Star Wars - Darth Plagueis

Masters Dooku and Sifo-Dyas, and a tall, powerfully built Jedi Knight named Qui-Gon Jinn, who remained standing while the rest took their designated seats at the circular table. The three men carried themselves with palpable self-assurance, and affected beards of different styles—Dooku’s terminated in a stylish point; Sifo-Dyas’s followed his strong jawline; Qui-Gon’s was long and thick.
    Plagueis, who rarely missed an opportunity to interact with Jedi, had planned to leave the business on Serenno to Larsh Hill and the others—until learning that Dooku would be present.
    Fifty or so standard years old, Dooku was Serenno’s native son, hailing from a noble lineage analogous to the Naboo Palpatines. Had he not been born strong in the Force, he would have been a Count, in the same way that Palpatine would have been a royal. But on the few occasionsPlagueis had encountered Dooku, he had sensed something in him that warranted further investigation. Dooku was said to be one of the Order’s finest lightsaber masters, and he had earned a reputation as a skilled diplomat, as well; but his passion and restlessness were what had captured Plagueis’s attention. For all his decades in the Order, he seemed to have kept one foot anchored in the mundane. In place of the homespun brown robes worn by most Jedi—like the hale Qui-Gon Jinn—Dooku favored cloaks and robes more appropriate to a night at the opera on Coruscant. In addition, he was a candid critic of Supreme Chancellor Darus and the corrupt practices of the Senate.
    Most important, perhaps, Dooku was linked to the Sith’s Grand Plan in ways that went beyond circumstantial. Some twenty years earlier, in a scheme engineered by Tenebrous to replace human Senator Blix Annon with a young upstart named Eero Iridian, Dooku and his then-Padawan, Qui-Gon Jinn, were caught up in the events and had managed to send some of the principal players to prison. Dooku had also unwittingly sabotaged several of Tenebrous’s plans to foster intersystem dissent in the Expansion Region.
    In the aftermath of the near-disastrous assassination of Vidar Kim, Plagueis’s interest in Dooku had assumed a new urgency. He felt certain that Sidious would evolve into a commanding Sith, but just now the young Naboo was drunk with power and prone to make mistakes. When the dark recognized one as a true ally, a novice could lose his or her way, as had almost happened to Plagueis following the murder of Kerred Santhe. Bane-adoring Sith Masters like Tenebrous might have used the meeting on Serenno as a means of threatening their apprentices with replacement. Plagueis, however, had no such intention, which was why he hadn’t mentioned to Sidious that Jedi would be attending the meeting. Even so, he found himself wondering whether a dissatisfied Jedi like Dooku could be insurance against a reversal of fortune—some unexpected event that would rob him of Sidious—or perhaps turned to the dark without formal enlistment, and manipulated into instigating a schism in the Order.
    As he had told Sidious, even a trained Jedi could succumb to the lure of the dark side on his or her own. One hundred thirty years earlier, on a former Sith world in the Cularin system, a Padawan named Kibh Jeen had been so strongly affected by the lingering power in a fortresson Almas that he submitted himself to the dark side and initiated a systemwide conflict. Perhaps, under Plagueis’s influence, Master Dooku could be inspired to do something similar. The Jedi would bear closer observation.
    One of Celanon’s legal advocates was the first to speak when everyone had been seated.
    “Celanon protests the presence of Jedi Master Dooku at this meeting, since it has come to our attention that he is Serennian by birth.”
    Serenno’s arrogant Count Vemec started to respond when Dooku cut him off, addressing himself to the litigator. “If you had investigated further, you would also know that I renounced all ties to my family and Serenno on being accepted into the Jedi Order.” He turned his penetrating gaze on Celanon’s ambassador. “I assure you that I will be as impartial as any one of you.”
    Celanon’s ambassador—a large, bumptious human—cleared his throat in a meaningful way. “Jedi Master Dooku’s reputation for even-handedness precedes him. We trust that he will be as fair in this matter as he is known to have been elsewhere.”
    “With that issue behind us,” Vemec said, “I call for an official