Darth Plagueis - James Luceno [26]
While midi-chlorians appeared to resist manipulation of a sort that might imperil the balance of the Force, they remained passive, even compliant, in the case of a weak-willed being manipulated by one who was strong in the Force. Perhaps that explained why it was often easier to call on the Force to heal someone other than oneself. Extending life, then, could hinge on something as simple as being able to induce midi-chlorians to create new cells; to subdivide at will, increasing their numbers into the tens of thousands to heal or replace damaged, aging, or metastatic cells. Midi-chlorians had to be compelled to serve the needs of the body; to bestow strength when needed; to overcome physical insult, or prevent cells from reaching senescence.
If one accepted the tales handed down in accounts and holocrons, the ancient Sith had known how to accomplish this. But had Sith like Naga Sadow and Exar Kun genuinely been more powerful, or had they benefited from the fact that the dark side had been more prominent in those bygone eras? Some commentators claimed that the ability to survive death had been limited to those with a talent for sorcery and alchemy, and that the use of such practices actually predated the arrival of the Dark Jedi exiles on Korriban. But sorcery had been employed less to extend life than to create illusions, fashion beasts, and resurrect the dead. Powerful adepts were said to have been able to saturate the atmosphere of planets with dark side energy, compel stars to explode, or induce paralysis in crowds, as Exar Kun apparently did to select members of the Republic Senate. Other adepts used sorcery merely as a means to better understand ancient Sith spells and sigils.
Darth Bane had referred to sorcery as one of the purest expressions of the dark side of the Force, and yet he hadn’t been able to harness those energies with near the skill as had his onetime apprentice Zannah. Bane’s disciples, however, believed that he had experimented with a technique of even greater significance: that of essence transfer, which he had learned after acquiring and plundering the holocron of Darth Andeddu, and which involved the relocation of an individual’s consciousness into another body or, in some cases, a talisman, temple, or sarcophagus. Thus had the most powerful of the ancient Sith Lords survived death to haunt and harass those who would infiltrate their tombs.
But none of this amounted to corporeal survival.
Plagueis had no interest in being a lingering, disembodied presence, trapped between worlds and powerless to affect the material realm except through the actions of weak-minded beings he could goad, coax, or will into action. Nor did he seek to shunt his mind into the body of another, whether an apprentice, as Bane was thought to have attempted, or some vat-grown clone. Nothing less than the immortality of his body and mind would suffice.
Everlasting life.
Sadly he could glean only so much from the texts, crystals, and holocrons stored in the library. Crucial knowledge had been lost during the brief mastery of Darth Gravid, and many of the most important elements of Sith training since had been passed from Masters to apprentices in sessions that had been left unrecorded. More to the point, Darth Tenebrous had had very little to say regarding death.
Alone in one of the test centers, surrounded by his experiments—these things Plagueis could say he loved—the enormity of what had occurred on Bal’demnic suddenly rose up before him