The Only Time Darth Sidious Showed Weakness & Almost Got KilledThe Only Time Darth Sidious Showed Weakness & Almost Got Killed

Coruscant hosted the first graduation for Imperial officers from Raithal Academy. Speeches wrapped, crowds packed Imperial Plaza, and six academies had their top cadets on-world. Then the attacks hit. Explosions wiped out dozens of Imperial sites within minutes—garrisons, comm towers, depots, the officers’ club. Hundreds of cadets poured into the streets and fought the clone troops head-on.

Darth Vader entered the plaza, rallied the clones, and started pushing the cadets back. That fight kept eyes on the streets while the real strike moved inside the palace.

General Gentis Planned For A Coup

General Gentis, a Clone Wars hero and the Raithal headmaster, had lost nearly all of his sons in the early New Order. A visit to the Imperial Crematorium showed him an endless line of dead Imperials and hardened his view that constant war would keep eating the Empire’s youth. Using his reputation and position, he quietly recruited across the academies and set a plan for the graduation night, when loyalty would be public and security would be predictable.

Gentis kept a clean face for the brass, framing everything as service to the Empire. Inside the conspiracy, he aimed to remove the cause of the losses he blamed on Palpatine. He lined up synchronized strikes, shut down communications, and prepared a blockade of the capital if things dragged on.

Aorth-6 Hits The Inner Circle With The Coruscant’s Droids Turn Hostile

With the city burning, Gentis unleashed an engineered necrotic virus called Aorth-6 inside the Emperor’s circle. The aerosol spread fast. Officers collapsed. Royal Guards died in seconds as the agent liquefied organs from the inside.

The virus reached Palpatine.

Vader and Lieutenant Laurita Tohm found the Emperor bleeding from every opening. Palpatine said the dark side was holding the damage back. He ordered evacuation and concealment. Vader resisted the idea of hiding, but Palpatine overruled him. Moff Trachta helped move the Emperor to a hidden hangar beneath the palace, where a stealth transport waited. A stasis chamber slowed the spread while a next step took shape.

Palpatine showed clearly his weakness, he got infected, losing ground, and forced to withdraw from public view while others carried the fight.

Gentis had one more layer. His engineers pushed a command to every droid within five kilometers: kill Imperial officers. The 2-1B surgical droid near the Emperor attacked Trachta. In the Jedi Temple, training droids activated with lightsabers against Vader and Tohm. They cut the threats down, then dug through archived security feed that pointed to a place perfect for hiding an Emperor and arming a counter-strike.

The Hideout: The Ghost Prison Becomes An Imperial Asset

The Prism—known as the Ghost Prison—sat in the Diab system, masked by the sixth moon’s mass shadow. The Jedi ran it in secret during the war to hold dangerous dark-siders, Separatist operators, and other high-risk captives. Vader moved Palpatine there to stay off Gentis’s sensors, then turned to the inmates for manpower.

Vader opened the cells and forced a test by combat. Only the controllable and useful would leave alive. Of 207 prisoners, 174 died that night. Among the survivors was Shonn Volta, a Force-user who could guide blaster fire and calculate tricky hyperspace interceptions. Her skills gave Vader a way to predict where a target would exit hyperspace and how to get there first.

Gentis Consolidates And Baits Tarkin

Back on Coruscant, Gentis declared emergency command, pushed a planetary blockade, and blacked out communications. He told high command that terrorists had struck, that the Emperor sat in “protective custody,” and that Vader and Trachta might be suspects. The goal was pressure and time—enough to pull Grand Moff Tarkin into a controlled landing.

Gentis planned to grab Tarkin alive and squeeze him for Death Star details. His last surviving son, Caul, stood with him as rows of fresh officers and cadets surrounded the landing zone. From the plaza view, the coup looked locked in: numbers, position, and a prized captive incoming.

Vader Trades Numbers For Skill

Using Volta’s calculations, Vader dropped a small strike team into Gentis’s reception the moment Tarkin’s shuttle hit the deck. The attackers were few—Vader, Trachta, Tohm, and handpicked killers pulled from the Prism—but they punched above their count. Vader blasted out a Force wave, carving space in the crowd. Blaster fire from trained hands cut lanes through the cadets.

In the surge, Tohm shot Caul Gentis. The headmaster ran to lift his son from the floor. Then the air filled with lightning.

Palpatine stepped forward and unleashed Force lightning at full burn. The arcs tore through Gentis while he held Caul, and the general went still. With their leader dead, the remaining conspirators folded fast.

Ranks Reshuffled And Loose Ends Cut

Imperial forces rounded up anyone tied to the coup. Executions followed. Trachta received a promotion to Grand Moff. Tohm rose to admiral. Later, Vader removed Tohm by sending him over a Coruscant balcony to eliminate a future rival. Order on the capital returned. The Emperor, stabilized by stasis and the dark side, resumed command after the purge.

Numbers from the night remained stark: 72 priority Imperial targets destroyed, more than 100 cadets in open combat at the plaza, Royal Guards killed by Aorth-6, and an Emperor who had to withdraw while a weapon chewed through him.