and a flock of the prehistoric marvels swoop down. Iroh extends a hand and helps Zuko onto one of them.

“What are you doing?” A guard shouts, drawing attention to Mai, who throws a fidget spinner in Sie’s direction.

“Testing out my new weapons.” She shrugs. She is confident that figit spinners are more effective than knives because in PG-13 shows blood is not allowed to be shown and she is very tired of having always missing her targets or simply pinning them to walls by their clothes. “I think that this one is going to work.”

Azula, not one to back down over a simple mild inconvenience, realizes that not all is lost. Her new business partner might have abandoned her, but her cabbage stall is still clinging to the gondola. She must stop them from cutting the line! “What is she doing?” Sie asks upon noticing Azula pickpocketing Mai for her fidget spinner.

Ty Lee shrugs and gives a mumbled “I dunno.”

Azula flicks the fidget spinner and it lands a few hits and one critical strike before returning to her. The guards have fallen. She watches the gondola and her cabbages drift off to safety. “My cabbages.” She sighs with relief.

“Leave us alone.” Most of the guards leave at Sie’s command. “I never expected this from you.” She looks to Mai and TyLee as though it was they who had assisted the gondala’s escape.”The thing I don't understand is why. Why would you do it? You know the consequences.”

Mai shrugs and says, “I didn’t know she could do that much damage with a fidget spinner.”

Sie turns to Azula. “And you! You know exactly what happens to people who interfere with my plans.” He pauses for a moment to recall his objective. For a moment, he doesn’t think that he has one. But then he remembers that his father had wanted him to find Zuko for betraying his nation again. He was also sent there to make sure that no prisoners escaped. Ozai bet one of his war generals 300 gold pieces and a roll of toilet paper that no one would ever escape the Boiling Rock. But now Hakoda, Suki, Iroh, and Zuko have escaped. “You know how this is going to end.”

“I guess you just don't know people as well as you think you do.” Azula says. She shudders to herself. Something is not right about this. No, she does not like this at all. She has a deep aversion to what she is about to say and she can’t place why. She ignores the unsettling feeling growing within her.  “You miscalculated. I love cabbages more than I fear you!”

Sie’s face twists into a snarl and pulls out a calculator, it reads ‘12’. Just ‘12’.  “No, you miscalculated!” He points furiously at the calculator. “You should have feared me more!”

Azula is in fact afraid. But not of the princess. She is afraid of the princess’ words. Not because they have been directed at her, but because of that something. That strange something, that she cannot place. She feels like she should be offended. She is suddenly overcome by a sadness. A feeling as though she has lost something dear and important. But her cabbages are safely sitting on the other rim of the volcano. So what then? What has she lost? Why did his words make her feel so hollow? Why did it leave her feeling so haunted to inform him that he has miscalculated.

Sie begins to generate lighting. Azula clutches the fidget spinner. Mai too holds a fidget spinner. But before Sie can send off his lightning bolt, TyLee jabs him several times and he falls. Azula can’t help but feel a hint of shock; she has no connection to TyLee whatsoever.

“Sorry, my hand slipped!” She explains apologetically, clearing up any confusion.

Sie is well aware that TyLee sometimes has muscle spasms. They mostly happen when she stands or sits still for too long. But in his disgust and outrage, he forgets this. Laying with his cheek pressed firmly against the floor, Sie declares, “you're both fools!”

Azula looks between Mai and TyLee. She isn’t sure which one of them isn’t a fool.

“What shall we do with them, princess?” Asks one of the remaining guards.

“Put them somewhere I'll never have to see their faces again, and let them rot!” Sie says. He realizes that he is being very harsh and that this is probably a misunderstanding. But he has had a taste of power and power changes people. He is a new man now. He decides that he is no longer going to be timid and shy. He is going to be a badass like Iroh.

The guards cuff Mai and TyLee and whisk them away before he can say that he was referring to Azula and TyLee, not Mai and TyLee. He does not have a problem with Mai, as far as he is concerned, she is a victim of the evil merchant too.

The merchant in question had pickpocketed two cheez-its and is smirking at him as a blue dragon flies her to safety. This is the worst day of Sie’s life.

.oOo.

Feeling a sense of accomplishment, Azula sets up her cabbage stall next to the one she had left in the Fire Nation capital. She takes down her ‘back in 15’ sign. And what an eventful fifteen minutes those had been!

“Oh good, I’ve been waiting for you for ten…”

Azula does not let the female soldier finish, for she knows that the woman is only going to set her stalls on fire again. She hastily packs up and hustles to find the tea man.

.oOo.

“Hello?” The warden says into the phone.

“Hello, warden!” Greets the man on the other end.

“Is this Jake from State Farm?”

“It is!” The many replies.

“Wonderful, I’m calling about a busted window and a broken gondola system…”

[wazafam]

Star Wars: The High Republic – Light of the Jedi is the novel that formally kicks off the new and hugely ambitious High Republic multimedia storytelling initiative, but it just may be doing something else sneakily in the background: setting up Darth Plagueis, the Dark Lord of the Sith who would, one day, go on to teach – and be murdered by – Darth Sidious, the main villain of the Skywalker Saga.

The High Republic epoch starts some 200 years before all of the current (and most of the upcoming) Star Wars films and television series, and it depicts the antithesis of those stories: a galaxy at peace, an Old Republic that is idealistic and prosperous, and a Jedi Order that mostly lives out in the field, being a part of the galactic community that it has sworn to guide and defend. Unfortunately, audiences have already been made well aware that this golden period is doomed to end in the long slide toward deterioration and collapse, as the Galactic Senate becomes corrupt and the Jedi become insular, priming for the return of their mortal enemies, the Sith.

Related: Disney’s Three New Star Wars Eras Explained

But beyond one or two tantalizing clues or innuendos, the ancient Jedi enemies are nowhere to be seen in the pages of Charles Soule’s Light of the Jedi. Instead, readers are introduced to a brand-new High Republic villain, Marchion Ro, a man with a long and mysterious past and a seeming blood vendetta against the Jedi, who have apparently afflicted his family before. Being the symbolic leader of the Nihil, a band of savage space pirates and marauders that hitherto have been too small to show up on the Republic’s radar, Marchion concludes that it’s only a matter of time before Supreme Chancellor Lina Soh and the Jedi Council start to close in on him, stripping him – and the rest of his “people” – of their way of life.

Ro, then, begins a vast and hugely complicated plot that will transform his Nihil, preparing them for the war that is to come, and awaken his true nature, allowing him to shed the placid, spoiled life of a figurehead and transform into the cunning, calculating, bloodthirsty strategist that he always secretly was. Even at this early juncture of his overarching plan – remember that The High Republic is designed to run for some five or six years – one can’t help but compare the convoluted, multifaceted scheme with that of Lord Sidious’s throughout all nine films of the Skywalker Saga. All of which begs the question: is Marchion Ro secretly Darth Plagueis, much like how Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine concealed the true identity of Darth Sidious? There are several hints buried in the text that would seem to point in this direction.

Decades before the events of Star Wars: The High Republic – Light of the Jedi, Mari San Tekka uses her strange, probably-Force-fueled power to locate special routes through hyperspace to help her family come to fame and prominence, establishing them as the dominant hyperspace prospectors of the galaxy – and, thereby, providing a familial lineage to their distant relative, Lor San Tekka, the old explorer who helps locate Jedi Master Luke Skywalker during the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. At some point, an individual by the name of Asgar Ro takes Mari as his own, using her pathways that are otherwise computationally impossible to help transform a low-level group of Outer Rim pirates into a sizable, menacing force – and rendering himself as their leader.

That band of marauders is called the Nihil, and Asgar becomes their Eye, but it is only a symbolic position as opposed to a substantive one. Eventually, this comes to an end with a blade in the back – one of the actual, on-the-ground commanders wishes to eliminate him in a power grab. Marchion Ro, Asgar’s son, instead assumes his father’s mantle and role and is, at first, content to merely toe the line, collecting his share of the plunder and maintaining the status quo. This is until the Republic's Chancellor Soh begins the effort to consolidate the Republic’s presence in the Rim in the form of the Starlight Beacon space station. Seeing the writing on the wall, Marchion decides it’s time to remake the ragtag group into an actual fighting force, with himself firmly positioned as their grand general.

Related: Star Wars Reveals Two Jedi Council Members Were Much Older Than You Thought

The impossibly complex plan starts with Mari San Tekka, who is well over a century old now and who is kept alive in a type of medical cocoon. Still believing she's prospecting – and making money – for her family, Ro has her deliberately chart a “Path” for one of the Nihil vessels that lands it directly in the way of the ship, a massive cargo freighter called the Legacy Run (itself a hundred years of age) that is transporting supplies and settlers to a new life out on the wild frontiers of space. The Run is torn to pieces after it attempts to avoid the collision, and its parts – some of which still contain living, breathing passengers – emerge from hyperspace all across the region, shredding through space stations and ships and slamming into worlds and moons. Billions of sentients die.

In the chaos that ensues, Marchion provides his people with projections of exactly when and where the remaining remnants of the Legacy Run will drop into realspace, with instructions to exploit the information for gain (blackmailing one planetary governor, for instance). In the process, the Nihil intrinsically become linked with the Great Hyperspace Disaster, and the Republic predictably marshals a defense fleet to eliminate the threat – which, in turn, helps to unite the disorganized ravagers in common cause. Ro is only too happy to step up to meet the sudden needs of the moment – much like Supreme Chancellor Palpatine does in the unexpected start of the Clone Wars centuries later – unveiling a new usage for their unique hyperspace Paths as he does so: combat, which throws the traditional war playbook out the window and demonstrates the true potential of a unified, cohesive Nihil.

While Disney and Lucasfilm may have shown a propensity for hewing to certain elements or characters that were originally established in Star Wars Legends stories, that original, now-defunct version of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, they have also demonstrated a willingness for going their own way, “overturning” classic storylines. Odds are good that Darth Plagueis may very well go the way of the latter – meaning that his backstory, and even his previously established species of Muun, could be wiped clean (it’s never established what type of alien Marchion Ro is in Light of the Jedi, but it’s very obviously not that). This, in turn, could mean that Lord Plagueis will get some sort of grand introduction somewhere in The High Republic – and Lucasfilm and the architects of the epic multimedia initiative could even attempt to position him upfront, right before the eyes of audiences right from day one.

This isn’t as big a leap as it may at first sound. With the upcoming Disney+ series Star Wars: The Acolyte chronicling the rise of the dark side of the Force during the nadir of the High Republic, it has the golden opportunity to show how the Dark Lords of the Sith maneuvered themselves into the position to enact their revenge, slaughter the Jedi Order, and reinstate their interstellar empire. By having the centuries-spanning High Republic transition from a time of peace and prosperity to the secret rise of Plagueis and his newly appointed apprentice, Darth Sidious, it would strongly parallel the narrative structure that George Lucas himself enacted with the prequel trilogy.

Related: Star Wars Reveals How Palpatine Cut the Jedi off from the Force

Another parallel – or “rhyming,” as Lucas liked to put it – would be Marchion Ro hiding his Sith identity for the majority of the story, only revealing it at just the right, climactic moment, in the throes of some type of victory or another, just as his student would do over the course of Episodes I through III. And just what that victory could be is already established in the very last scene of Light of the Jedi: a Force vision that’s set in a sickly purple light and that shows “horribly mutilated” Jedi fighting battles they can’t win and fleeing in open terror from “awful things that lived in the dark.” The prophecy ends with an image of “evil, horror, sweeping across the galaxy like the tide” – which could very well be another rhyme with the ravages of the Clone Wars and the establishment of the Galactic Empire during the Skywalker Saga.

And then there’s a mysterious device that Ro brandishes, a rod which has also long been part of his family and whose description sounds very much like some sort of ancient Sith relic (lest that sound too far-fetched, Light of the Jedi introduces another Jedi who wields a recovered kyber crystal that was plucked from an old Sith lightspear and purged of its red-hued misery and pain). This weapon is covered in bizarre symbols – such as screaming faces – and emits a purple glow, which only seems to seal the Sith deal.

There are many instances in the novel where it could seem like Ro might have a secret Sith identity. Whether or not Marchion Ro turns out to be Darth Plagueis in disguise, fans of The High Republic have plenty of tantalizing clues to keep them guessing, and a thrilling storyline even without that connection to the Star Wars trilogies.

Next: Star Wars: New Canon Keeps Making Yoda Even More of a Failure

Is Star Wars: High Republic Villain Marchion Ro Actually Darth Plagueis? from https://ift.tt/3aoRyFC