Most people in the Empire never had a clue who they were serving. To the galaxy, Emperor Palpatine was just a frail old politician who somehow kept everything under control. Only a handful of individuals knew that beneath that calm, wrinkled face lived one of the most dangerous Sith Lords in history. Even his elite Royal Guards — those crimson-robed soldiers who never left his side — didn’t fully understand what kind of power he carried.
But in Lords of the Sith novel, two of them did.
The Trap on Ryloth
It all started when Palpatine decided to use himself as bait. During the early years of the Empire, the Free Ryloth Movement — led by Cham Syndulla — was causing problems for Imperial control. To snuff them out early, the Emperor arranged a trap. He traveled with Darth Vader and a small escort, making himself an easy target, knowing the rebels wouldn’t be able to resist attacking such a prize.
The Free Ryloth fighters took the bait and shot down his shuttle over the planet’s wild terrain. The crash killed most of the crew, leaving only four survivors: Palpatine, Vader, and two Royal Guards — one a clone veteran from the Clone Wars, the other a human with tattoos across his face. Stranded miles from civilization and cut off from communications, they had to fight their way through hostile ground.
When the Emperor Dropped the Act
Not long after the crash, two rebel freighters found them and began raining blaster fire from above. The guards and Vader moved to protect the Emperor, but Palpatine waved them off. He told them he didn’t need protection — and he meant it.
He pulled back part of his cloak, revealing something none of them had seen before: a red-bladed lightsaber. When the blade ignited, its crimson glow lit up the smoke-filled sky. Blaster bolts came down like a storm, but the Emperor deflected them effortlessly, using his lightsaber in one hand while raising the other to hurl lightning into the heavens.
That’s when the two guards froze. They already knew their Emperor was powerful, maybe even touched by the Force, but nothing had prepared them for what they saw. Bolts of blue energy cracked across the sky and struck the rebel ships, tearing them apart midair. The guards just stood there, stunned — watching the leader of the Empire laugh as he destroyed ships with his bare hands.
Even Vader seemed caught off guard, not by the power itself, but by the fact that his master chose to show it so openly. Seeing the Emperor fight was a rare thing, and Vader knew better than anyone that Palpatine didn’t reveal his strength unless he wanted to send a message.
Into the Wilds of Ryloth
Once the freighters were dealt with, the survivors pushed deeper into Ryloth’s wilderness. That world wasn’t known for being friendly, and soon they faced something far worse than rebels — a swarm of lyleks, massive insect-like creatures that moved like a living tide. Hundreds of them poured through the jungle, hunting anything that crossed their path.
As the horde closed in, Palpatine used the Force again, ripping trees out of the ground and dropping boulders to slow the creatures. The guards fought alongside Vader, but even their training couldn’t prepare them for what came next. They ended up inside a huge cavern — right in the nest of the lyleks, face to face with the Queen.
The battle that followed was pure chaos. The guards tried to hold the entrance, fending off wave after wave of creatures, while Vader and Palpatine took the fight to the Queen herself. Palpatine moved with terrifying speed, spinning through the air, cutting through the monsters while laughing like he was enjoying every second of it.
The guards had never seen him like that. To them, he looked almost joyful — completely consumed by the dark side. One of the guards, the clone veteran, didn’t make it out alive. He was overrun during the fight, while the other barely survived.
A Glimpse Behind the Mask
By the time Imperial reinforcements arrived, the Emperor, Vader, and the lone surviving guard had already destroyed everything in their path — rebels, lyleks, and anything else that dared to come near. They were rescued near a remote Twi’lek village after fending off another wave of rebel attacks.
For the guard who lived, the journey on Ryloth changed everything. He had seen the Emperor without the mask of politics, without the Senate speeches, without the calm deception that ruled the galaxy. What he saw that day wasn’t a man — it was a predator who used the Force like a weapon of nature.
After that mission, the surviving guard continued his service, but he never looked at the Emperor the same way again. How could he? Once you’ve watched your ruler unleash lightning from his fingertips and laugh while cutting through a hive of monsters, the image of a “frail old man” doesn’t stick anymore.
