GrS 16:6:14 Working closely with Vader!

We've been pretty busy lately. Turns out the Emperor has a LOT of secret projects for us to work on...

They mentioned we'd be "working closely" with those closest to the Emperor, and in today's meeting, who should get introduced but a sinister guy dressed all in black. "This is Darth Vader, the Emperor's right-hand man."

Sure, Darth Vader, the man in black. But I've seen the Mustafar viral video, and I know that before the armor went on, this guy was Anakin Skywalker, stealer of R2 units.

I'm not sure what happened between the wipe-out on Mustafar and now to give Vader the breathing problem and the black-suited armor, but I'm guessing a serious butt-kicking was issued. Nice.

I hope whoever it was got in some shots for R2-D2 along the way.

Everyone seemed scared of Vader (I've heard the force-choke stories too, of course), but I wasn't having any of it. I straight out asked him, "What happened to that R2 unit you used to hang around with, you know, the one you took from the people of Naboo?"

A silence fell in the room. The dry hum of the ventilation system was like the dry wind blowing over a lonely Tatooine plateau. Even Vader's asthmatic rasping seemed to have stopped.

"He exhibited... divided loyalties," Vader finally intoned. "Something to which you, I hope, are not going to fall victim."

"Oh no," I said, much more cheerfully than I felt. "I'm all Empire, all the way. I guess you knew he was serving on the Tantive IV now? Captain Antilles from Alderaan."

"Indeed?" asked Vader, sounding interested. "Thank you. I shall certainly be keeping a close eye on Captain Antilles and the Tantive IV from now on."

Oops, hope I haven't made life difficult for Antilles now. Oh well, I'm sure he'll keep his nose clean for the next few years, until Vader forgets about him, or loses interest.

Oh, and the clone troopers are being renamed. Apparently, people are paranoid about dealing with them after the whole sudden instant defection thing, and the plebes don't trust them. So they're going to be renamed "stormtroopers". Oh yeah, that sounds friendlier. Wonder if Vader had anything to do with that name? Anyway, they're going to redesign the uniform as well, so they don't look the same.

We talked for a long time about the style of the uniform. I tried to argue that, as long as we're changing the uniform, we should adopt some sort of armor that's resistant to laser fire, but Vader said that researching new materials would be too expensive, and we should just stick with the old material. I said, "What about the cost of human life?" and Vader replied that "troopers, like technicians, are cheap and easy to replace." I let it drop.

I also suggested that we incorporate clones from somewhere other than just Kamino, as a single clone template makes the trooper ranks vulnerable to disease, sabotage, corrupted cloning vats and so on. Vader said it would be too expensive and besides, Kamino made the best clones, and the Kaminoans were completely trustworthy.