Chasing down Set Harth

Kyp and Ree research Set Harth, and talk to Ree's holocron. It remembers Harth as a patadwan, too interested in the Sith for his own good. He ran away to follow his interests after his master forbade him to pursue his research. How did he live so long? And where did he stash all the stuff he found? The Sent holocron says he was slippery. A loner. Only gets pals in order to tackle something especially big. He doesn't trust people. So if he sprang Ventress, he's probably after something Dooku knew. The Dark Reaper device? Or the Dark Harvesters, the devices that sucked life from planets to power the Reaper.

Zeltros has information on the two Zeltrons, but nothing especially informative. The male is named Rade; the female is Yara. They're siblings. They're psychos whose Force-enhanced empathy might've driven them over the edge, who ran amok and then escaped the planet before they could be apprehended.

Kyp and Ree try to gather information on each other's likes and hobbies.

Then it's off to the Core in their swanky new ship, tracking Drath to an uncharted, nasty planet. The place is thoroughly corrupted by Dark Side energy. There's one structure, no lifeforms detected. An empty landing pad and a place for a small capital ship that's gone. Looks like Drath might've removed his tracker.

SARR: "I agree with Z."
Kedrihm'Val: "Blow it up?"
Ree: "And thereby possibly blow up the entire Core including you?"
SARR: "Well played, meatbag."

Oola hacks the computer system. There's no active security, and empty building, looks like everything is cleared out. It was Set Harth's place, but the systems have been purged. some fresh blood is in one corridor, smeared on a security interface. Heading down, they find a human dead of lightsaber wounds which is missing its head and a hand (Oola takes a blood sample for later ID) and matching blood on the security panel. The place is grotesquely uncomfortable, even for the non-sensitives.

Kedrihm'Val senses a memory: Set Harth, Drath, and the Zeltrons standing in the hallway. they discuss Ventress and her apprentice prepping the ship, finding a Dark Harvester, and other stuff Harth has. Harth relates his interest in the True Sith, believes they're coming wants to be less cornered when they show. He seems very reverent; Drath is disgusted. Harth describes where he's just gone, mentions a retina and hand scanner. Drath, revolted by Harth's reverence for any being that would dominate him, kills him. Harth does something with the Force just before he dies, leaving an imprint of shock and rage on the vicinity. Kedrihm'Val notes that Drath is more confident now, powerful and angry but more controlled. More Sith.

Oola finds Harth's head. Drath cut it off, and the hand, before tearing out the eyes. Noticing the head, Kedrihm'Val realizes what Harth did: he bound his spirit into his brain, so he's still in there. Startled, he says this out loud, so Oola drops a Force crystal into the bag, which wipes out the Dark Side spirit, and that's the end of Set Harth. Rather ignominious way to go. Kedrihm'Val is rather uneasy about using Force crystals to kill or destroy.

They're able to find an ion trail from the Sith ship and track it. The ion trail leaves the Deep Core and stops, entering hyperspace on coordinates that head toward Iridonia, the home planet of the Zabraks. When Oola also spots a peculiar map in the computer which points to Iridonia, it's pretty obvious that Drath is inviting them to follow him. Uncertain where they might look for a Dark Harvester device, they decide to follow the bread crumbs.

Dalt's new ship has many merits, but it's not fast, so they detour to pick up the Starwind. Dalt thinks that the Dark Reaper is a sort of hate-powered Death Star. He mastered that sort of technology long ago, and finds the Harvesters much more interesting, inventing several unpleasant possible uses for one right off the cuff. He thinks the Harvesters actually use people, their sentient life energy, souls, spirits.

Turns out, the Dark Harvester lies--or used to lie--on a moon on the way to Iridonia. Oola's able to pinpoint it by searching through old folktales and geographic reports. When they reach it, the place is torn up, two big holes left in the surface. They send massages to the Republic to help
alleviate local suffering, but can't stop themselves because they need to catch Drath as quickly as possible. SARR thinks he'll use this thing on Iridonia, and the others find that very likely.

But Drath got there first. By the time they reach it, the whole planet is dead--scoured absolutely of life, down to the smallest microbe. The collected energy has been removed. But where? In such a vacuum of living energy, Kedrihm'Val is able to follow Drath's traces of passing quite easily. He went to a nearby town, ate lunch, then emptied a single room. There are no family pictures left or anything. Oola verifies that it was his family's home. Z discovers that Drath left a message for his parents to lead them to the site where he dropped the Harvester. Planetary defense records showed a Sith ship uncloaking and dropping the Harvester, to which Drath had hooked up a camera so he could have the pleasure of watching his family die.

Drath turns out to have burned all his old possessions out behind his family's home. And he left a note for the crew: "The one thing the Jedi are right about is no attachments." Again, the sense of Drath here is different: more focussed, more controlled. Z: "So we did him a favor by locking him up?" Kedrihm: "Yes." Z: "So we should be killing him next time?" Kedrihm: "Yes."

There are no other clues, so it's time for logic. Drath has one more Harvester, and can't build another. Drath might sit on it, build up his forces--collect some stray Thule agents?--hide till he decides what he wants to do. Kedrihm thinks what he wants to do is, apparently, face down the True Sith. So, he'll build a weapon. Z suggests that Drath might hunt for the Dark Side orb, then. He's sitting on a pile of Dark Side energy, so he may be able to use one to lead him to the other.

It's back to Coruscant to talk to Council about finding Drath...and where they find out that Drath sent the Council, and the media, his recorded footage. Darth Tromos, Sith Lord, he's calling himself. Despite this horror--yet another destroyed planet--people are surprisingly calm, confident that Ree and her compatriots, or Luke if necessary, will handle this.

So, finding Drath. Dalt says a cloak that big will have to power down every several months. He thinks Drath will hide either in the Core, which is dangerous and he could be cornered easily, or the Outer Rim, which is iffy, busy and full of untrustworthy types, or the Maw. He'll need more ships, more people, and time to go through Harth's collection of information and artifacts. He might try to ally with Thrawn. The Senate has to ratify any talks with Thrawn (who wants to know what's going on).

Ree asks the Yoda holocron about the True Sith. He tells her they are said to be equal to the Architects in power. He believes they may be a cabal of 4 to 5 individuals, very powerful beings who've telepathically influenced development of the Sith. He's quite specific on the number. the Yodacron goes inactive on further questioning about this cabal, however. Ree tells Luke, who is very curious about this development. He tells her to look into Revan while he talks to Leia.

Revan was chillingly logical. They find records of his droid, HK-47, who is eerily similar to SARR. Revan had bases all over the galaxy. He wrote a book on the True Sith, but they can find no title for it. He hoped they were remnants of a civilization, because if they were more organized they might be an insurmountable threat. The folklore book says that he thought they were a race that rose and fell in cycles of power. He traveled out during what he thought was a low ebb. If this is so, they may be ascending again.

Kedrihm'Val rather wonders what might determine that cycle.

The Jedi and Oola reconstruct Harth's computer as best they can. Ree and the Jedi Librarian visit the Smashed Holocron to talk to Pence. He ponders on how there's no species record for Yoda, and how strange that is. He must've wandered in from the Unknown Regions. Ree: "Who's to say he's only 900? Some people lie about their ages. My mother does."

And they look through the Emperor's journals, what safe bits there are. He records that he went back to Naboo for his dead master's stuff and found that it was gone. He knew it wasn't Anakin, so suspected it was probably Harth.

Dalt communes with the deleted computer and gets some more information, including Darth Plagius's missing information.

Ree talks to Kyp about Yoda being an Architect. Kyp: "You do know Luke, um, he talks to him. And Ben, and... *sigh*" So they can, well, ask Yoda. Ree talks to Endek too. He's still being a bit weird over the Alderaan thing, but says he'll hunt. He'll check the Corporate Sector auctions. Ree considers House Pelagia before remembering...the Ossus Library! And what do you know. They've got a copy of Revan's mysterious book.

Kedrihm talks to Dalt about finding the evil glowy Iridonia box. Dalt thinks it would be hard to hide in the long run. He asks Dalt what he'd do with it: Dalt comments about Force Stars (and Kedrihm duly files away that Dalt hasn't given up on that particular dream), but eventually figures he'd dump it into Kedrihm'Val's planet. Let the coral suck it up, generate hate and pain and so forth, and as a Sith ride that flow of dark power to basically control everything it touched and infested. Also he thinks he could use the Harvester to suck the Dark Side taint out, funnel it through his filter and put it back in to heal the damage to Abindosan.

Revan's book details that he thought the Sith had a ruling council of five, and they essentially had a bet with the Architects over whether creating or manipulating life was better. Some Architects and Sith felt that this was exploitation and left. The Architects are gone now, of course. Usually there were a couple of very powerful Council members, and the others were weaker--depending on the cycle. They expected the Sith to welcome them as gods, and Revan thought that the True Sith would have considered a failure to do so as a sign of failure, at which point they might choose to wreck everything and start over. So he went out to interfere.

Yoda does indeed match a drawing of a True Sith that Revan included in the book. Revan admits that it could be an Architect. He rode their telepathy backward and could have gotten a distracted signal. Of course, it's also possible the two were related or even factions of a single race.

Kyp gasps when Ree shows him the picture. Ree: "I don't wanna do this by myself." Kyp's aghast. "That poor, poor guy," he says of Luke. He wonders if they should make sure Ben wasn't a serial killer. He'll go get Leia and Han. Ree: "I'm glad Dalt never cloned you. I couldn't take two." Kyp: "Didn't Dalt have Yoda's?" Dalt does indeed--in a fake tooth. What is it with Dark Siders and fake teeth? Dalt reminds them that Drath could still have DNA from Han and Obi Wan and others. Ree tells him about finding the book, Kedrihm'Val shares Dalt's theory on his planet. Ree places a call to Malina.

The Senate is rumbling about reopening the Blueprint issue. Master Roon and Erin are increasingly convinced that the Remnant was behind the assassination attempt, but are worried that the Alderaanians might get stupid enough to try it again on their own or to be manipulated into something more serious. The ARC trooper doesn't seem to be human. He may be an advanced droid. He's not talking.

Ree finally realizes that Luke put her in her new room next to Kyp's, and at last catches on to the various incidents and innuendoes of the past. "Wait...freaking Z," she grumbles.

Luke and Kyp are missing at breakfast the next morning. Ree and Lydia train, Kedrihm'Val calls his planet to pass on information, and meditates. Oola and Dalt work on the Architect language and the droids. Later, Kyp turns up to say Luke took it well, and suggests they go out to lunch to talk further since people keep staring.

Right about then, Ree notices a girl staggering determinedly toward her, but the girl collapses before she reaches Ree. Ree darts to her side just in time to hear the girl whisper, "Dust" before dying. She was poisoned.