The Sith Lords had entombed their bodies on the mausoleum world of Korriban, trapping their essences in temples of Sith Sorcery. They were able to roam the dark side realm beyond death without being consumed there. At the crisis point of his struggle to return to Byss, Palpatine had been found by some of these Dark Lords. They had offered to save him by guiding him to his destination. They even claimed that they had done so once before, after Endor. Palpatine had no recollection of that, but neither did he have a choice about trusting the spirits. The Sith had shown him the way to reach his clones, guiding him through the madness and terror that obscured all pathways. They had taken him to Byss, and opened the way for Palpatine to enter a new, young body. Luke Skywalker had not destroyed all of the clones. Palpatine would never have kept them in one vulnerable location…not after Urn Zelotes’ treachery. Deep below the chamber Luke ravaged, there was another collection of waiting clones. As Palpatine inhabited one, he knew he had won again.
Except…that he hadn’t. The clone he had entered was flawed. Before long, his scientists told him, it would begin to fill up with necrosis, and finally die. As punishment for this failure, the Constable of Homunculi, Rollo Mon, had been executed along with his coworkers. They had not had enough time to study the clone and realize that its decay would also cause the Emperor to go slowly insane. Unsuspecting, Palpatine had turned his attention to the Rebel Alliance, confident that if his body died, he could take another.
Now, as he considered the matter, it became clear that he had been betrayed, and not only by his scientists. The Sith spirits had been his true enemy. Of all the remaining clones they could have guided him to, they chose the defective one, the one that meant his death. Why had they wanted to destroy him in this way? The reason, he realized, was simply for revenge for what he had done to them.
Decades ago, Palpatine had been taken by the remnants of the Sith as a boy. They had thought that he was prophesied to lead them to greatness once again. For a while, he learned all he could about the dark side from them. But Palpatine was then chosen by the dark side itself to be its greatest servant. He surpassed the Sith, and found he had little need for such a pathetic collection of outcasts, hiding from history in their dusty monastery. He left them with empty promises, and went away to enter galactic politics.
Eventually, a use for the Sith presented itself. Palpatine had wanted to destroy the Jedi as an obstacle to his rise. The Sith seemed like a useful weapon to him. He had set up Darth Vader as the supposed fulfillment of that old Sith prophecy, and then he had used the revitalized Sith against their ancient Jedi foe. The long exile had weakened the power of the Sith, and in the resulting battles, the Sith had been wiped out. Their Dark Lord, Darth Vader, had become the Emperor’s servant, and was charged with completing the eradication of the weakened Jedi order. Palpatine saw this state of affairs as the proper order of things, but he admitted that the ancient Sith Lords might well have felt differently. Now he strongly suspected that it was their long-delayed revenge to guide him into a defective clone. It suggested that Palpatine might have been able to reach a healthy clone without their help…or perhaps not. Perhaps the Sith Lords hadn’t wanted him to die right away. Perhaps they had wanted to enjoy the spectacle of an insane and desperate Emperor before he met his final fate.
And what a spectacle it had been. The slow loss of his sanity meant that many of the more recent events were unclear in his memory, but those that he did recall were enough to fill him with shame and rage for his foolish decisions. No doubt the Sith had enjoyed their revenge. If Palpatine had his way, he would enjoy his even more. Upon returning to life, he would take the Sovereign-class Star Destroyer Eclipse II and lay waste to the entire planet of Korriban. But only after having his revenge on Luke Skywalker and his sister.
Palpatine breathed slowly, trying to calm himself. The hard part was now at hand…remembering what had happened while he was insane.
Although he had returned to Byss, he had allowed his survival to remain a secret for a while, hoping to flush out any traitors who would feel free to act in his absence. That had been his first mistake. Two of his dark adepts did betray him, and before they died, they destroyed all of his remaining healthy clones. From that moment, he had been trapped in the one fateful necrotic body. Yet, neither he nor his followers recognized his madness. That did not happen until later, after he had revealed to Luke Skywalker that he was still alive. But surely, the insanity must already have been growing. Palpatine was not making rational decisions. He had toyed with Skywalker, sending a series of incompetent dark side warriors after him, instead of simply using another Force Storm.