"Somehow....Palpatine Returned." (Player Plot)

[survivalthroughhate]

Who: survivalthroughhate and anyone who wants to join in!
What: Palpatine ends up in Trench and no one wants that, so it's time to give him the beatdown!
When: Throughout the month
Where: All over Trench.

Content Warnings: Physical child abuse mentions, mental manipulation mentions, gaslighting, exorcism, food deprivation mentions, weed mentions, will add as necessary.



Maul's followers had come to him with the worst news possible. They'd been tracking the signs and had come to one conclusion: Palpatine was back to full strength and here in Trench. The Sith Lord was now possessing people, monsters, animals, whatever that could hold his form for any length of time before it was destroyed or rotted away from the pure evil of his spirit being contained within the body.

Maul knew he had to do something. He'd been responsible for unleashing this menace and so it was his responsibility to stop it. But he was scared too. The fear of his (former, he had to remember that part) master was deeply entrenched into his mind, the simple fear of a child scared of their abusive father and wanting to avoid punishment by doing anything possible mixed in with the more complicated fear of an adult who had been broken down through brainwashing and physical abuse until he'd been turned into a weapon rather than a person. Even now, letting go of his anger and pain hadn't diminished the fear he had of Sidious.

He'd hide for a period of time after warning the other Sleepers, too afraid to go out and face his master for good. It was all well and good to let them try to deal with this. None of them had any personal connection to Sidious, so they could try whatever methods they saw fit in order to exorcise those he'd possessed.

But as the month wore on and his master's spirit still stubbornly clung to the realm of Trench, Maul began to realize he had to face his master even if it was the scariest thing he'd ever have to do in his life. If he didn't confront him, Sidious was never going to leave. Bolstered by the encouragement of his friends and family, plus with the motivation of knowing only he could end this, Maul would go out to face his master. It'd be the hardest thing he'd ever have to do in his life, but to protect the people he loved so deeply and the place he called home, he would find a way to banish Palpatine forever from his life.

[OOC: This is the log post for the Palpatine in Trench player plot! Feel free to start your own open top-levels, set up closed threads, or just head straight over to the network post if you want to interact with Maul or threadjack people there. As a reminder, Maul doesn't necessarily need to be involved in exorcising an NPC or character if you just want to do to something among two of you.]

Comments

[survivalthroughhate]

"That is not a good idea. He'll be seeking you out specifically," Maul warned. Finding Sidious would be the worst possible scenario to play out. As soon as they got near to one another, he would body-hop into Rey, and getting him back out again would be close to impossible.

But such a cryptic statement required follow-through, so he gestured for the two of them to sit on a nearby low wall. "Come. I have something I must tell you. It will not be easy to hear but you need to know the truth." Of anyone in Trench, Maul was the most qualified to tell Rey this, to explain the family connection shared between Sidious, Rey, and Maul.

[makesrocksfloat]

"Because I have the Force. Kriff it," she exclaimed, looking thoroughly upset. But if that was the case, how could any Force sensitive person hold him off long enough to defeat him before being taken over. Their mental shielding would have to be tighter than a drum. And she knew all too well that her own shields were...shaky.

And she followed, a halfway-suspicious and a halfway-worried look on her face. But she sat and looked over at Maul, eyes intense and bright. "The truth? About Palpatine? Bad enough he was able to survive the second Death Star, but what does that have to do with me?"

[survivalthroughhate]

"That's part of the reason, yes," Maul agreed. She was a powerful Force user, he could feel that. Much like Luke, she'd come from a family lineage that gave her a strong connection to the Force.

"It's difficult to explain it all but I will try." Rather than answer her questions, he asked one of his own. "What do you remember about your parents?" Maul knew enough to know Palpatine's clone must have escaped and found someone to love, which in turn had eventually produced Rey. But he wasn't certain what happened after that. Once he had that last puzzle piece put together, he'd be able to tell her everything.

[makesrocksfloat]

"Only part," Rey asked, looking a combination of confused and concerned. "What's the other part?" Why would Palpatine be so interested in her Rey of Nobody and Nowhere? Maybe because of how easily she could access the Dark Side, by accident? That probably would make her a better target.

"All right." Now caution was added to the mix. But his question was so out of nowhere, that everything was replaced by surprise. "My parents? What do they have to do with it?" It was still a sore subject after what Kylo Ren had said to her in the throne room of the Supremacy, that her parents sold her for drinking money. That they lay in a pauper's grave in the sands of Jakku. She couldn't imagine a wider gulf between Palpatine and parents like those.

[survivalthroughhate]

I shall explain that now,” he said in a patient tone. “This isn’t going to be easy for you to hear but you must know the full story.”

Maul spoke softly as he told the tale of Rey’s unknown past. “Palpatine experimented with cloning himself so that he would always have a back-up body to transfer himself to. Most of the clones were warped, horribly misshapen, or otherwise not healthy. But there was one who was perfectly healthy yet had no connection to the Force. Never being one to throw away something or someone that had the potential to be useful, my old master let him live. I think I am the only person in the entire galaxy who is uniquely qualified to say I know exactly how much torment and pain he was put through.” His poor adoptive brother, growing up under the thumb of such a monster. Maul had all the sympathy in the world for him.

“Eventually, he had enough courage and determination to leave Sidious behind and ran as far away as he could into the galaxy at large. He met a woman and they had a child. A girl who was now the granddaughter of Darth Sidious. But unlike her father, she was Force-sensitive. They knew if Palpatine were to ever know of the girl, he would seek to use her for his own devious ends. So they hid her away on Jakku, knowing he would never think to look there to find her.”

He paused for a moment, letting all of this be absorbed by Rey, the truths of her past that had finally been brought to light. “Now you know what really happened in your past and why I cannot not allow you near him. You are family to me and I won’t allow such a horrible fate as being possessed by him to happen to you.” His voice held a rough, desperate note to it. Maul had failed his family so many times when Sidious had come after them but he would not fail this time.

[makesrocksfloat]

Rey had a sinking feeling in her stomach, like she'd swallowed a ton of rocks. Because if it was about her parents, it couldn't be anything good. I'll come back for you, sweetheart, I promise. A sensation she'd associated with love, that her parents did love her and would come back. A hope dashed to pieces by Kylo Ren.

And Rey looked a combination of confused and concerned. "Clones? But...from what I heard, Palpatine died on the second Death Star. Was his clone nearby? Because I've been told that--that projecting one's spirit through the Force took an awful lot of energy, enough to kill someone. Is Palpatine really that powerful, so he could escape dying? And how would a direct clone of him not be able to use the Force? Or was he a clone mixed with someone else since apparently the others hadn't been terribly stable?"

Her blood ran cold as Maul described the clone meeting a woman, falling in love, and having a child. She knew, she knew Maul had to have been talking about her. The pieces fit far too well and her breathing grew shallow as she took all of the information in, but processing it? That would take time. Time and understanding from others, but she doubted that Palpatine's granddaughter--and she shuddered at the thought--would receive much.

But Maul was being so calm, so concerned his statements. And she shuddered again, thinking of what he must've been subjected to. "I--but--I don't--he's my grandfather?" But she could sense the truth and sincerity in Maul's words and clung to that.

She tried to smile. "So...we're family. Does this make us cousins?" She needed, had to get a grip. If she didn't, she'd be easy prey and she knew it.

[survivalthroughhate]

She had a lot of questions and so he did his best to answer. "He's the most powerful Sith Lord in a thousand generations," Maul said. "I don't doubt his spirit could survive things that would have killed anyone else. I didn't even know he possessed such an ability until recently." Just another secret of the Sith he'd kept from his apprentice.

"I don't know if his 'son' was a pure clone of himself. Or if he mixed his DNA with a man or woman who was Force-sensitive for a better chance of survival and making sure the offspring would also be able to access the Force." The latter would have been more of an actual child as opposed to purely a clone but Maul didn't know enough of the details to be aware of what the situation had been. "While the Force is often passed down through a bloodline if one's family is strong with it, it is entirely possible for it to skip an individual or an entire generation." Perhaps the Force had rebelled at Sidious' attempt to make himself bodies that would last him for eternity, an attempt to keep the Sith Lord in check. The Force didn't like one side becoming too powerful for too long and unbalancing the galaxy that way.

He smiled gently at her, a genuine one. She was taking this alright for having learned revelations which shook up what she had known her entire life to be up to this point. "More like uncle and niece. Distasteful as it is to admit, Palpatine was the closest thing I ever had to a father."

[makesrocksfloat]

"I can't believe it. That--that Palpatine is my grandfather. Was he waiting for me this entire time, to take over and use?" Because that was the worst of her fears, now that it was open to coming true. Be Palpatine, cut down everyone she loved Ben.

"I have...vague memories. A man with brown hair and a kind face. A woman, also with brown hair covered with a blue veil. She looked kind, too. They held me. They promised they'd be back for me. But I spent fifteen years in Jakku with no one. Those were my parents, weren't they? They didn't plan to abandon me on Jakku forever, did they? They weren't just drunks who sold me for drinking money, were they? And a trash-can nearby goes straight into the wall nearest it, flattening it.

"Powerful light, powerful darkness. Luke told me that. I--I thought he meant me and Kylo Ren. But did he mean me and---and Palpatine?" She both looked forward to and dreaded the answer.

Not to worry, she'll beat herself up and cry over all that was being revealed later. She'd wanted family, but not like this. Not like Palpatine. But she did her best to smile in return. "Uncle and niece. I can--I can live with that."