Darth Plagueis/Legends

"If you don't already want to murder me, you will before I'm through with you. The urge to kill one's superior is intrinsic to the nature of our enterprise. My unassailable strength gives rise to your envy; my wisdom fuels your desire, my achievements incite your craving. Thus it has been for one-thousand years, and so it must endure until I have guided you to parity. Then, Sidious, we must do our best to sabotage the dynamic Darth Bane set in motion, because we will need each other if we are to realize our ultimate goals. In the end, there can be no secrets between us; no jealousy or mistrust. From us, the future of the Sith will fountain..."

- Darth Plagueis to Darth Sidious

Darth Plagueis&mdash;born under the name of Hego Damask and remembered as Darth Plagueis the Wise&mdash;was a Muun Dark Lord of the Sith, heir to the lineage of Darth Bane and a master of midi-chlorian manipulation, who lived during the century leading up to the Invasion of Naboo. Obsessed with eternal life, Plagueis experimented with ways to cheat death and create new life from the midi-chlorians.

His great contribution to the history of the galaxy was training Darth Sidious in the ways of the Sith and the dark side of the Force, whom he incited to take control of the galaxy and bring about an age of the Sith. Sidious, convinced that his master had outlived his usefulness, eventually killed the Muun in his sleep.

Sidious later recounted the tale as The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise&mdash;an old "Sith legend"&mdash;to sway Anakin Skywalker to the dark side, though Plagueis himself remained a mysterious figure to the Jedi and their allies well into the time of the Galactic Alliance.

Pre-birth
Several years before Hego Damask's birth, his father, a Force-sensitive Muun named Caar Damask, who worked as a middle ranking Banking Clan agent, met renowned starship designer Rugess Nome by chance on High Port Space Center. Nome, in his capacity as reigning Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Tenebrous, had been searching for the right apprentice to train for the sole purpose of eventually possessing through the virulent midi-chlorians he had dubbed "maxi-chlorians" in order for his consciousness to survive until the creation of the Chosen One. Years after his meeting with Damask, Tenebrous discovered another Force-sensitive Muun&mdash;a lower-caste female&mdash;and conscripted her as a disciple, for she was not strong enough in the Force to be considered for apprenticeship. Tenebrous, using Bith scientific methods, had predicted that the offspring of Damask and his disciple would be strong in the Force. For this purpose, he tasked his Muun disciple to seduce Caar Damask and bear him a child.

Early life
"In truth, and in ways you that you will eventually come to understand, you belong to him."

- Caar Damask to his son, referring to Darth Tenebrous

Born on Mygeeto sometime between 200 and 100 BBY, the son of Caar Damask, who had become the planet's administrator more than ten years earlier, and his codicil wife, Hego Damask was named after his grandfather. Growing up in a domed city on a perpetually frozen and sparsely populated planet under the overly attentive gaze of his mother, Hego had a very atypical childhood for a Muun. She recorded every detail of his upbringing, encouraged him to talk with her about even the most furtive of his thoughts, and provided playmates for him, observing his interactions with them and interrogating him about his feelings regarding each specific youngling. Before his fifth birthday, Hego discovered that he could manipulate the Force by using it to ply the feelings of his playmates. He eventually tested the limits of this power by using a very potent mind trick on a Muun youngling he had grown to dislike, convincing the boy to commit suicide by jumping into a courtyard from a high window. Hego's mother instructed her son to keep his powers secret, and confided in him that they shared the gift.

Hego's parents handed him over to Nome as a youngling in return for a career advancement for Caar, presumably arranged through the Dark Lord's shadowy intelligence network. Tenebrous took the child as his apprentice, the one he intended to eventually possess, naming him&mdash;at some unknown point&mdash;Darth Plagueis. Plagueis left Mygeeto for the first time in his life, and began his life as a Sith.

Five years after handing his son to the Dark Lord, Caar Damask was appointed director of the treasury branch of the Banking Clan, realizing his lifelong dream of wielding real power within the IBC. His codicil wife disappeared without a trace. Five years after that, Plagueis learned the truth of Tenebrous's machinations that led to his birth. Caar Damask eventually rose to the top of the IBC as Chairman.

Tenebrous and Plagueis
"We Sith are an unseen opposition. A phantom menace. Where the Sith once wore armor, we now wear cloaks. But the Force works through us all the more powerfully in our invisibility."

- Darth Tenebrous to a young Darth Plagueis

Darth Plagueis traveled the galaxy with his master, masquerading as Rugess Nome's young accountant while the two carried out the Sith plan of spreading discontent to ripen the galaxy for their rule.

Around the year 104 BBY, Plagueis undertook the trial of visiting Kursid and fighting its natives with Tenebrous for the first time.

Plagueis later told his own apprentice that his first mission under the tutelage of Lord Tenebrous was undertaken in the twenty-fifth year of his apprenticeship, at some point after 99 BBY: Tenebrous tasked his apprentice to murder Kerred Santhe the Elder. The assassination was accomplished by means of telekinetic strangulation during a banquet on Corulag; the Sith Lords took advantage of the fact that bloat eel was served in order to blame Santhe's death on the chefs. Following this trial, Plagueis veered from the Sith path, as often happens with apprentices when they first discover the potency of the dark side.

At some point, Darth Plagueis inherited the Damask fortune and took over the Sojourn Gatherings from his father. Gatherings were clandestine annual meetings of politicians, the leaders of various trade organizations and cartels, and even gangsters, hosted by Damask Holdings on the moon of Sojourn. Hego Damask transformed the Gatherings from the elite secret club it had been under his father into a Sith tool to influence the most influential beings of the galaxy in order to prepare the Republic for the submission to an enlightened elite promised by Darth Tenebrous.

During their long years together, Tenebrous did not invest in properly training Plagueis as a Sith. Instead, he sent him on various missions he judged pointless as a distraction, and cultivated his apprentice's unprecedented talent for midi-chlorian manipulation, all the while making sure that the Muun would only apply it to the preservation and extension of his own life, thus ensuring that he would live long enough for Tenebrous to possess the body of the Chosen One. Plagueis developed his powers in the Force and in the mundane world largely on his own, and indeed took them further than his Master believed.

The murder of Darth Tenebrous
"Foolish, pathetic Plagueis...."

- Darth Tenebrous's thoughts on his apprentice

67 years before the Battle of Yavin, Darth Tenebrous learned of a cortosis deposit on the planet Bal'demnic, and personally went there to survey it with his apprentice, a treddroid, and an M-2 mining probe provided by Subtext Mining. What neither Tenebrous&mdash;apparently&mdash;nor Plagueis knew was that the probe had been sabotaged by an unknown party, with Subtext's complicity. Inside a cave on the side of a steep escarpment on the shore of the Northern Sea, the two Sith Lords landed their craft, a ship designed by Tenebrous himself, and set out to survey the cortosis vein, using enviro-suits to protect them from the deadly heat.

Tenebrous ascribed special significance to the mission&mdash;he believed that two Sith Lords mining cortosis at the apex of the Rule of Two era amounted to the “closing of a circle,” a circle that had began with Darth Bane, the Sith'ari of legend, starting on the path toward darkness in the Apatros cortosis mines. The enterprise soon came to an unexpected end, however, when the droid reported that the mining probe had discovered a pocket of a highly combustible variant of lethane directly beneath the borehole. Tenebrous ordered the droid to have the probe deactivated, but it failed; the probe overrode the droid’s commands. After the two Sith unsuccessfully tried to damage the probe using Force lightning, they hastened to return to the grotto where they had landed the ship, leaving the treddroid behind. Plagueis made sure to let it know that it had been useful before running away.

As the two Sith ran through the superheated caverns, Plagueis noticed that his Master was uncharacteristically distressed, as if he sensed something alarming in the Force. They had just made it to the grotto near the surface when the gas explosion caught them&mdash;Tenebrous conjured a barrier to shield them from the fireball, and when the ceiling began to collapse, he used the Force to protect the ship. It was at that moment that his apprentice saw a chance to kill him. Plagueis swiftly brought the huge slabs of stone down on his Master&mdash;and their ship&mdash;using the Force. Racing to Tenebrous’s side, Plagueis tried to comfort his Master. The Bith went along with his apprentice’s charade, and conferred the mantle of Sith Master to him. Plagueis informed Tenebrous that his death would mark the end of the Rule of Two, and that he would escape the grotto even without the ship; he then broke the Bith's neck, killing him.

Both Darth Plagueis and Darth Tenebrous had waited a long time for that moment. The latter had hoped that his apprentice would have made his move years earlier, and was happy to finally implement his plan. As Plagueis reached out in the Force to study Tenebrous’s dying midi-chlorians, the maxi-chlorians carrying the Bith's intelligence slipped out of his body undetected and infected a wound on the the Muun’s lower back, caused by a rock or some other projectile. As the maxi-chlorian virus propagated inside Plagueis's cells, Tenebrous accessed his apprentice's powers of foresight, the powers he had had to give up himself in order to code his intelligence into the retrovirus. What he witnessed horrified him: instead of providing access to the Chosen One, Darth Plagueis died at the hands of his own apprentice, "the shadow." After the retrovirus completed the task it had been engineered for, the infection of all the cells in Plagueis's body, the Muun Dark Lord lost his powers of foresight. Tenebrous, after slipping out of his apprentice's body in panic, remained trapped as a disembodied essence in the cave.

After eventually escaping the cave, Plagueis walked to the nearest city with a starport and entered the starship Woebegone inside a refrigerated container full of seafood. Once the crew discovered the stowaway, Plagueis promised to captain Lah that he was prepared not only to offer full recompense for the cargo he had spoiled, but moreover to reward them handsomely in exchange for passage to Muunilinst. He chose not to divulge his identity, however, and most crewmembers treated him with distrust. The deal eventually went sour, and Plagueis killed everyone&mdash;captain Lah, first mate Maa Kaap, the pilot Blir', the navigator Semasalli, and the crewmen Doo Zuto, Wandau and PePe Rossh, all fell to Plagueis's lightsaber; he only spared Lah's droid, 11-4D. Much to Plagueis's displeasure, he was unable to sustain the midi-chlorians of the crewmembers he butchered. Plagueis ordered 11-4D to set a course for the coordinates he provided, and retreated to the captain's quarters. The droid then tended to the festering wound the Dark Lord had received in the cave-in, and served him food and drink.

Gathering of 67 BBY and discovery of Darth Venamis
"I am Darth Venamis.''" "Darth? We'll see about that." "''Your death will legitimize the title, Plagueis."

- Darth Venamis and Darth Plagueis

The Wobegone arrived at Deep Space Demolition and Removal, owned by Damask's ally Boss Cabra of Black Sun. There, he ordered that the Wobegone be sealed and slagged, and requested a change of wardrobe and a fueled, piloted ship to Muunilinst. He arrived on High Port Space Station with 11-4D several days after he had been expected, and was welcomed by Larsh Hill and a retinue of Damask Holdings members accompanied by Echani Sun Guards. He also had a chance encounter with Chairman Tonith of the IBC.

During the Gathering on Sojourn, Plagueis met with Gardulla the Hutt, Qayhuk of the Yinchorri Council of Elders, and Gossam representatives of Subtext Mining. After threatening them for causing the death of Darth Tenebrous, they revealed the presence of a massive plasma reserve recently discovered under the city of Theed on the Mid Rim world of Naboo that could be highly profitable for Damask Holdings. Plagueis chose to spare their lives, ordering his Sun Guards to transport them to the most remote world they could find in the Tingel Arm in case he needed them again.

After the Gathering, Plagueis was informed by his Sun Guards that an intruder had breached the building's security. The Dark Lord sensed this was the work of a Force-sensitive being and set out to challenge him in the forests of Sojourn. Originally, he thought it was a Jedi, but was proved wrong when he attacked by a Bith wielding a crimson lightsaber. Plagueis momentarily believed this to be his deceased Master Tenebrous, and then considered him an artificially-created offspring, but the Bith claimed to have been selected by Tenebrous as his Sith apprentice, Darth Venamis. Venamis told Plagueis that he planned to execute his Master's last command&mdash;to kill Plagueis, and legiimize the title as Darth.

Theirs was a short but fierce duel; so as to better prepare his apprentice for the fight against Plagueis, Tenebrous had taught Venamis the same fighting style as the Dark Lord so that he would have an advantage when they finally faced each other. The Muun originally had trouble fighting this new foe, but eventually gained the upper hand and disarmed Venamis, using both weapons to force Venamis to his knees. The Bith then offered to apprentice himself to Plagueis, but the Muun had other plans for him: he forced Venamis to poison himself by ingesting a poisonous coma-bloom. Plagueis planned to use Venamis as part of his experiments on midi-chlorians by using him as a test subject.

Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious
"Tell me what you regard as your greatest strength, so I will know how best to undermine you; tell me of your greatest fear, so I will know which I must force you to face; tell me what you cherish most, so I will know what to take from you; and tell me what you crave, so that I might deny you."

- Darth Plagueis to a young Darth Sidious



First encounter
"Palpatine.''" "How do you know my name?" "''I know more about you than just your name."

- Darth Plagueis and Palpatine

In 65 BBY, Plagueis, under his public name of Hego Damask, traveled to Naboo so as to gain access to the plasma ressources of the planet. Secretly, Plagueis also hoped to find an apprentice. During this time, Nabo was in the middle of an election for the throne. The candidates divided between a conservative faction wich wanted Naboo to remain isolatonnist so that companies would not exploit them for the plasma, and a liberal faction which desired to fully integrate Naboo into the Galactic Republic. The latter candidate, Bon Tapalo, secured the endorsement of both Damask Holdings and the Trade Federation by promising to open Naboo to trade which would allow them to profit from the plasma resources. In the meantime, Bon Tapalo's opponent was supported by influential figures such as Cosinga Palpatine, patriarch of House Palptine, and Naboo representatve Vidar Kim.

Plagueis eventually learned that Tapalo had an informant in the rival campaign who provided him with vital information. He discovered that the informant was in fact the seventeen-year-old son of Cosinga Palpatine, a student in the Legislative Youth Program. Eager to know more about the young man, Plagueis convinced him when they met at the Program's Theed headquarters to give him a tour of the town.

From this first encounter, Plagueis learned much about the young aristocrat: he was interested in politics but was shy to admit it; had a modest fondness for art and desired for his homeworld to be opened to the wider galaxy. Most notably, Plagueis learned of the young man's severe estrangement with his father which had been going on for years and years. Impressed by the young man's ambition, intelligence and motivations, Plagueis offered to use him as a spy to secure Tapalo's election and Damask Holdings' interests on Naboo. Palpatine accepted the offer on one condition: he would report to Plagueis alone and directly. This led Palpatine to see Plagueis as the father figure he never had.

Initiation
Plagueis was soon approached by Cosinga Palpatine who had notcied the friendship between the Dark Lord and his son. He covertly threatened the Muun to stay away from his son but Plagueis was not impressed. He then contacted Palpatine who was away on Chandrila at the time. The young was furious at his father's attempt to sneak into his affairs and implored Plagueis for advice. Plagueis told him that he needed to do whatever he needed to do to emancipate himself from his father's control.

After Palpatine then murdered his family onboard their starship, Plagueis promised the young Palpatine that he would never be linked to his family's death. He also saw the young man, whose power in the Force was immense, ready to join the Sith as his apprentice. Plagueis named his new apprentice Darth Sidious for he saw in him an insidious nature, a lack of empathy, ambition and arrogance. Sidious knelt before his new Master and swore his loyaulty to the Sith Order.

Training Darth Sidious
He also promised him that, although his training would be severe, they will both attempt to break the cycle enacted by Darth Bane, and thus they shall neither harbor any secrets from each other, nor experience any jealousy or mistrust with each other. Sidious learned from Plagueis over the course of decades, during which Plagueis taught his apprentice everything he knew to prevent the power he had amassed from being lost forever. During Sidious' training, Plagueis gave his apprentice access to his Sith holocrons. Plagueis' lessons involved forcing Sidious to face his fears, denying him pleasures, and taking from him the things he loved. He taught Sidious that emotions such as envy and hatred, though necessary to master the dark side, were simply means to the end of casting aside usual notions of morality for a greater goal. Plagueis also lectured his apprentice on the means of taking power, with the eventual goal of control over the galaxy.

Sidious, meanwhile, began training his own apprentice, Darth Maul, under Plagueis' watchful eye. Sidious would not kill his master, however, until he understood the lessons of Plagueis and had become powerful enough to defeat him.

During the Naboo Crisis, Plagueis and Palpatine became aware of a young boy who stood at a convergence in the Force and who had been born around the same time that they had tried and failed to create life using the force. Palpatine informed his Master, and Plagueis decided to try to meet Anakin for himself. He was able to use the force to persuade a handmaiden to grant him access to Palpatine's suite, but was informed that he had just missed Anakin. For the first time, Plagueis began to fear that the Sith were in danger of being undone.

The death of Darth Plagueis
"You lost the game on the very first day you chose to train me to rule by your side—or better still under your thumb. Teacher, yes, and for that I will be eternally grateful. But Master—never."

- Palpatine to Darth Plagueis

After being elected as Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic Palpatine decided the time had come for him to continue the Grand Plan alone. Having learned all he could from Plagueis, the aging Muun became nothing more than an obstacle. In Damask's penthouse in the Kaldani Spires building, Palpatine plied his master with wine while rehearsing the acceptance speech he would soon deliver before the Senate. Watching as Plagueis became increasingly intoxicated, Palpatine waited patiently until his master fell asleep before unleashing torrent after torrent of Sith lightning upon him, basking in the Muun's agony, as he slowly tortured his master to death. As Plagueis expired his apprentice experienced a monumental shift in the Force. Sidious also suspected that the unease he felt after experiencing the monumental shift in the Force was Darth Plagueis' attempt at reaching out to him, although he immediately dismissed it upon deciding that it was likely Darth Maul's defeat at the hands of Obi-Wan that was the true cause of his unease.

Legacy
"Did you ever hear the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?"

- Palpatine

Nearly a decade before his death, Darth Plagueis, and his apprentice, Darth Sidious, committed an act in direct violation to the nature of the Force. To further the Grand Plan, the two Sith had attempted to will a being of their own design into creation, pouring their malicious intent into waves through the Force to the countless midi-chlorians spread across the galaxy. The experiment yielded unfruitful however, and the midi-chlorians, unwilling to comply, not only denied Plagueis' efforts, but struck back in retaliation, conceiving a savior to ultimately destroy the Sith: the prophesied Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker. Though Plagueis purportedly taught Palpatine all he knew, and Palpatine himself had also participated in the earlier failed attempt at manipulating midichlorians that resulted in Anakin's birth, Palpatine himself was unable to fully master Plagueis' teachings to cheat death through the Force via midichlorians, and was forced to rely on clone bodies to hold his spirit instead.

Sidious spoke little of Plagueis to his apprentice Darth Tyranus, who himself knew the Muun as Hego Damask, and in the following decades, only gave hints to his apprentice, Darth Vader. However, he did use Plagueis' story to seduce Anakin Skywalker into becoming Vader. The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, Palpatine's Sith legend, told of Plagueis' abilities to create and preserve life; according to Palpatine, the tragic irony was that though he could keep others from dying, he could not save himself. Skywalker, seeking Plagueis' power to save his own wife Padmé, later apprenticed himself to Palpatine.

At some point after Palpatine brought the galaxy under his heel by reorganizing the Republic into the First Galactic Empire, probably between 19 and 18 BBY, the Dark Lord included a manuscript fragment on the nature of the dark side and the progress of the Aborah experiments written by Plagueis's hand c. 45 BBY (both dates are Master Luke Skywalker's non-scholarly estimates) into his Book of Sith, showing respect for his master by including him among the handful of Sith who advanced the cause and left behind documents detailing their approach to the dark side.

At some point after Plagueis' death, some of the members of a Sith cult known as the Apex Society, believed that Collan Eislo, the leader of the cult, was being guided by the spirits of deceased Sith Lords, such as Plagueis.

When historians in later years were unable to find much information on Plagueis, they suspected that Palpatine had destroyed everything about his master. The Wavlud Manuscript, one of the few sources of knowledge for the Jedi on the Sith and Sidious, revealed information on Plagueis to the Galactic Alliance and New Jedi Order. It is not known whether the information revealed about Plagueis identified him as the same individual as Hego Damask.

Personality and traits
"You must begin by gaining power over yourself; then another; then a group, an order, a world, a species, a group of species&hellip; finally, the galaxy itself."

- Darth Plagueis

Darth Plagueis was considered to be a mystic, despite the fact that he sought to develop an entirely rationalistic system of Force study, was among the few Sith Lords to have serious doubts about the the existence of Force ghosts, and was similarly weary of supposed prophecies. He was a devotee of the dark side, and a lover of things otherworldly and arcane. Obsessed with the prospect of eternal life and ideas of spontaneous generation, he remained focused on matters of the material world, though in later years Darth Vader mused that Plagueis had also desired a way to preserve the immaterial self after the death of the body. Although Plagueis was ultimately a Sith Lord, he also intended to have a genuine bond with his apprentice, Darth Sidious, in an attempt to break the cycle that the Sith'ari, Darth Bane, had started and thus further their own goals, although it ultimately failed when Sidious murdered him.

Plagueis was wise and possessed a logical mind, and his apprentice Palpatine believed that the extent to which he turned his sight inward was the source of his power and knowledge. He believed that power was to be gained incrementally, beginning with the self and culminating with control of the entire galaxy. As his own powers grew, he became afraid of nothing but losing that power. Plagueis was pathologically afraid of death, and this was the main reason he was chosen by Darth Tenebrous as an apprentice. He elected to change the usual means of Sith succession, death of the master by the hand of the apprentice, by becoming immortal together with his own apprentice and forgoing the need for succession, but as a result of his arrogance and his lack of precognitive abilities resulting from his maxi-chlorian infection, he never saw his own death coming.

Powers and abilities
"Ironic. He could save others from death, but not himself.''" "Is it possible to learn this power?" "''Not from a Jedi."

- Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker

Plagueis was a master of esoteric and unnatural aspects of the Force. With it, he was able to manipulate the essence of life, a power Palpatine believed was directly tied to his inward sight. Plagueis could save others from death and, when his power was applied to the extreme, create new life from the midi-chlorians found in all lifeforms. Plagueis even discovered the ability to retain one's identity in the Force while becoming one with it, but this manner of surviving death did not appeal to him, as he was not concerned with the nonmaterial world.

Behind the scenes
"In some respects, Plagueis is a different breed of Sith, he's passionate and arrogant, but loyal to the Sith imperative to topple the Republic and eradicate the Jedi Order. But he is not infallible, and his sense of commitment could be interpreted as a fatal flaw."

- James Luceno

Darth Plagueis was named as early as the first draft of Revenge of the Sith (April 2003), and possibly earlier than this. His name is clearly derived from the English word "plague," a connection later made in-universe in the Wizards of the Coast article Behind the Threat: The Sith, Part 2: The Becoming.

Plagueis' first appearance of any sort was in the non-canon Tag & Bink: Revenge of the Clone Menace. In this comic it was stated that Plagueis' manipulation of the midi-chlorians produced Force-sensitivity in Tag Greenley and Bink Otauna. It also caused the destruction of a red sun and its planet, whose only survivor would go on to become a hero on Earth&mdash;references to Krypton and Superman, respectively.

Although strictly non-canon, the image of Plagueis in Tag & Bink appears to have inspired the design of his miniature in Star Wars Miniatures: Jedi Academy. The weapon and pose exhibited in Plagueis' miniature (and the accompanying card illustration) exactly match those in the comic image. Plagueis' appearance as a miniature in the Jedi Academy set marks his first representation in toy form.

The Darth Plagueis novel
James Luceno was scheduled to write a novel about Plagueis. The book's announcement on StarWars.com was the first source to identify Plagueis as a Muun. However, in March 2007 it was announced that the novel had been removed from the publishing schedule. Sue Rostoni's official explanation for the cancellation was that "this was not the right time to delve into Palpatine's back story and Plagueis's beginnings." The novel was replaced with Darth Bane: Rule of Two. Though Plagueis' species had been revealed in the novel's announcement, Leland Chee stated that its cancellation did not affect that decision, as it had not originated in the novel. A panel on continuity at the Celebration IV convention revealed that his identity as a Muun had originally come from George Lucas. Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force confirmed his species as a Muun and was the first source to give him a canonical image. On July 27, 2010, information from a sales database leaked indicating that the novel was once more on the publishing schedule. Sue Rostoni subsequently confirmed the announcement. The novel was finally released on January 10, 2012 in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook format.

The Force Unleashed
When creating the multimedia project Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the development team looked to a number of unexplored characters and events for inspiration, amongst them Plagueis. The initial plan was to use Plagueis as a Sith spirit who would give the player of The Force Unleashed game new dark side powers and information. Another idea involved the Secret Apprentice, the main character, sent to find Plagueis as part of a plot by Darth Vader to resurrect Padmé Amidala. Still other ideas included revealing that the Apprentice was Plagueis reborn, or using a reformed Plagueis as the Apprentice's mentor.

As the team did not know much about Plagueis at first, they started with Human designs, including famous actor Michael Gambon. Concept artist Greg Knight explored a number of directions, including the undead, a character from a different time, someone using machines to stay alive, eerie youthfulness, the occult, and a number of "freaky and exotic" ideas.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Darth Plagueis
 * Restraint
 * End Game
 * Labyrinth of Evil
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith comic
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith novel
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith junior novel
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith PhotoComic
 * Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader
 * Death Star
 * The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader
 * The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader

Non-canon appearances

 * Tag & Bink: Revenge of the Clone Menace