USH'S STAR WARS GAME- CAMPAIGN II EPISODE II (DARK SIDE)- In the Coils of the Serpent

And of course, at this point, a horrible sickly feeling is descending over all of you...

Not least of which if you ever read back through Episodes I and II and count the clues.

It is now clear that your arch-villain in this game has been... none other than Melkus Doon, the man who has the Serpent behind him, but lacked the necessary authority by birth to make the job official.

If you guys had spent more time looking into it, you might have discovered the rumour that the increasingly discontent Serpent cells that Vigo was losing control of were becoming somehow united.

With her father and brothers dead, Jena is the only one of birth left. But no woman can rule the Serpent.

But when he marries Jena, Doon will be in the family! Of course, that's no good whilst the others were around...

... unless, somehow, they were all violently butchered...

But now here is the big one. How... HOW did he do this? HOW???!!

And there you might have had some answers also- if you had found the true story of Siva Lantarnas.

But the tablet is real, so we didn`t totally lose?!

We also left behind Takuan's tablet.

Ah yes. The tablet. Rand's a bit upset with that. It's an index file. It doesn't mean anything worthwhile.

Not surprising- because Siva simply stole the first one he saw.

And it's not from Avalar.

(can I please kill something right about now? Preferably Doon?)

Heck, Takuan's one was probably worth MORE...

That's not helping Rianna's sudden need to kill things........

Well, somehow I doubt that any of you are happy right now!

But you still haven't worked out how he did it.

BTW, this is the best day of my Dark Side life...

I shall be making some revelations over the next few hours, to kill the time before Rex arrives and then comes to England to kill me.

Hahaha....yes....I think he is going to kill you....even I would slightly be tempted if not for the fact that I'm too damn amused at how we were manipulated into all this.....

(pokes)

So Kuylen is likely death?!

You have no idea- perhaps someone does?

Well, it is the fault of Galder and old guard! I thought they trust Doon! Why didn`t we checked him as we should?!!

Well... he saved all their lives... and then Rand was so keen to get the tablet, and Kuylen's old crew were so keen to get to HIM...

... no-one ever seemed to question Doon!

Damm you Ushgarak, make the revelations now! I can`t learn for my exams because of this suspense!

Or perhaps I am overly dramatic.....

Heh, don't worry, seems I am causing a lot of anxiety...

Very well then...

---

Revelation the First- The Historic Hero (and his Merry Men)

One story you never got was the real deal behind Siva. If Tanic had showen enough interest and just said to the Librarians "Screw the legend, what REALLY happened?" he could have bit by bit revealed the true story.

The most important bit being the nature of how he tricked the Sith. No knowledge of that is exact... but the Librarians could have told you that at the point he boarded the ship, half the Sith in that ship were fighting the other half, and not necessarily only on two sides. All as a result of Siva's lies.

See, Siva had this remarkable ability- he was the straightest liar in the Galaxy. Hooked into a lie detector he wouldn't even cause a blip- and he was so good at it, no force user could ever sense a gulty conscience from him that might reveal a lie.

How did he himself trick the masters of deception? Simple- he didn't HAVE to. Siva relied upon the Sith's greatest weakness- their habit of turning on each other. He didn't bother to trick the really clever ones. He only had to trick the stupid ones- and the fighting would then draw in everyone, smart or stupid!

And even the less stupid ones, the mid-rankers, the equivalent of you guys... all he had to do was give them a convincing enough lead, and their natural lust and desire for power would make them careless.

Next clue was Siva's copy of the tablet. Aside from the fact that Takuan, if he had looked at the length and width data I talked about, would have clocked that the tablet was not the same type as was found at Avalar, no-one ever wondered... how could Siva have had an exact copy of the tablet ready BEFORE he snatched it?

The answer was simple- he'd seen it quite a few times before hand. And how did he do that? Because Siva wasn't the Sith's enemy- he was their friend. He ingratiated himself into their good books... to get the info he needed. Siva's greatest weapon was his cunning. Many Sith thought he was their best friend. Sound familiar?

And if any Sith sensed a hint of treachery... who the hell was going to suspect an irrelevant mundane servant of theirs, when there were hundreds of other Sith around? It was all too beautiful for Siva.

In fact the snatch was the least dangerous part of the entire operation. It was the set-up that was so fantastic! The man who conned the Sith- the stuff legends are made of.

The most hilarious part of all was when Galder remarked that the Sith must have been useless to have beaten by Siva... when Doon was doing the exact same thing!

Everywhere, people were saying that Vigo might have been solid, but he just wasn't cunning enough. If yoiu had investigated thouse rumours, you would have found that people thought the original spirit of the Serpent was gone- that no-one had the touch of Siva any more. No-one was quite as daring and bold and cunning and talented as the founder; the lne was weak and spent.

But Doon has all those qualities. All he needed was somnething fantastic to put him into power! Wiping out the Lantarnans was only half of it. The other half...

... was in tricking the Dark Side into getting him the tablet.

Doon has successfully re-created the original stunt that created the Serpent- and proven to you all exactly how you trick the Dark Side. The game works for you players just as the plot does for your characters- you are all so drawn along by what is in offer, your senses count for nothing.

Except, opf course, the Force- which was continuously warning you all that you were ALREADY CAUGHT in the Coils of the Serpent... and that by doing so you were sealing your doom.

Two extracts from people's pre-game visons here:

"And you see none of this ever happening, because a great serpent is coiled around you and your friends, feasting on your flesh"

from Rand's Manifest Destiny.

And rather more tellingly...

"You have walked into the Coils of the Serpent, and there is no escape. You were caught before you knew it, and now surely it will kill you."

from Rianna's dream.

The Coils of the Serpent- which you could have asked about- is the name for the Serpent's notorious political machinations by which they gain power- normally without people realising it. You were all in it, LONG before you got to the citadel- and the Force was telling you. But of course, you were all focussed on Doon's distractions- the Lantarnans, and the tablet.

Siva's legacy seems to live on.

Revelation the Second- the pointless tablet

One to annoy Galder, this one.

As noted, Takuan could have found out in advance that the tablet was the wrong shape. Not a total giveaway- it was meant to be a special one, after all.

It's Galder who was the only one who could have pointed out the flaw in the whole scenario- and only then if his memory from Campaign I Episode I was damn good. Still, he is the one who writes all about it, and the story has been often repeated, so it was possible!

Siva stole the tablet from the Main Sith Armada.

Avalar was nothing to do with the Main Sith Armada!

If you remember... it was bullt by renegade Sith, specifically breaking away from Sith orthodoxy. Heck, it was the mainstream Sith that killed them all!

And all the Avalar tablets were made... ON Avalar... and never left it.

The idea that Kuylen was chasing the missing Avalar tablet was one small hole in Doon's story.

And now, I guess, Doon will sell us to Bureau?!

Revelation the Third- the uber-moo of all moos

In a story where things have worked very well, plot wise, did anything work better than Jena Lantarnas? Possibly only Doon himself.

In on the plan on the beginning, Jena was the odd one out of the Lantarnas crowd- genuinely talented, hideously evil (more so than Doon, by a long way; Doon may be callous but he does that to be practical- Jena scarily enjoys it), and disturbingly efficient.

Looking through everything that happened with ena will make you cringe. Because she was helping you ALL the way! But she was so damn good at making you hate her, that it LOOKED like she was your enemy. In fact, she pulled Galder out of the arena before Bora could get his hands on him, pointed you continuously in the right direction, and almost infurstration at your slow progress, GAVE you the key!

One of the funniest parts for me was when, of all things, you decided to make your entrance into the Serpent work by choosing Jena as the one to trick! Amazingly inspired really- because she was going to 'believe' any story you gave (and quickly dismissed Mika when he turned up asking who you guys were).

And talking of Mika... an early plot point that got forgotten was that it seemed apparent that Jena had messed up lately. This would have been seen to be to Mika's advantage. Jena later got Rianna to do that break-in (an excuse to give you guys the key) on the idea she needed info from Mika's place to solve the problem he had caused her. If asked, many people in the Citadel would have expressed surprise that Mika seemed to have beaten Jena for once.

In fact, Jena set up Mika to be able to beat her, thinking he had done it., She did this so that she had a valid excuse to leave the citadel before the slaughter. She improvised to make it a reason to get the key to you. The crystal contained nothing important- a dud.

As were the explosives on the ship, which is why Galder was able to disable them so quickly- he was so panicked at the time, though, he just thought he was lucky.

Everything else- like the midi-chlorian testing- was just her having enormous fun at your expense; she was never going to try and stop you. But she DID torture Galder until he had a story that would convince the OTHERS, which is what worried her.

The punchline? You guys being triumphantly happy at the prospect of her coming back home and seeing the devastation caused in her absence. When in fact.. it had all been at her bidding, to her advantage.

So why Jenna wanted to throw Takuan out of the window?!