This is not the Dark Side. This is where failure to master it leads. - A case of a very early scene that didn't quite come together right until just about the end of the road, but I'm very happy with the final result.

"I'm not particularly happy to be back here again." - Alaia hitch-hiked of of Sarati to a coreworld - with a broken arm, no Master, no Force-sense, no lightsaber, and a massive case of PTSD last time she was here. She had no intention of ever coming back.

What are you for if not to save my ass when I lose my shit completely? - Alaia's come so far. :)

Though they'd only been living in it for perhaps two years, she and Khash and Anahita had done a lot of cleanup work to get it back into habitable condition; - Later, Obi-Wan observes that Alaia's had a lot of construction experience in the past 3 years. Master Befin was a strong proponent of 'Before enlightenment, chop wood, haul water. After enlightenment, chop wood, haul water.' Only in their case it was apparently, haul stone, shore up crumbling architecture.

feeling the lump in her throat as the past pressed in around her and demanded admittance - that Temple is a rotten place to be a psychometrist right then, as becomes palpably obvious later when she managed to get her calm together, and promptly has a flashback to Khash and Master Befin being cut down.

Jedi are human too, Master Befin said, and we have to remember that and not try to lose it. - Master Befin protected many pieces of Old Knowledge, but this bit might be one of the most subtle - and important.

thankfully didn't offer her any stupid platitudes—or tell her not to get angry. - Obi-Wan Kenobi has learned a LOT from mentoring Anakyn shar Atrados. He no longer makes stupid mistakes like telling people trying to confront the mess that has been made of their home to just calm down.

"I wish he'd told me," - He did, Alaia. He's just as subtle as Obi-Wan in his own way. Give it time.

"Well, at least we know why they didn't retrieve this—they couldn't. Not under all that rock." - Alaia will later investigate the maker of the knockoff in question, as anything that can stand up to several thousand pounds of rock being dropped on it clearly can withstand the sort of abuse Jedi put their materials through, and it's a brand worth buying.

and the rockpile collapsed under Alaia, partially burying her. - Anahita pulled it down on her.

the partially decomposed corpse of another young human. - Khash. It's a very, very good thing that Alaia will be verging on unconscious by the end or this fight.

she found the shape of the word in her mind became a form - One of the series of drills Master Befin had Alaia do was, in fact, the shape of the glyphs done as lightsaber strikes. It didn't make any sense at all to her at the time, but in this moment, without the saber in her hand, it does. The italicized word after each chanted word is the corresponding Jedi virtue, and although they're not spelled out with the same level of detail Vader does for Rei, it should be obvious that they suffer from the same issue - the virtue taken to excess becomes a flaw, and the Jedi Order has fallen prey to taking them to excess from time to time.

Shen. - The unifier, the whole, the thing to which all Jedi aspire. (Also, a glyph in Diana Wynne Jones's Homeward Bounders, which amused me as a personal in-joke.)

"Kill me, please," - Anahita senses that if the Light glyph goes away, she's going to go insane again. She wasn't far enough along the Jedi path to keep enough of herself to come back from the Dark Side.

"Welcome, my young friends, to Serenno." - Mwuahahahah. OK, no, but we were hoping.

Only Serenno remains. - And now that we have all the threads, it is time to weave.

"As Soresu is to me," - Remember, Anakyn was Obi-Wan's first - and only - Padawan. He's having the slightly startling realization that Alaia is just as much a potential master of this particular power as Anakyn was of the physical lightsaber arts. She's probably never going to be as excellent a martial artist as Obi-Wan, but right now, that's not what is needed - and Obi-Wan is wise enough to know that: "It may not be sabers we're contending against."

Knights of the White Hand - A tongue-in-cheek reference to the white-handprint-marked orcs who served as Saruman's guards in The Lord of the Rings.

What's the point of being the Count of Serenno if I can't have a little fun? - I don't know if this is my favorite line in the piece? But it's pretty close. :)

"I was really expecting you to live in a drafty old castle on an imposing-looking cliff." - We had a good long laugh at this one. There were a few evenings on chat where we all sat around, trying to think of every evil Trope we could pin on Dooku to upend, if possible.

ANAKYN—MAKE BEST SPEED TO SERENNO. FINAL RITUAL IS PLANNED TO TAKE PLACE THERE. LEN/EMMY/DOOKU IN TERRIBLE DANGER -KENOBI - Information given in order of importance: where to go, what's happening, why. Obi-Wan Kenobi is very genre savvy in this space.

HK, rig for warp travel. - When she picked the Cipher Zero up from Salusian military surplus, Rei got an excellent deal.

Kadreth - It will shock you that I was playing a lot of SW:TOR while Fulcrum V was percolating around the studio. Kadreth appears as a archivist / historian character in a few quests on Alderaan.

Something about this one... I think it might be important. - Len missed the map case because his awareness is generally better on the 'wider' scale of things, but Emmy has had a lot more exposure to the Dark Side (and mastery of same) thanks to her travels with Vader. The foreshadowing, she tries to be subtle.

"I could have actually done some research on this, you know." - It wouldn't have helped, but it would make her feel better.

"I wouldn't exactly call it a habit..." - Were he listening, Anakyn might have politely disagreed.

he had to learn from those moments, not deny them. - Juhani's experiences helped here, but Len also gained quite a bit of perspective thanks to his earlier training.

Well, crap. - Sorry, Len. :( You're good - great even! But there's an awful lot of lightning there.

it appeared to have been styled with a razor blade - The Count's car is a Pegassi Zentorno, which in the UF universe is an early-twenty-first-century supercar representing one of the first post-Contact collaborative ventures between an Earth firm and an offworld one. Pegassi was owned 50% by Lamborghini and 50% by the Corellian Engineering Corporation, the latter of which is shown in how hilariously overpowered the Zentorno is, even for an Italian-style supercar.

there comes a time when a man must simply spit on his hands, hoist the Black Flag, and begin slitting throats - Hard to say when the Count read H.L. Mencken, but a very useful sentiment for a Gentleman in his position.

"And Master Yoda would be the first to admit that there is no such thing as a perfect Jedi." - At least now he would. :)

Gentlemen. - This sequence? Also rather satisfying.

I love this scene so very, very, very much.

Obi-Wan slapped the comm system silent with a mental touch on the Force. - Jedi aren't, after all, supposed to use Force TK for such piddly things. That would imply a certain level of superiority to normal people, and yadda yadda yadda. Obi-Wan has spent a lot of time around Anakyn shar Atrados.

N'gant-Zarvel 9118 - Blaster carbine that used to be available in the old Star Wars Galaxies MMO.

Alaia smiled, and held the light. - A single candle, to throw back the dark.

that may have been a tad overenthusiastic - One of the small details I've enjoyed about Vader and Obi-Wan's interactions in the modern setting is how easily they've slipped back into their old buddy-cop pattern from before the Fun Stopped (Sith Edition). Vader isn't even being ironic when he says things like, "Sorry, Master."

a brief but unbelievably furious cataract of hot, whirling winds - On Mars, this would of course be known as a blint.

a glacial cave on Ice Planet Halloran V - As seen in the Road Movie to Naboo prelude A Dark and Silent Rendezvous.

join with the darkness already there and become part of her. It flooded over her, washed through her, fear, anger, rage, despair, and finding nothing to block its path, to strike against and destroy, it kept going and was gone. - Emmy is ignoring the first part of the Bene Gesserit "Litany Against Fear" and skipping right to the chase - "I will allow it to pass over me and through me --" (I wrote this bit without talking to the other Suspects, I'm very amused by Matt's commentary below.)

The sorcerers - and the Yoma before them - had no thought of how a Jedi who had experienced and accepted the necessity of the Dark Side might fare in their engine.

Oops.

Or, from the studio conversation we held while turning this particular plot point over:

LEN: "I shall face my fear, and let it wash over me, and when it is gone, only I will remain."

EMMY: "FROM HELL'S HEART, I FUCK UP YOUR SHIT!"

j'ton'tuu sorcerers - Asked for a Hyelian equivalent of "shithead", Marty Rose replied:

(Not to be confused with tonttu, a kind of Suomi sauna spirit sometimes seen in Strike Witches artworks.)

"Well done, youngster" - There are two important things to note about the Supreme Archimandrite here. One is that he clearly doesn't recognize a Hyelian when he sees her. The other is that... actually, you know what, there aren't two important things about the Supreme Archimandrite.

forming a third, entirely new construct - When I saw Gryph write this, my immediate thought was, "Na, meet Cl. Cl, meet Na. Play nice with each other and stop blowing stuff up." And then a loud thump as a block of salt hit the floor with "did nothing at all."

the ultimate weapon did nothing at all - The original plan called for the classic "load-bearing boss" outcome here, and indeed Rei, ever practical, was prepared for such an outcome (viz. her instructions to HK-47 earlier), but when I reached that point in the scene I realized it would work better to subvert that trope and just have this ancient and terrible apocalypse machine go phut.

an amazed, delighted sound; as if he had suddenly gotten a joke, long after he had given up hope of understanding it. - When we first conceived of this scene, Dooku was going to be down in the pit, being ambiguous and unclear and possibly evil, right up to this point. And then he was going to laugh as Len pulled a rabbit out of his hat (so to speak), and it wasn't going to be a cackle either. We didn't end up being able to write the scene that way, but I wanted to put an homage in to that particular instant in our creative process. And also make it really clear that Count Dooku, at least, is utterly delighted. (We were also going to blow up the castle, but I like it better this way.)

As Leonard materialized, it became obvious that he was holding Emmy, arms around her. She shifted while he came back into being, her head on his shoulders, crying into the fabric of his robes. - What Emmy ended up doing here wasn't quite a one person Khamor Bhakva, but the way she showed Len the way home here wasn't too far off at all...

a frank exchange of views - The being Kei is addressing has no way of knowing that this, since time immemorial, has been WDF conversational code for "a fight to the death."

I'm just going to take the story behind that as a given. We're all genre savvy enough to put together the "did something much appreciated by the Crown" sort of thing.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Dark Helmet may be right in that Good is often dumb, but Evil is correspondingly often BLIND. It's hard to see over your own ego, sometimes.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

I don't know whether or not this was intentional but the understanding of the dark side displayed by Vader gave me massive flashbacks to a light side Sith Inquisitor, too - particularly the parts where other Sith call you out for not being evil enough, and the game actually lets you quote the Sith Code back at them and note that it stresses freedom, rather than cackling evil. Vader Gets It.