Darth Vader is furious, storming through Jabba's palace, impaling two of Jabba's guards! He demands an audience with the vile Hutt, right this second.
Jabba cannot believe the cheek of this lowlife. Their meeting was only tomorrow, and the agreement was no one was to die. Vader responds that he will be back tomorrow as the Emperor's representative but tonight he is here for himself. Jabba orders his surrounding guards to kill the upstart sith lord. Vader deflects with ease, then proceeds to force-choke Jabba. Jabba quickly gives into Vader.
We time-jump to Vader taking on Ben Kenobi and the destruction of the Death Star. Vader remembers clasping the lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker and the boy who used it, making Darth Vader determined to find the boy.
The Emperor was furious with Vader for the loss of the Death Star and as punishment sent him to the outer rim. The Emperor is then joined by a mysterious man, sending Vader off.
We jump back to Vader demanding bounty hunters from Jabba. Jabba gifts Vader the best bounty hunter he has to offer, the Mandolorian Boba Fett. Vader commands Fett to find the boy only knowing that they had escaped on a ship called the Millenium Falcon.
Vader rejoins his forces all commanded by a man called General Tagg.
Far across the galaxy, a young woman breaks into a facility dodging lasers and guards, she comes across a droid rolling towards her, she dives into a room just as the door closes. She turns and there are droids waiting for her. The droids start to take her away just as a ship lands and Vader exits. The woman runs, nearly falling off a ledge but manages to grab onto something. Vader makes short work of the droids and then offers his hand to the woman. The woman is revealed to be Doctor Aphra. They board her ship where she inquires how she may help Vader. Vader states that the droids she had recently reactivated impressed him.
Aphra goes over and reactivates a protocol and an astromech droid. The protocol droid is needed to activate the astromech droid, which turns out is an assassin, that only speaks binary. She asks Vader what he needs her to do. Vader states he needs his own private resources, not controlled by the Empire, he needs troops with unquestioning loyalty. Aphra suggests that they get moving to Geonosis as she does not want to let Vader down. Vader agrees.
On Geonosis, Aphra sends the two droids deep into the planet to see what they can find while she and Vader stay on the planet's surface. Aphra asks Vader if he has been here before. We see a flashback to Episode 2 with Anakin and Padme kissing as they ride into the arena. Vader ignores the question and tells Aphra to get back to work.
The droids are shown to be going deeper into the planet, mapping their routes until they find a room with insect-like droids which remain still, The protocol droid asks for info yet still they remain silent. The protocol droid gives the order to the astromech droid, who proceeds to set fire to the room and the insect-like droids inside.
Vader and Aphra later join their droids to discover that the insect-like droids were part of a hive mind and the Queen does not think of their droids as droids.
They venture deeper and confirm this suspicion. Aphra questions Vader's plan to remove the droids from the Queen, Vader ignores her and only replies ‘yes’ before cutting off the Queen's limbs.
The Queen screams and shouts for her children to come to her aid. The assassin droid turns his flamethrower on the children, as Vader uses the ship to lift the factory out of the ground.
In the ship, Aphra expresses that Vader has his army, and asks whether he will kill her now or later. Vader replies that she is resourceful and will be safe as long as he finds need of her. He warns though that if she betrays him, he will end her.
The protocol droid joins then to report that the wookie, Vader had hired, had found the mysterious man. Vader demands answers from the man, including the task that the Emperor had assigned him. The man resists Vader. Vader storms off leaving the protocol droid, who takes immense pleasure in this, to torture him. It does not take much time to discover the man was told to build "rivals" to Vader, to ultimately replace him.
They head to the "secret" base and prepare for an attack. The droids provide a distraction while Vader cuts a hole in the ship sending all the guards out into the vacuum of space. Vader commands his new droid army to crush all resistance. As Vader marches through the ship, he enters a room where he finds two humans holding lightsabers.
They use what seems to be the force, closing the door isolating Vader from his army. Vader and the two humans start duelling but the duel is stopped by the mysterious man, who Vader cannot believe survived the torture. The man is revealed to be a clone.
Vader declares that he was under the impression that the Empire was creating new apprentices. The man states that they are not apprentices but better than any jedi or sith as he motions towards his team that has just destroyed Vader's army. Vader is furious and swings at the man, but the Emperor, who suddenly appears from nowhere, stops him. The Emperor tells the man that he has gained his attention and so must prove if he is worthy of it. The man proceeds to send all of the "replacements" after Vader.
A lizard looking creature comes at Vader first, whom Vader dispatches with ease. Next a woman with dozens of droids, whom she commands to fire on the sith lord, has her turn. Vader deflects every blaster bolt before blowing up the droids. Next, a squid looking creature wielding four lightsabers appears. Vader, clearly the better duellist, defeats him with ease. Annoyed, the man commands the all the entities to rush Vader together, in his attempt to please the Emperor and prove himself worthy.
The squid tries again, but Vader cuts his arm. The lizard leaps forward to take a bite out of the sith, but one of the ‘replacements’ kills him, sparing Vader. The Emperor growing weary of the show calls for an end.
Vader looks upon the ‘replacement’ who saved him, a boy, and says that he will not forget it. The boy replies that he did not do it for Vader. Vader responds that the lizard was his life to take and that the boy interfered in something he shouldn't have.
Vader leaves with the Emperor. The Emperor is impressed with Vader's initiative at gaining his own forces outside of the Empire but Vader is furious at the creation of these so called "replacements". The Emperor explains that Vader has failed him and that it is the way of the sith where only the strong survive.
Vader leaves the Emperor and joins Aphra back on the ship. Aphra gives Vader the message from Fett who Vader had earlier sent on a mission to find the boy. Fett, unable to find the boy does however manage to discover his name. The boy is none other than Skywalker.
We are taken to several flashbacks in Episode 3 where Padme reveals to Anakin that she is pregnant, then to Anakin’s decent to becoming Darth Vader, then to the Emperor’s relaying of the news of Padme's death, and finally of the young boy using Anakin's lightsaber. Vader realises that he has a son and he will ultimately have him and have everything!
To be continued in part 2...
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