Time to learn about Dalt

Dalt's gone and they have no idea where he might've gone. The more they think about it, the more they realize there's an awful lot they don't know about him. They always wanted to look into his background more, but just never got around to it.

Well. Brainstorming on where he might've gone and how he got away, they wonder if he might not have some allies. But they've got no way to find them. It does, however, occur to them that if he was the Emperor's little prodigy, chances are he had a home base lab somewhere on Coruscant. Thinking about it further, it seems likely that he probably also had a lab the Emperor didn't know about. After all, he got into quite a few things he surely didn't want the Emperor to know anything about. And where's the best place on Coruscant to put a lab you want to hide from the Emperor? The Undercity!

Some words with Kyp and with the Kaminoans, whom he worked with fairly extensively on cloning technology, get them the info they need: while he may have allies, he definitely does have a lab in the Undercity, and with they knowledge they're able to hunt it down.

Inside the lab, they find a machine that convert electricity to the Force and back. It takes a bit of looking around before they notice the droid in the corner. It's willing enough to talk to them. Explaining that he's really a hobo's brain in a robot's body, he says that Dalt keeps him around to keep house while he's away. Apparently Dalt exposits a lot, because the hobo-droid is able to explain a great deal about his theories, such as the following: "Not only is the Force the source of energy, it is all energy and therefore can be transferred and converted, blah blah blah."

Exploring, they find that the place actually is a series of labs devoted to various sciences, all involving their application to the Force.
- A biology lab is devoted to learning how to convert the human electrical field to pure Force.
- A geology lab seems to be dedicated to building the perfect lightsaber crystal. In the hobo-droid's words: "Crystal, diamond, blah, carbon, people, Force, crystal Force."
- In a nuclear lab, notes talk about converting a star's energy into Force, creating a Force generator that'll bathe a planet in Force radiation. What for? To create another Thule? Kedrihm'Val wonders in concern, "What was he doing to my planet?"

The hobo-droid has more to tell them. Dalt felt it highly unfair that not everyone is Force-sensitive. He "would go on and on about how his knowledge of the Light Side exceeded that of any of the Jedi." "The Light Side?" asks a confused Kedrihm'Val. "He called it the 'true' Light Side," explains the hobo. Then he hands over Dalt's journal.

Inside, they learn that he feels "it's good to kill people, because they join the Force and make it stronger." "When everyone's sensitive," he theorizes, "then there'll be no fear because they'll all be equal." Of course he studies the Ysalamiri, and wonders if their anti-Force bubble might have to do with the fact that they're utterly passive, antithetical to activity.

He discusses his Force-star experiment: he wants to hook it to an astrogation computer that'd create space lanes for the entire universe. He ponders a Jedi myth that where all life started, that planet had a Force-star. The non-Jedi in the group find that a bit weird, but Zan explains that he thinks it's a metaphor for the Big Bang. Still, it might be worth checking the radiation prints of stars orbited by planets hosting large numbers of Force sensitives. Maybe Force particles settled in some places more than in others? Could this "source," then, be somewhere in the Deep Core?

Dalt mentions that Palpatine, in passing, once mentioned a Force ability that could create sentient life, and that it had been used once. Wondering if this might have something to do with all the cloning, they ask Kyp, who says he'll speak with Han (he'd prefer it go through family channels). The Kaminoans say they have a myth that if brain patterns synch up perfectly with the original, a cloned body can call a spirit back to it. Kedrihm'Val asks Zan to check, since he knew...er, Anakin fairly well. Ree and Oola find records of Anakin's discovery that he had no father. Yoda notes in them that this ability to create life is a Dark Side power.

When they pass all this on, the Council is deeply disturbed. When Zan checks on the clone, it does indeed seem to be in the process of developing into Anakin.

Delving into old Imperial archives and whatever other notes they've dredged up from various places, they learn quite a bit more. Dalt rebuilt the Oracle at Pelgrin. He equated water as the representation of Force on a planet. Abindosan seemed to be a perfect place to experiment. He though if he could corrupt the coral, he could corrupt the flow of the Force through the planet and turn the whole thing into a Dark Side world...at which point he would try to blot out (hey, the Sun Crusher!) and reignite the star to create a Dark Side Force-star.

They find correspondence between him and Darth Vader regarding manufacturing artificial parts for Vader that're compatible with the Force, in return for Vader teaching him stuff. But Vader locked it all down after he taught Dalt, so Dalt doesn't even know what he knows. Zan wonders if cutting Dalt off from the Force might've broken open those seals.

Further questions to pursue:
- Does Dalt have projects the Emperor made him forget?
- Did the Emperor assign Dalt a keeper? Maybe a 'special friend' to keep him occupied (Oola: "I feel bad for that guy.")
- Did the Emperor leave more records on Byss, Korriban, Thule, or the Shadow Academy?
- Thrawn and Dalt knew each other, and Thrawn was impressed by him. Could he have snagged Dalt at some point, perhaps gotten information or inventions from him?

They decide to interrogate the Shadow Academy people, try to track down Mara Jade and talk to her, hunt up whatever else they can find from the Imperial archives, and get Erin and Master Roon to construct a timeline of Dalt's activities. Also on the list: check out the Oracle at Pelgrin, track down those "Force-stars," riffle through the Chimera's database, which SARR reveals he copied while they were visiting Thrawn (damn, how much data storage can one droid have?). And, when they've got enough material, have another chat with the Dalt-o-chron.