beyond the wildest dreams of many species and access to starships of the highest quality, they were unwilling to leave their holdings on Muunilinst unattended. Nor were they interested in colonization for its own sake — in spreading their seed — because the more Muuns the galaxy contained, the less wealth there would be to go around.
Eventually, though, autarky and isolationism ceded to a desire to make themselves essential to the galaxy, and the Muuns began to fund settlements established by other worlds, or by independent groups, self-exiled as often as not. And so colonies at the distal end of the Braxant Run became dependent on Muunilinst for support, borrowing against the promise of discovering rich veins of ore or precious metals. When, however, the purported treasures failed to materialize, or markets became saturated, resulting in lower prices, the careworn populations of those settlements found themselves hopelessly indebted to Muunilinst and were forced to accept direct oversight by the Muuns.
So it happened that Plagueis’s clan father, Caar Damask, came to be administrator of the treasure world of Mygeeto.
Located in Muunilinst’s own stellar neighborhood, and a fertile breeding ground for nova, artesian, and low- level Adegan crystals, Mygeeto—
Already a member of long standing in the IBC, the elder Damask had accepted the assignment as a personal favor to Muunilinst’s High Officer, Mals Tonith, but more in the hope of advancing a career that had stalled and kept him confined to middle management. Unrecognized for his genius and angry about it, Damask had left his primary wife and clanmates behind and had attempted to build if not a life then at least a career for himself on the remote ice world. Success in supervising the mining operations came in short order, but contentment, of any sort, proved elusive until the arrival — ten years after his own — of a lower-caste Muun female who would first become his assistant, then his codicil wife, in due course giving birth to a son they named Hego, after Caar’s clan father.
His upbringing in a domed city in a perpetually frozen environment was in many ways the antithesis of the typical Muun childhood, and yet young Hego managed not only to endure but to prosper. His mother took what some considered to be an unhealthy interest in his development, recording every detail and encouraging him to share even his most furtive thoughts with her. She was especially interested in observing his interactions with playmates — of diverse species — which she was never at a loss to provide, interrogating him after every session about his feelings about this or that youngling. Even Caar found time enough from a demanding schedule to be a doting parent.
Hego was not yet five years old when he began to sense that he was somehow different. Not only was he more astute than his playmates, but he could often manipulate them, arousing laughter when he wished to, or just as often tears; comfort just as often as anxiety. He learned to read intentions and body language. When he sensed that someone didn’t like him he would go out of his way to be generous, and when he sensed that someone liked him too much he would occasionally go out of his way to be difficult, as a means of testing the limits of the relationship. He divined tricks and deceits, and sometimes allowed himself to play the victim, the dupe, out of concern for arousing unwanted suspicion or being forced to reveal too much about his hidden talents.
As his abilities increased, other children became playthings rather than playmates, but with no loss of enjoyment on Hego’s part. One afternoon a Muun youngster he had grown to dislike pushed his way past Hego in an effort to be first to reach a staircase that led down to the Damask home’s lower-level courtyard. Grabbing his peer by the upper arm, Hego said, “If you’re in such a rush to get downstairs, then jump out the window.” Locking glances, Hego repeated the suggestion, and his victim took it to heart. Many questions were asked after the youngling’s broken body was discovered in the courtyard, but Hego kept the truth from everyone but his mother. She made him go over his explanation in increasing detail, until finally saying, “I’ve long suspected that you have the gift your father and I share, and now I know it to be true. It’s a strange, wondrous power, Hego, and you have it in abundance. Your father and I have spent our lives keeping our gifts a closely guarded secret, and I want your word that for the time being you will speak of it only to me or to him. Later in life this power will serve you well, but right now it must remain undisclosed.”
Having lived a surreptitious life for so many years, Hego found the notion of sharing the secret only with his parents completely natural.
No one held him responsible for his playmate’s plunge from the window, but, soon after, the steady stream of playmates began to dry up. Worse, his father began to grow distant — even while Hego found himself becoming more and more a part of Caar’s world. He considered that his father might be lying about having the power, or had come to think of Hego as some kind of monster. And yet he observed his father employing his eldritch powers of persuasion and manipulation in business dealings.
Like Muunilinst, Mygeeto received many important visitors, and at times it struck Hego that, in lieu of his being able to explore the galaxy, the galaxy was coming to him. On several occasions, his father met with Jedi Knights and Padawans who came in search of Adegan crystals, which the Jedi Order used in the construction of training lightsabers. Hego had long since perfected his ability to mask his powers from others. Even without revealing his true nature to the Jedi he was able to sense in them a kind of like-minded power, though one that was clearly at cross purposes with his own. From early on he knew that he could never be one of them, and he began to abhor their visits, for reasons he couldn’t grasp. Even more puzzling, he came to sense a power closer to his own in a Bith visitor named Rugess Nome. Nome wasn’t a Jedi but a starship engineer, who arrived in a luminous vessel of his own design. Before long, however, Hego began to suspect that his mother was the reason for Nome’s frequent visits. And the suspicion that there was something between them incited feelings of anger and jealousy in young Hego, and a kind of conflicted despondency in his father.
Hego had made up his mind to bring his power to bear on the intolerable situation when, during one of Nome’s visits, he was summoned to his father’s office, where Caar, his mother, and the Bith were waiting. Without looking at his wife, Caar had said, “You are of our blood, Hego, but we can no longer raise you as our progeny.”
Hego had looked from his father to his mother in mounting distress, fearing the very words Caar added a moment later. With a nod toward Nome, he said, “In truth, and in ways that you will eventually come to understand, you belong to him.”
A decade later, Hego would learn that while Caar had, in fact, done his best to keep his Force abilities to himself, he had come to the attention of Nome when the two had chanced to meet on High Port Space Center. Years would pass before Nome found Hego’s mother, whom he had conscripted not as an apprentice — for she wasn’t strong enough in the Force — but as a disciple, whose task it had been to romance Caar and bear the fruit of that seduction: a child whom Nome and Bith science predicted would be born strong in the Force. Hego’s parents had safeguarded the secret until his power had begun to reveal itself. And then a deal had been brokered: Hego, in exchange for the realization of Caar Damask’s lifelong dream of being accepted into the upper echelon of the InterGalactic Banking Clan.
Five years after the revelation in the office, Caar was recalled to Muunilinst to become director of the treasury branch of the IBC. Hego’s mother vanished, never to be seen again by either husband or son. And Hego’s apprenticeship to Sith Lord Darth Tenebrous commenced.
In addition to being widely respected as a savant engineer and starship designer, Rugess Nome headed a shadowy organization that over the decades had gathered intelligence on the dealings of nearly every criminal, smuggler, pirate, and potential terrorist who had left a mark on the galaxy. With young Hego masquerading as Nome’s accountant, the two secret Sith had traveled widely, often conspiring with the galaxy’s most notorious beings, and facilitating anarchy whenever possible.
