Informationen zum Autor James Luceno Klappentext At long last, the Star Wars story of the mysterious Sith Lord Darth Plagueis and his apprentice, Darth Sidious, is revealed! NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The best Star Wars publication to date . . . [James] Luceno takes Darth Plagueis down the dark path and never looks back."-Newsday Darth Plagueis: Like all Sith Lords before him, he craves absolute power. But like no Sith Lord ever, he possesses the ultimate power-over life and death. Darth Sidious: In secret he masters the power of the dark side, while publicly climbing to the highest government office. One desires to rule supreme; the other dreams of living forever. Together, they will destroy the Jedi and rule the galaxy. Unless merciless Sith tradition becomes their undoing. . . . "Luceno draws on his storytelling skill and prodigious knowledge of the [Star Wars] world . . . to craft a complex tale of ambition and desire."-Library Journal Leseprobe PART ONE Enlistment 67­65 Years Before the Battle of Yavin 1: THE UNDERWORLD Forty-­seven standard years before the harrowing reign of Emperor Palpatine, Bal'demnic was nothing more than an embryonic world in the Outer Rim's Auril sector, populated by reptilian sentients who expressed as little tolerance for outsiders as they did for one another. Decades later the planet would have a part to play in galactic events, its own wink of historical notoriety, but in those formative years that presaged the Republic's ineluctable slide into decadence and turmoil, Bal'demnic was of interest only to xenobiologists and cartographers. It might even have escaped the notice of Darth Plagueis, for whom remote worlds held a special allure, had his Master, Tenebrous, not discovered something special about the planet. Darth Bane would appreciate our efforts, the Sith Master was telling his apprentice as they stood side by side in the crystalline cave that had drawn them across the stars. A Bith, Tenebrous was as tall as Plagueis and nearly as cadaverously thin. To human eyes, his bilious complexion might have made him appear as haggard as the pallid Muun, but in fact both beings were in robust health. Though they conversed in Basic, each was fluent in the other's native language. Darth Bane's early years, Plagueis said through his transpirator mask. Carrying on the ancestral business, as it were. Behind the faceplate of his own mask, Tenebrous's puckered lips twitched in disapproval. The breathing device looked absurdly small on his outsized cleft head, and the convexity of the mask made the flat disks of his lidless eyes look like close-­set holes in his pinched face. Bane's seminal years, he corrected. Plagueis weathered the gentle rebuke. He had been apprenticed to Tenebrous for as many years as the average human might live, and still Tenebrous never failed to find fault when he could. What more appropriate way for us to close the circle than by mimicking the Sith'ari's seminal efforts, Tenebrous continued. We weave ourselves into the warp and weft of the tapestry he created. Plagueis kept his thoughts to himself. The aptly named Darth Bane, who had redefined the Sith by limiting their number and operating from concealment, had mined cortosis as a youth on Apatros long before embracing the tenets of the dark side. In the thousand years since his death, Bane had become deified; the powers attributed to him, legendary. And indeed what more appropriate place for his disciples to complete the circle, Plagueis told himself, than in profound obscurity, deep within an escarpment that walled an azure expanse of Bal'demnic's Northern Sea. The two Sith were outfitte...

Autorentext

James Luceno

Klappentext

At long last, the Star Wars story of the mysterious Sith Lord Darth Plagueis and his apprentice, Darth Sidious, is revealed! NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The best Star Wars publication to date . . . [James] Luceno takes Darth Plagueis down the dark path and never looks back."-Newsday Darth Plagueis: Like all Sith Lords before him, he craves absolute power. But like no Sith Lord ever, he possesses the ultimate power-over life and death. Darth Sidious: In secret he masters the power of the dark side, while publicly climbing to the highest government office. One desires to rule supreme; the other dreams of living forever. Together, they will destroy the Jedi and rule the galaxy. Unless merciless Sith tradition becomes their undoing. . . . "Luceno draws on his storytelling skill and prodigious knowledge of the [Star Wars] world . . . to craft a complex tale of ambition and desire."-Library Journal

Zusammenfassung

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This essential Star Wars Legends novel chronicles the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, and the origins of the saga’s most enduring evil—the malevolent Sith master Palpatine.

**“The best Star Wars publication to date . . . [James] Luceno takes Darth Plagueis down the dark path and never looks back.”—Newsday**
 
Darth Plagueis: one of the most brilliant Sith Lords who ever lived. Possessing power is all he desires; losing it is the only thing he fears. As an apprentice, he embraces the ruthless ways of the Sith. When the time is right, he destroys his Master—and vows never to suffer the same fate. For like no other disciple of the dark side, Darth Plagueis learns to command the ultimate power . . . over life and death.

Darth Sidious: Plagueis’s chosen apprentice. Under the guidance of his Master, he secretly studies the ways of the Sith while publicly rising to power in the galactic government, first as Senator, then as Chancellor, and eventually as Emperor.

Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious, Master and acolyte, target the galaxy for domination—and the Jedi Order for annihilation. But can they defy the merciless Sith tradition? Or will the desire of one to rule supreme, and the dream of the other to live forever, sow the seeds of their destruction?

“Luceno draws on his storytelling skill and prodigious knowledge of the [Star Wars] world . . . to craft a complex tale of ambition and desire.”—Library Journal

Leseprobe
**PART ONE

Enlistment

67–­65 Years Before the Battle of Yavin**

1: THE UNDERWORLD

Forty-­seven standard years before the harrowing reign of Emperor Palpatine, Bal’demnic was nothing more than an embryonic world in the Outer Rim’s Auril sector, populated by reptilian sentients who expressed as little tolerance for outsiders as they did for one another. Decades later the planet would have a part to play in galactic events, its own wink of historical notoriety, but in those formative years that presaged the Republic’s ineluctable slide into decadence and turmoil, Bal’demnic was of interest only to xenobiologists and cartographers. It might even have escaped the notice of Darth Plagueis, for whom remote worlds held a special allure, had his Master, Tenebrous, not discovered something special about the planet.

“Darth Bane would appreciate our efforts,” the Sith Master was telling his apprentice as they stood side by side in the crystalline cave that had drawn them across the stars.

A Bith, Tenebrous was as tall as Plagueis and nearly as cadaverously thin. To human eyes, his bilious complexion might have made him appear as haggard as the pallid Muun, but in fact both beings were in robust health. Though they conversed in Basic, each was fluent in the other’s native language.

“Darth Bane’s early years,” Plagueis said through his transpirator mask. “Carrying on the ancestral business, as it were.”

Behind the faceplate of his own mask, Tenebrous’s puckered lips twitched in disapproval. The breathing device looked absurdly small on his outsized cleft head, and the convexity o…