Darth Plagueis - James Luceno [85]
Plagueis hadn’t lost interest in Venamis by any means, but the Yinchorri’s immunity to Force suggestion—an immunity the species shared with Hutts, Toydarians, and others—had provided him with a new line of investigation. Unlike ysalamiri, which created a Force bubble in the presence of danger, the Yinchorri were in a perpetual state of involuntary immunity to Force suggestion. The fact that immunity was in a sense hardwired into them meant that the ability was an adaptation, prompted by a past threat to the survival of the species. To Plagueis, it meant that the Yinchorri’s midi-chlorians had evolved to provide protection to a species that was naturally strong in the Force. If that were indeed the case, then the Yinchorri were living proof that the Sith of the Bane line had been on the right path from the very start.
For while toppling the Jedi Order and the Republic was essential to the task of restoring order to the galaxy, that goal belonged to the realm of the ordinary—to the world that was nothing more than a byproduct of the eternal struggle between the light and dark forces, both of which were beyond any concepts of good or evil. The greater goal of the Sith involved toppling the Force itself, and becoming the embodiment of the galaxy’s animating principle.
It had been theorized by Jedi and Sith alike that balance between the light and dark sides was actually under the guidance of a group of discorporate entities—the ones called the Celestials, perhaps—who had merged themselves with the Force thousands of generations earlier, and had continued to guide the fate of the galaxy ever since. In effect, a higher order of intermediaries, whose powers were beyond the understanding of mortal beings. But many Sith viewed the notion with disdain, for the theoretical existence of such a group had little bearing on the goal of making the Force subservient to the will of an enlightened elite. Only the Sith understood that sentient life was on the verge of a transformative leap; that through the manipulation of midi-chlorians—or the overthrow of the Forceful group that supervised them—the divide between organic life and the Force could be bridged, and death could be erased from the continuum.
As evidenced by those few Lords who had managed to perpetuate their spirits after physical death—foremost among them Emperor Vitiate, who was said to have lived a thousand years—the ancient Sith had come halfway across that bridge. But those few had been so focused on worldly power that they had ended up trapping themselves between realms. That they had never provided the Order with guidance from beyond attested to the fact that their influence had been negligible, and had long since faded from the world.
In the same way that the pre-Bane Sith had been responsible for their own extinction, the great dark side Lords of the past had doomed themselves to the nether realm through their attempts to conquer death by feeding off the energies of others, rather than by tapping the deepest strata of the Force and learning to speak the language of the midi-chlorians. Plagueis was finally learning to do that, and was just beginning to learn how to persuade, prompt, cajole, and coax them into action. Already he could command them to promote healing, and now he had been successful in enticing them to lower their defenses. If he could compel a murderous Yinchorri to become peaceful, could he—with a mere suggestion—accomplish the opposite by turning a peaceful being into a murderer? Would he one day be able to influence the leaders of worlds and systems to act according to his designs, however iniquitous? Would he one day conquer not only death but life, as well, by manipulating midi-chlorians to produce Forceful beings, even in the