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Chapter 1 Katrina, daughter of the great Emperor Palpatine had been lucky. She had been freed from imprisonment by an unlikely accomplice and had escaped the underground compound on Manooglious Prime before it caught fire and caved in on itself. She had escaped into a hostile jungle and met up with friends she had never met and taken to safety. But, somehow, Katrina didn’t feel especially lucky. She was eternally grateful to Darth Vader for going behind Palpatine’s back to free her and allow her to escape, and she would never forget the kindness of Xenritha and Cha-Lee who had taken her away, but she did not feel lucky. Part of her problem was that she found it all to easy to find the many times in her life that she had felt beaten, used, and/or humiliated. Part of her problem was that despite the help of those three men she had been dumped off at a boarding school where she was treated as though diseased and alienated in every way. Part of her problem was that many of her siblings were dead and she was very worried that those she actually cared about may have been among the number that had not escaped the compound before its collapse. When word of Palpatine’s death at Endor reached Manooglious Prime chaos broke out. Guards and nurses forgot their positions and their young charges and began looting and/or packing. Some children began crying, others simply laughed. The older children, those who had yearned for years to be away from the compound and in charge of their own destinies, those who knew the wrath of the Empire and it’s Emperor, ignored all the others and took advantage of the lapse in security to free themselves. Somewhere during it all, an open flame touched something flammable and the fire spread out of control. Long before that point Katrina had been tucked away safely in an all-girls reform school where it was assumed she would never be found. Katrina was special in addition to being one of Palpatine’s bastards, in addition to being the most powerful of the emperor’s children, to being a misfit among what were meant to be carbon copied offspring. Katrina was what was known as a Zanespot, and because of all that she had to be kept hidden at all costs. Even before the galaxy had been created there was Guardian. Guardian created and protected it all, watching it grow and adding just enough of himself and his god-like powers to make life. As it all grew Guardian found his attention divided to the extent that he wished for help governing his creations, so he made the Jedi. Still the galaxy grew, as did the number of the Jedi. Time passed and Guardian discovered that his presence was no longer needed; he became bored for the first time in his existence. He gathered his 9 most powerful and trustworthy Jedi and gave them each a special gift. Guardian, creator of the all that existed in the galaxy, split his powers over all time into three equal pieces, Past, Present, and Future. Because each of those three parts was just too powerful for any mortal to carry each split into three more and deposited themselves into the chosen Jedi. And Guardian was gone, under the protection of the 9 Zanespots. Because the 9 remained mortal they, at some point, ceased being but their powers did not, they were passed to an unborn Force-sensitive. Katrina, daughter of Palpatine, was born a Zanespot. Normally Zanespots lived together in groups of three, one of the past, one of the future, and one of the present, but because of Katrina’s paternity and the galactic upset it was thought likely that someone might try to find her and, if they succeeded, they would then find the other Zanespots and endanger them all. And so, at the age of thirteen-standard-years-old Katrina was deposited in a outer-rim boarding school that she hated, sulking at just how unlucky she truly was. |
