46 pages • 1-hour read
Darth Plagueis
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Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of graphic violence, death by suicide, suicidal ideation, physical and emotional abuse, animal cruelty and death, illness, and death.
Part 2: “Apprenticed to Power”
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary: “Riders on the Storm”
Eleven years later, 54 BBY, Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious train across the galaxy. On Buoyant, they hunt animals while Plagueis lectures on Sith philosophy. Sidious kills a quadruped and absorbs its life energy, after which Plagueis demonstrates the transformative power of Force lightning on living matter.
They refine their lightsaber skills against combat droids on Hypori. For Sidious’s final trial on Kursid, they engage in ritual combat with native warriors. When only one warrior remains, Plagueis executes him, carves out his heart, and eats part of it before giving the rest to Sidious, explaining it as a necessary act of destruction for renewal that reinforces Sith superiority.
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary: “The Shape of His Shadow”
Since becoming Darth Sidious, the Sith apprentice has become Naboo’s ambassador in his public identity as Palpatine. In this role, he attends a gala on Malastare with his aide Kinman Doriana. He successfully navigates conversations with Senator Vidar Kim and Senator Pax Teem. When messengers announce that Kim’s wife and sons have died in a starship crash, Palpatine positions himself as a supportive colleague.
At the funeral, Palpatine consoles the grieving senator. Kim reveals that his last surviving son, the Jedi Knight Ronhar Kim, might leave the Order. Palpatine then meets with Naboo’s chief minister, Ars Veruna, and informs him of political difficulties Plagueis has been experiencing as Damask, secretly increasing his own influence at Plagueis’s expense.
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary: “Quantum Being”
Plagueis continues his research seeking immortality on Aborah, experimenting on a Force-resistant Yinchorri with 11-4D’s assistance to learn how to manipulate midi-chlorians. As Palpatine, Sidious travels to the world of Dathomir, seeking to discover more information about the dark side than Plagueis will teach him. While there, he meets a Nightsister who offers him her Zabrak infant son, Maul, hoping Palpatine will protect him. Sensing the infant’s Force potential, Sidious accepts.
The Sith convene on Sojourn. Plagueis outlines the next phase of their Grand Plan to destabilize the Republic. He orders Sidious to arrange the public murder of Senator Vidar Kim to create a political vacuum on Naboo that Palpatine can fill.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary: “Bold as Love”
On Naboo, Vidar Kim finds that his family has been murdered. Only his Jedi son, Ronhar, has survived. He summons Palpatine and confides that he suspects King Tapalo and Ars Veruna for the murder. He vows to expose corruption to the Jedi and gives Palpatine his travel itinerary on Coruscant. Palpatine immediately forwards the itinerary to his agent Sate Pestage and hires Maladian assassins.
Simultaneously, Plagueis travels to Kamino to meet with cloners. He presents a Yinchorri specimen and asks them to create a secret, obedient army. On Coruscant, assassins kill Vidar Kim. Ronhar Kim witnesses the attack, but the surviving assassin kills himself to avoid capture. Pestage confirms the plot cannot be traced to Palpatine.
Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary: “Days of Wine and Impropriety”
Now serving as Naboo’s interim Senator, Palpatine arrives on Coruscant. At Vidar Kim’s funeral, he meets Ronhar Kim and proposes a friendship, which the grieving Jedi accepts.
Elsewhere, Plagueis attends a conference on Serenno as Damask. He meets Jedi Masters Dooku, Sifo-Dyas, and Qui-Gon Jinn. Sensing Dooku’s disillusionment and Sifo-Dyas’s anxiety, Plagueis probes their views and subtly suggests to Sifo-Dyas that the Republic could create a formidable army. Jocasta Nu interrupts before he can say more, leaving the idea to take root.
Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary: “Artful Dodging”
Two months later, Palpatine prepares for a pivotal Senate vote. Before the session, Damask greets Palpatine in public, an intentional display that alarms Senator Pax Teem. Inside the Senate Rotunda, the vote ends in a tie, with Naboo having the tie-breaking vote.
Palpatine walks to the center of the chamber and cites Vidar Kim’s unresolved assassination as the reason Naboo will abstain in protest. The declaration throws the session into chaos, allowing the Trade Federation to win the vote and establishing Palpatine as a decisive political voice. The Sith Grand Plan is advanced.
Part 2, Chapter 19 Summary: “The Trials”
Weeks after the vote, a lobbyist lures Palpatine to a meeting and he attends even though he recognizes it as a trap. Santhe Security agents abduct him and transport him to an abandoned factory. Senator Pax Teem appears by hologram, declares the abduction a response to Damask’s maneuvering, and orders the execution of Palpatine.
Damask’s Sun Guards storm the factory, kill the captors, and extract Sidious. Plagueis appears by hologram and explains that he foresaw the plot and used Sidious as bait to expose Teem’s conspiracy. Sidious grasps that his Master staged the rescue as another test.
Part 2, Chapter 20 Summary: “The Canted Circle”
Hours after the abduction, Plagueis attends an initiation that is ambushed by Maladian assassins. They decapitate his aide, Larsh Hill, and strike Plagueis in the neck with a decapitator disk, leaving him gravely wounded. Sate Pestage warns Sidious, who arrives in time to save his Master.
Sidious moves directly to the Malastare ambassador’s residence. Wielding Plagueis’s lightsaber, he kills the guards, Santhe agents, and the assembled Gran families. He corners Senator Pax Teem and unleashes Force-induced flames that immolate him, eliminating every witness.
Part 2, Chapter 21 Summary: “Investiture”
One month later, Plagueis summons Sidious to his Aborah laboratory. Sidious sees the full scope of the experiments, including Darth Venamis floating in a bacta tank. Now permanently reliant on a transpirator mask as a result of his injuries, Plagueis proclaims Sidious a true Sith Lord.
Plagueis shares his plans for galactic war. He instructs Sidious to train Maul as a Sith assassin, anointing Sidious as the public face and blade of their order. He shares the purpose of his research into immortality and declares that he will end the cycle of The Rule of Two, extending the rule of himself with Sidious indefinitely.
Part 2 Analysis
The training sequences that open this section serve to demonstrate the cruelty and darkness of Sith philosophy. On Buoyant, Plagueis frames a hunt as a metaphysical “summoning” (191), a lesson in commanding the Force. This principle of domination is then enacted through ritualistic violence on Kursid, where the public execution of one warrior is designed to “terrify one thousand” (202). The act of consuming the warrior’s heart becomes a sacrament externalizing the belief in destruction as a prerequisite for renewal. Plagueis explains that to restore order, the Sith must embrace their role as apex predators, arguing that success requires them to “become as beasts” (204). This willful bestiality exemplifies The Self-Destructive Nature of the Pursuit of Power.
The narrative structure of these central chapters deliberately juxtaposes the two primary theaters of the Sith Grand Plan: the esoteric laboratory and the political stage. In doing so, the novel increasingly reveals the unsustainable tensions between Plagueis’s two motivations, driving him toward his inevitable downfall. While Plagueis pursues his research on Aborah, seeking to unlock immortality by manipulating life, Sidious operates in the world of galactic politics. While this duality is central to their strategy, it represents Sidious’s increasing power as Plagueis becomes reclusive. Plagueis’s obsession with midi-chlorians symbolizes an attempt to control the galaxy at a quantum level, representing the theme of The Hubris of Seeking to Control the Forces of Nature. Simultaneously, Sidious’s public persona embodies the motif of masks and hidden identities. As Ambassador Palpatine, his power grows through charm, deception, and the precise application of political violence. The constant shift between Plagueis’s clandestine quest for godhood and Sidious’s public ascent to power illustrates the comprehensive scope of their ambition to dominate both the institutions of government and the fundamental forces of existence.
This section deepens its exploration of The Master-Apprentice Relationship as a Corruption of Patrilineage. Sidious’s relationship with his political mentor, Vidar Kim, is a foil for this. Sidious engineers Kim’s downfall without hesitation, demonstrating that personal sentiment is subordinate to the Grand Plan. He then effectively exploits the tragedy to forge a calculated friendship with Kim’s Jedi son, Ronhar, using him as an informant and a means to test his ability to conceal his dark side nature. This pattern extends to the acquisition of Maul. Plagueis approves of Maul’s training not as a true successor but as a disposable assassin—a tool to be wielded and broken. This decision is a departure from the tradition of the Rule of Two, revealing an ambition to subvert the cycle of succession and retain absolute power, a goal that fundamentally misunderstands the self-consuming logic of the Sith.
The intertwined plots involving the abduction of Sidious and the subsequent ambush of Plagueis serve as a critical examination of The Self-Destructive Nature of the Corrupt Pursuit of Power. Plagueis orchestrates Sidious’s kidnapping by Pax Teem’s agents as another “test” of his apprentice’s abilities, a calculated exercise that reinforces the inherent mistrust in their partnership. The irony is that while Plagueis focuses on this internal test, he is blindsided by a genuine external threat. The Maladian attack is a direct consequence of his arrogance; he is so assured of his own plotting that he fails to anticipate his enemies’ cunning. This failure results in his severe injury and reliance on a transpirator mask, a physical manifestation of his vulnerability. In the aftermath, Sidious’s decision to annihilate Pax Teem and his retinue is a pivotal moment. It is an act of independent, unrestrained fury that demonstrates he has surpassed his Master in raw ruthlessness, foreshadowing the inevitable central betrayal that frames the novel’s structure.
Throughout these chapters, the narrative again employs dramatic irony to foreshadow the Grand Plan’s trajectory, especially by situation the novel within the wider Star Wars narrative. During a conference on Serenno, Plagueis subtly manipulates a conversation with Jedi Masters Dooku and Sifo-Dyas. He probes Dooku’s disillusionment while planting the seed of a manufactured army in Sifo-Dyas’s mind—the very army that will later destroy the Jedi Order. This scene demonstrates Sith manipulation, as Plagueis lays the foundation for galactic conflict while maintaining his guise as Hego Damask. The ultimate irony, however, is revealed in the section’s conclusion. Having survived the assassination attempt, a scarred Plagueis anoints his apprentice, declaring that Sidious is “the blade we will drive through the heart of the Senate, the Republic, and the Jedi Order” (311). This metaphor is literal in its application; Sidious is indeed the blade of the Sith, but Plagueis fails to grasp that the self-annihilating logic of the Rule of Two dictates this blade must first be driven through the heart of the Master. As the novel reaches its final section, the dramatic tension is at its apex.
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