#sith!luke

(I have a problem, and it's "my brain refuses to take Dark Empire less than seriously," I apologize in advance)

... is that the backdrop is the Imperial Civil War.

The first issue opens with New Republic held Coruscant under attack NOT by a united Imperial Remnant but almost caught in the crossfire by competing Imperial factions

Major players include Pellaeon's faction (whatever he was able to hold onto post-Bilbringi), Daala, Krennel (NOT Krennic, we're in the Legends canon), the Pentastar Alignment ... there were a bunch

BUT THEN there's the DEEP CORE WEIRDOS

Because if you're a normal pragmatic Imperial warlord, "somehow Palpatine returned" is not a tremendously believable argument just like how it wasn't a believable argument for audiences in theaters for TRoS

Like imagine hearing, "of course the Queen came back, and also she's a wizard now."

Your immediate reaction is probably, "sure, buddy; sounds like a scam."

And if you're a pragmatic GFFA Imperial officer who never bought into the Sith bullshit in the first place, it's, "sounds like a scam, but even if that's true that sounds like a staffing problem."

Because the SW narrative camera lingers a lot on the Force woo but for most people's lived experience, and especially within the Empire, that stuff is background noise. The Emperor came to power through normal channels (and had this one weird quirk where his enforcer was an armored cyborg who talked like a particularly religious medieval crusade reenactor.)

Remember Admiral Motti in ANH? That wasn't a guy who was going to be super convinced by the argument that the queen came back and is an immortal wizard now. To most of the galaxy, the Sith are a weird folk story from a thousand years ago pre Ruusan Reformation

But suddenly the weirdo cultists in the Deep Core start punching above their weight, because whoever's in charge of their fleet actually understands asymmetric warfare really well. And maybe some of the factions start folding and consolidating and integrating into the weirdo cultists who PREVIOUS to this had been mostly interested in inscrutable dark side cult nonsense

And you (you're a pragmatic, secular Imperial officer, remember) take a look at some of these recent engagements, and you realize you've seen this doctrine before.

Not at the Imperial Academy. Certainly not in the expensive delusions of admirals who think warfare is a matter of arranging enough triangle-shaped objects in visually persuasive formations.

You've seen it used against the Empire, by enemies with too few ships and but a lot of imagination: distributed pressure, logistics strangulation. Hit the thing behind the guns rather than the guns themselves, refuse decisive engagement until the geometry itself had been poisoned, force your opponent to waste mass reacting to emptiness.

This is Rebel doctrine.

And you flip back through your datapad and double check if your people have a name for the weirdo cultist faction's Supreme Commander and – IS THAT LUKE KRIFFING SKYWALKER?

(Image from here)

And that's A LOT more legitimate than "the Deep Core dark side cultist weirdos say they have a new clone Reborn Emperor for real this time we swear"

Wasn't that guy like ... a Republic irregular during the Thrawn crisis literally a year ago? The dark side must be a helluva drug.

And you, the pragmatic Imperial loyalist, can suddenly imagine consolidation and can understand why the other warlords were beginning to fold.

Not because they believe in a resurrected Emperor. Not because they want mystical legitimacy. But because a real commander had finally appeared in the Deep Core, one ruthless enough to use the old Imperial machine without becoming sentimental about its habits.

And because that commander is Luke Kriffing Skywalker ... and surrender can be justified, inwardly if not publicly, as tactical realism rather than devotion. Because if the New Republic’s sainted Jedi champion had crossed the line, then perhaps the line itself has always been fiction.

Prompt: Dark Luke (courtesy @jedimordsith)

“Luke?”

His sister’s voice was hesitant, cautious.

Luke smiled from the shadows.

“I’m here,” he answered. “Everything’s fine.”

“Thank the Force.” Leia stepped closer, her face pale and drawn with worry. “When we heard about what happened to the others, we...”

She trailed off, eyes narrowing, her lightsaber suddenly at the ready.

“No.” A whispered refusal to believe.

Maybe, Luke wondered, she sensed his power, so much stronger than before. But she was too slow.

“Don’t fight,” he advised, crushing the kyber inside her lightsaber with a careless wave of fingers. “It’s so much better if you don’t fight, Leia.”

prince and princess of the empire

or luke shows grogu how to file his claws so he doesn't poke anyone

i recently watched star wars and now all i can think about is what would happen if luke was raised by vader and this is the result...i drew him way too pretty here

i imagine he'd be very calculating, a bit of stepford smiler, and has a habit of getting a bit too excited over things like BLOOD and MURDER because in my brain if someone was imbedded with the dark side for their entire life they'd probably have more then a few screws loose. he's pretty much everyone's first edgy deviantart OC Do Not Steal™.

i also imagine as things go on he gets more and more unhinged until he ends up at complete insanity. by the end of things he's basically azula from avatar or dilandau from escaflowne.

pretty much everyone who's not vader or palpatine thinks he's super unsettling to be around.

i don't know how to end this post.

Eternal Sunshine | Chapter 8: Happy Is The Blameless

7/21/24 at 5:30pm EST

Summary: An alternate universe where the only thing that happens differently is… well, the Emperor wins. And Luke wakes up with a mysterious scar on his temple.