Rank this basic concept, if you want,

[Angedechu]

After a lot of attempts, I settled on a less ambitious project for a fic short novel, one that would deal with a relatively novel matter and era in SW.

 

The core idea : the birth of the Hapan Consortium.

 

The basic plot : a Sith agent from the Empire (from our time, our being TOR time) ends up on Hapes in the twilight years of the rule of the Lorrel Raiders. The extremely basic knowledge of the average Joe of the Galaxy about the Force is going to cost them. They assume that this is one of the hated Jedis that defeated them under Arca Jeth. They fail to realize that she is a Sith....

 

The outline of the story : the Sith girl, after a rather abject captivity, is helped by a Hapan slave girl. After a Dark Side fuelled revenge on her captors, she realize she can't really go back to the Empire with what had happened to her. Unless she return as a victor.

 

The character development : the slave girl (who is, should I say, a rather cunning, intelligent, and especialyl defiant Human being) will become the first Ta'chume. , The Sith girl is a POV protagonist : not especially bloodthirsty (for a Sith), but quite, quite, quite vengeful and manipulative. (1)

 

The setting : A wannabe Draka/Gor society that collapse, and hard, on their masters.

 

(1)In an attempt to be marginally original, the Sith is not a especially powerful Force user. Her powers are told as being rather on the low side. She is not a good fighter either-she is only good (and marginally) with mind tricks. (Thinks to Code Geass Lellouch)

[Doozzer]

Your protagonist needs to have some kind of life experience that ties into their principal strength.

 

Right now, all you have is that your protagonist is very manipulative and cunning, but not especially martial or strong in the force.

 

This is kind of a problem, because although in the Sith Empire its possible for someone to rise to high rank through deception and clever plotting, it is very difficult the lower on the totem pole you are. The academy experience is pretty rudimentary, and initiates tend to get picked off if they're weak in a fight or in the force- You don't have friends in the academy, you don't have peers, and you don't have a powerbase. You only have opponents. How did your protagonist, whose only advantage was that she was Batman-Smart, get to that level? How did she become wily enough to be a Sith in the first place.

 

This is why she needs a life experience. She needs a view point- Something that has colored her perception since a very young age. Perhaps her hand got chewed off in a tragic garbage compactor accident when she was six years old, and she's had a cheap bionic replacement from a nar shaddaa street doc ever since, so she learned to avoid fights because she wasn't good at it. Perhaps she's ugly, or she has really bad acne, or BONEITIS, and it prevents her from acting on a higher social level, so she had to learn different ways to manipulate people because she couldn't make friends. Maybe she's just a midget, like Tyrion in Game of Thrones- He's wily because people have been giving him crap his whole life. Or maybe she's just a Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, because being a high functioning autistic apparently somehow grants you mythical hacking powers. What if she's just Bella Swan and has the amazing supernatural power to make vampires fall in love with her, despite never making a decision or having a personality?

 

Or what if the car is on the other side of the street, going a different direction down the same road? What if she's breathtakingly gorgeous, and nobody takes her seriously as an intellectual because they assume she's been able to charm and seduce all her problems away, but at the same time, she can never make meaningful connections on an intellectual or emotional level with people because they constantly judge her at face value. What if her beauty is what fuels her power in the dark side, because she's constantly irritated that people use her like a bimbo?

 

Of course, if you're going somewhere Gorean, that would be a good road to go down. I don't necessarily think that going somewhere Gorean is a good idea though, because John Norman made a blanket assumption that all women are at heart sexually submissive, which is profoundly wrong in more ways than can be described.

 

What we need to find out is what gives your protagonist that advantage, that defined her. What colored her life to such a degree that the skills she learned playing around her disadvantages made up for her lack of martial strength or power in the force.

[Angedechu]

Ah excellent answer, you bring good points.

 

About the ''Gor'', I should precise one point. The Raiders think this junk is mostly true. The Sith and the slave girl are going to provem them wrong. Very wrong.