The Blueprint

The Council meeting the next day is on the subject of Thule. They're moving against the invaders in a few weeks. The plan is to drive the Thule out of Bimm and follow them back to Thule (and keep an eye on Thrawn, of course). Thule's war leader is a woman named Davar Haktu, and she's reputed to be a powerful Force user. The ruler of Thule is a woman named Absinthe Dooku. Ree is concerned about that, because Dooku's home planet is often tetchy about relatives of their ruling family. They're very proud.

Ree asks about giving Dalt his coin. Luke thinks she should. And after the council, she catches up to Kyp to give him a piece of her mind about those comics. She also asks about Zan. Luke admits that he has been a touch concerned, considering Ree's vision, but he thinks they're on top of it.

So, she grabs Kedrihm'Val and Oola to give Dalt his coin. Oola has done some more research, and finds that the gate on Ree's planet is known as the "Gate of Healing." It's part of a triune of items also including the Infinity Gate and something called the Blueprint.. Ree's gate does something when powered by the Dathomir Gate, guided by the Blueprint. So where's the Blueprint? Could that be what Maul was looking for on Dagobah?

Well, he was sure after something on Dagobah, so it's just as well to head back and look.

Outside the Dark Side cave, Z asks whether the Force users want to go in. Ree hesitates, but Kedrihm'Val feels like he should, so Ree goes too. And then she promptly disappears.

Unable to find anything that might've happened to her, or to so much as sense her, the others are left to continue on and hope they can find her somewhere else in the cave. Meanwhile, Ree looks around to discover that she's somehow wound near her family's house. The animals lie dead in the field of some wasting disease, and the door is hanging off its hinges. The rooms inside are covered in blood and body parts. On the way, painted in blood, are the words, "You should have gone to Dathomir sooner. Why were you afraid?"

Kedrihm'Val feels a bit ill in the cave. Even Oola and Z can feel the oppressiveness. They discover a secret passage into a room. There's writing in the Architect language and an opened box that looks like it held some kind of computer core. "We need to wake up Drath," Oola says, looking at it.

On their way out, they find Ree, looking fine but shaken. When they break orbit with Dagobah, she calls her mother. The whole family is fine, and very excited about Ree's new comic. At a loss and quite alarmed, she seeks advice from Luke, who sympathizes with her. "That cave is a bad, bad place." Kedrihm'Val, meanwhile, sets Z on the delivery service to find out who's been sending those messages.

Drath knows what they're after, but says he has no incentive to tell them anything. They try to talk him into it, but the Council can't find any grounds on which to negotiate that he'd care for. But before they can put him back under, Drath shatters himself free and makes a run for it. The group takes him down and he surrenders, then bites a guard's nose off when the security comes in.

Well, that was a bust. But they are able to get some information from Dalt. He's unaware of anything called 'the Blueprint,' but he recognizes its description. Maul hid it on a base as a bargaining chip, he tells them, either on Naboo or Coruscant. Things being as they are, his guess is Naboo.

So, it's to Naboo they go. Z suggests looking for one of those fifteen million tracking devices SARR put on Maul's ship a while back. One of them might've fallen off. And sure enough, they locate a signal coming from an old research base in a mountain that was supposedly abandoned.

Oola snags floorplans for it. The place obviously saw a visitor recently. They find two cloning vats, both empty. One was clearly Maul. The other, Oola can't identify readily, but she takes some samples so they can test the DNA later. Then they find a secret door on one wall.

It takes them a long way down. There, there are two pedestals and a copying device. One holds the very computer core they were looking for, and the other is empty. Apparently, Maul made a duplicate of it. But why? When Ree picks it up, she finds out! It tries to mind-whammy her. The thing has a limited form of sentience. Z puts it in a box so it won't cause trouble.

On the way back to Coruscant with the device, Kedrihm'Val offers his theory that Darth Maul may want to plug Dalt's final Dark Side device into the Infinity Gate to create a mammoth Dark Side-tainting beam.

On Coruscant, Luke studies the gizmo and says it wants to interface with someone's mind in order to transmit its data. Instead, they plug it into a computer...from which the thing interfaces with the entire Coruscant power grid. While the lights flicker all over the planet, the thing begins to display information: literally the blueprint for the entire galaxy. It presents data for a while until it begins registering anomalies: missing planets, such as Alderaan and Kamino. At this point, it tries to access something on Ree's planet--probably the other gate--but can't. Clearly, the gate on her world builds planets. SARR pokes through the backlog of data and finds that this thing registered the Dark Side device sitting on top of the Infinity Gate.

Dalt's voice comes over the comm to point out that they didn't remember to isolate the prison ship from the power grid before they booted this thing up, though Oola did think to block it from accessing things like hospitals. Drath is loose up there, but the Jedi on board think they've got it under control.

And the DNA from the second cloning vat belongs to Padme Amidala. Kyp's response: "Awwww, giant rampant space banthas." "What about the Anakin clone?" Oola asks. "You want to wake him up?" responds Kyp. "This is how! Don't think about it too hard. ...Don't!"

Oola passes word on to the others. This prompts a council meeting at the Smashed Holocron, at least some minor distance away from the sleeping clone. Luke orders the group to deal with Dathomir. He has Ree and Kedrihm'Val fetch Dalt so he and Kyp can make sure he can be trusted. While they wait for the interrogation, Ree discovers she now has a drink called the Two-Fisted Farmgirl.

About half an hour later, Luke thinks that Dalt will be okay. He tells them to leave the next morning. In the meantime, everyone can try to guard their thoughts.