Eighteen Months Prior
The Battle of Karak

They say that I am an evil man, a man that would sacrafice all I had for a little more. The embodiment of all evil, corrupt and contemptable. I do not call them wrong. But I disagree. Evil is not a word so easily attatched to anyone, or anything. Evil is a word that none in this galaxy have yet known. But they will... of that, I am sure.

The dark figure known only as Ominii turned to stare at the terrified captain of the modified Star Destroyer Shadow Reaper. His eyes, while a nominal shade of grey, seemed to portray a fire so terrible that none could imagine. His face showed more pure evil than any the captain could ever have seen, and even after months of serving the Shadow Lord he could not imagine what went on in the man's sinister mind.

"Captain," his voice was low, ominious, a threatening growl more animal, some said, that man, "plot us a course for Rancor Base. We have been ...beaten... here."

The man only nodded, and turned away.
"Helm!" He choked. "Plot us a course! Rancor Base! All speed."
"Belay that, Captain," the dark figure said quietly. "Two thirds speed. We are in no hurry." The captain nodded, eager to please.
"As he says, Helm. Two thirds speed."

The Star Destroyer accelerated and vanished, followed closely by her sister-ship, leaving behind a confused and broken Tholatin fleet, and two massive Imperial warfleets...

A massive expenditure of time and resources on those parties, indeed...

Now...
Imperial Centre

I said once that an unimaginable evil would find its way to our galaxy one day. And now it has. Tilaric Brell, and his Wrath Virus, are that evil. I can only wonder at how we managed to stave off utter destruction at his hands, being as idiocratic a galaxy we are. It is a mystery that perhaps will never be revealed to us. And if it is? What then? Will we learn from it? Become better people for it? Of course not. We will remain the same - idiocratic to the last.

The Wrath Virus had claimed victims even with those who (thought they were) abolishing the idiocratics of society. A side effect of righteousness, and the sacrafice of those martyrs was held in the highest esteem. But it had cost the Shadow Guard dearly, their two Star Destroyers scrapped by neccessity and scores of loyalists gone.

It was a time to rebuild, indeed, to start over again. And since all idiocacy started from one centre, it only seemed fair to rebuild from that centre.

Coruscant.

A transport, insignificant in itself, reverted from hyperspace on the fringe of Imperial Centre's space. Like hundreds of other passenger carriers that arrived daily, the Lady of the Stars was not held up in orbit with useless delays - the owners of her line knew where to slip the money to keep the customs officials down, and so it was that a million credits worth of materials were coming to ground with the Lady. It was standard operating procedure on Imperial Centre, as it had been on Coruscant under Republic rule, and Ominii would not have been surprised to find that highlighted in the Imperial Customs Officer's Handbook.

The lines went quickly, and soon Ominii and a dozen of his remaining top officers were on the planet with him. They rented a landspeeder and moved quickly towards the City Centre, if there really was one, and settled.

Tomorrow, the game would begin in earnest...

Imperial Centre...
The Past

Infinite devestation... A world of agony, the very centre of a horrendous evil...

He paused, looking around the ruined property. Threats of passing the Warath virus, even strict Imperial quarantine measures, had not saved this district of Coruscant from the thousands of disillusioned Imperialists who had come here following the outbreak of Wrath. This place, where it began, where the first dozen cases were reported. The place that had first seen the terror of a madman's wrath...

The buildings here were gutted, some with fires lit by Imperial forces in an effort to kill the bacteria, some by the looters. It was those looters who had helped to spread the virus, taking it outside the Imperial quarantine and spreading it to their friends, who spread it to their friends, and so on...

It spread like wildfire!

Inside a week a hundred thousand had died of the mysterious illness, and twice that many had reported symptons. Imperial command was in disarray, no one agreeing on what should - must - be done.

It was all very ironic, in its own twisted way, that the Empire that could develop and pull off plots such as Endgame could not find out who had unleashed this horror upon their world.

Thus, the easy belief of Tilaric Brell's claim that Regent Hyfe was responsible. A desperate people, in need of something, anything, to believe. A lifeline in a world filled with chaos. A lifeline of hatred...

Imperial Centre...
The Present

He stood, watching the masses of people filling the plaza below him. Untold thousands of lifeforms, all coming together, here. Ominii mused for a moment that this was why the Jedi had errected their temple here. To strengthen a force made of life itself, where better to worship it than the very planet that life was everywhere?

But the hundred thousand people who filled the plaza below were not aware of that. They were oblivious to the outside, aware only the present. Such was the way on Coruscant. The mobs cooperated for their own survival's sake. The only alternative, indeed no alternative at all, was to resort to chaos. And Coruscant's teeming masses had more sense between them than to descent into that pit.

Or, they had, once. Before the War, before Wrath, before everything.

Ominii turned his back on the crowds, contempt beginning to line his face. The masses were no more than ants to the Regent and his henchmen... ants, he mused, or pawns. Pawns in a Galactic-scale game of Chess where the Empire was black. The only problem was that the New Republic had been white, and the New Republic was gone now. And what happens to the pawns when the game is done and over with?