User:MPK/Rebus

=Introduction: Explaining the Name and Other Things=



Aside from commenting on canon and fan-made Star Wars stories from my considerably changed perspective, one of the purposes of my Looking Back essays is to reflect on my own fan works, the majority of which are unfinished and will probably remain in such a state. Because I'm a chronic procrastinator and have been for years, the majority of these incomplete stories and never-begun ideas ended up producing a sizable collection of outlines, character notes, scraps of prose, brainstormings, and other scribbles. All these sit together on my hard drive in a single folder which I eventually named the "Rebus File", after  who spends his days tinkering with nondescript machinery in the depths of a labyrinthine sewer. So as a supplement to my Looking Back reflections, I will be copying selections from the Rebus File and leaving them here, to which they will be linked when appropriate in my essays. The extracts will be for the most part unedited (format adjustments excepted) though I may put in some in-line commentary, which will be in bold text and brackets or something like that to distinguish it. -MPK, Free Man  14:45, January 3, 2016 (UTC)

Extract 1: Dark Order.txt
The much-bloated and monotonously military-centric Dark Order continuity was supposed to be accompanied by a series of novel-length stories, chronicling various events of the war with an excessive focus on the villains. At one time I had a series of detailed but nevertheless mismatched and incomplete outlines, as well as snippets of prose that I produced and poked at whenever I fancied. Several times I found my preparatory writings to be unsatisfactory and re-did everything. Since then, however, all has been lost except for the very last and sparsest of these outlines, which follows and describes the basic shifts of focus and point-of-view that the story would have taken as it developed. Apparently I never got around to finishing the outline this time. Again, in-line comments are indicated by bold text. -MPK, Free Man  14:45, January 3, 2016 (UTC)

Section A
First arc: The first main protagonist is Jaden Korr, and the saga proper begins toward the end of the events of JKA. Jaden's character direction is to be established in these final missions. Kyle Katarn and the other Jedi colleagues of Jaden's are starting to see how he's slowly turning darker after Vjun. The friendship between Jaden and Kyle starts to get strained as he focuses more on building his power and reclusive meditation, and that phase of the character arc ends with Korriban, Jaden's fall, and the founding of the Dark Order. [Here we see what I talked about in essay 1: the crappiness of Jedi Academy's story and of the post-Endor EU in general provoked me into needing to fix the backstory of everyone and everything.]

Second arc: After the capture of numerous Jedi apprentices from Yavin, Jaden takes an interest in Jorus Kuun, whom he considers to be among the strongest of them. The two share much of the narrative as the two leading villain protagonists, with Jaden's part focusing on what he has to do to keep control over the Dark Order and the nature of his beliefs about the Force, and Jorus' being about how he adjusts to his new life as a Dark Jedi and redefine his identity. Darth Persia should be introduced as a supporting character, but his true nature is to be obscured at first.

The "hero" side of the story would at this point be supplied mostly by Kyle Katarn, who is trying to deal with Jaden's fall as he hunts down his fallen student. Jorus' former master, Devereus Addes, can provide another perspective, since he is also being forced to deal with the loss of a student. The two will find themselves working together on occasion. '''[I don't think I ever got much of anything fleshed out about this Master Addes character. Again, you can see throughout this outline that, even in the late period of my interest in this whole storyline, I still couldn't find much of any place to fit some actual heroes in. Kyle Katarn pretty much stops being relevant after Jaden's death, and Luke Skywalker never became relevant until it was his turn to get killed off some time later.]'''

Third arc: After realizing Jorus' power, Darth Persia secretly takes him as a Sith apprentice. This complicates things for Jorus, who will have to deal with being taught by both the Sith and Jaden while simultaneously trying to purge himself of his lingering Jedi restraints. Meanwhile, Jaden finds his control over the Dark Order slowly deteriorating while the competent military leaders (such as Persia) are earning more respect.

This will eventually culminate in the Second Battle of Bakura. Up to that point, Persia finds training Jorus a bit frustrating, as the inferior teachings of the Order are starting to bleed over onto the Sith teachings, so Jorus' final test is to kill Jaden once and for all. This event ends as it did in the original version, with Jaden's death, the destruction of Bakura, and Persia's control over the Dark Order beginning.

Section B
Fourth arc: After settling on Eriadu, declaring the Greater Sith Empire, and launching the First Expansionary Campaign, Persia turns his attention to refining his apprentice, whom he has bestowed with the title of "Darth Imperious". He sends Imperious on a series of assignments designed to test his command of the Force and his ability to lead soldiers and fleets in battle. Imperious generally succeeds, and Persia is satisfied for the moment, though he knows that the training is only beginning. '''[Can you imagine Darth Maul leading fleets and armies on his own? Yeah, I didn't think so.]'''

On the other side, the arcs of Kyle and Devereus are continued, with the latter man getting more coverage since Jaden is dead. Deverus holds out hope that he will somehow be able to find Jorus, but his zeal to do so starts to become an obsession. '''[Aaaaaaand then at some point Imperious kills him. The end. That's all I can ever remember hammering out.]'''

Fifth arc: Much further along in his training, Imperious is put up to the task of advancing his skills in other areas which he is lacking: teaching and leading others. To start him off on this, Persia pairs him up with a less-experienced Sith acolyte named Danik Kalnar as part of an informal apprenticeship. Imperious, however, is a bit more eager than Persia knows, and has in fact been pursuing a Jedi Knight whom he plans to turn and take as a secret apprentice. Imperious and Danik are somewhat like-minded, but any chances of the two getting along are destroyed when Danik kills Imperious' target. '[The Force Unleashed'' had somewhat recently come out, so I unimaginatively latched onto that. Not that "secret apprentice" stuff was an idea invented by TFU, but it was in the air at the time, so all the kiddies were goofing around writing fanfic for it or being directly influenced by it.]'''

Frustrated, Persia terminates the partnership and advises his apprentice to seek out ways of putting his power to better, more specialized use than simply winning the war. Prompted by repeated questioning from Imperious, Persia reveals his origins and says that he has seen a lot of his past self in both Jaden and Imperious, and cautions his student to avoid neglect of the more practical, down-to-earth aspects of the Sith legacy. '''[The outline ends here. Overall it seems to represent my first serious attempt to conceptualize how the Dark Order storyline would appear as an actual narrative, but as you can see, this effort didn't go very far.]'''