Star Wars - Darth Plagueis

hovering, some advancing on two legs, others on treads, and all firing blasters.
    Twenty years had added a slight stoop to the Muun’s posture and veins that stood out under his thinning white skin. He wore a dark green utility suit that hugged his delicate frame, a green cloak that fell from his bony shoulders to the fort’s stone floor, and a headpiece that hewed to his large cranium. A triangular breath mask covered his ruined, prognathus lower jaw, his mouth, part of his long neck, and what remained of the craggy nose he’d had before the surprise attack in the Fobosi. A device of his own invention, the alloy mask featured two vertical slits and a pair of thin, stiff conduits that linked it to a transpirator affixed to his upper chest, beneath an armored torso harness. He had learned to ingest and imbibe through feeding tubes, and through his nose.
    Seen through the Force, he was a nuclear oval of mottled light, a rotating orb of terrifying energy. If the Maladian attack had weakened him physically, it had also helped to shape his etheric body into a vessel sufficiently strong to contain the full power of the dark side. Determined never again to be caught off guard, he had trained himself to go without sleep, and had devoted two standard decades to day-and-nightexperimentation with midi-chlorian manipulation and attempts to wrest a few last secrets from the Force, so that he—and presumably his human apprentice—might live forever. His inward turn had enabled him to master the equally powerful energies of order and disorder, creation and entropy, life and death.
    “You have made him fearsome,” Plagueis remarked without turning from the recording, as the athletic Zabrak cleaved a Colicoid Eradicator droid down the middle and whirled to cut two others in half. The yellow-eyed humanoid’s hairless head bore a crown of small horns and geometrical patterns of black and red markings.
    “Fearless, as well,” Sidious said.
    “Still, they are only droids.”
    “He’s even more formidable against living beings.”
    Plagueis looked over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed in question. “You’ve fought him in a serious way?” Reconstructed vocal chords and trachea imparted a metallic quality to his voice, as if he were speaking through an enunciator.
    “I stranded him on Hypori for a month without food and with only a horde of assassin droids for company. Then I returned to goad and challenge him. All things considered, he fought well, even after I deprived him of his lightsaber. He wanted to kill me, but was prepared to die at my hand.”
    Plagueis turned fully to face him. “Rather than punish him for disobedience, you praised his resolve.”
    “He was already humbled. I chose to leave his honor intact. I proclaimed him my myrmidon; the embodiment of the violent half of our partnership.”
    “Partnership?” Plagueis repeated harshly.
    “His and mine; not ours.”
    “Regardless, you allowed him to believe that he is more skilled than he actually is.”
    “Did you not do the same for me?”
    Plagueis’s eyes reflected disappointment. “Never, Sidious. I have always been truthful with you.”
    Sidious bowed his head in acknowledgment. “I am not the teacher you are.”
    Plagueis spent a long moment observing the holorecording. The Zabrak’s fists and legs were as lethal as his lightsaber, and his speed was astounding. “Who applied the markings?”
    “The mother did—in keeping with rituals enacted shortly after birth. An initiation, during which a Dathomirian Zabrak infant is submerged in an oily bath, energized with ichor conjured by the Nightsisters’ use of magicks.”
    “A peculiar decision, given her hope to send the child into hiding.”
    “The Nightsisters rarely leave Dathomir, but Nightbrothers are sometimes sold into servitude. I believe the mother wished him to be aware of his heritage, wherever he ended up.”
    On seeing the Zabrak’s lightsaber produce two blades, Plagueis drew in his breath. “A saber-staff! The weapon of Exar Kun! Did he construct that?”
    “The prototype was two lightsabers he had welded pommel-to-pommel in imitation of the Iridonian zhaboka. I furnished the knowledge that allowed him to improve on the original design and construct the one he is using.”
    Plagueis watched as droid after droid was impaled on the opposing crimson blades. “It strikes me as unnecessary, but I won’t deny his mastery of the Jar’Kai technique.” Again, he turned to Sidious.