A.N. Just checked Wookiepedia. Episode III is actually 19 years before Episode IV. Since I want my OC to be roughly 17 when I thought Luke and Leia were 20 (now know that they were 19), this fic actually starts about two years after Episode III.

Sizhran Savazh considered his life to be a series of intricately connected contradictions. His great uncle, Xizor, underlord of Black Sun, called the Dark Prince by everyone who knew of his shadowy dealings, completely hated and detested him.

The irony was that Xizor had wanted someone of his own blood on the Imperial throne, and for years it looked like Savazh would be just that someone.

His mother meant him to be the replacement of Darth Vader, who had destroyed most of her family. Yet he was actively trained as a Sith Apprentice by Vader in clear defiance of Darth Bane's Rule of Two.

He was chosen by Darth Sidious to be next in line after Vader, yet he and Vader plotted Sidious's downfall many times.

He owed his force abilities and the Zabrak horns protruding from his otherwise Falleen head to his biological father, Darth Maul, whom he regarded as a traitor. Maul wasn't a traitor because he betrayed Sidious. It was quite the other way around. Sidious had betrayed Maul, murdered Savazh's grandmother and his namesake uncle. No, his father was a traitor for betraying the Sith. He should have let his justifiable anger fuel his vengeance against Sidious and Vader then take their place. But according to his mother, who was the only source of information he had on his father besides Sidious himself, Maul's goals were to end the Sith after his vengeance was complete. He did not care what arose in their place.

Well, Savazh would fulfill his father's original goals of being the greatest Sith Lord in history. Vader had allowed the boy to choose his own Sith name: Darth Shadow—inspired by a creature out of Falleen folklore called an "ogre shadow," edabuwo. Technically he shouldn't have had a Sith name yet: Sidious still lived and Vader was still an apprentice.

"Darth Shadow's" most complex relationships with people he knew were his dual relations was with his mother, the Grand Duchess Savan, and his master, Darth Vader. She had deliberately chosen to impregnate herself with Maul's DNA so that her son, House Sizhran's son, could be a Sith and get revenge on Vader for nearly destroying the State of Ix. Yet, by the same token, he would never have existed if Ix had never fallen. He had wanted to eventually kill Vader and prove himself more fit to rule and live, but Ix was a distant place on a distant planet, and not due to any personal hatred to the man helping him realize his potential. He had cared little for his mother's grudges, and less for his uncle's.

He realized that his own ambitions and outlook were more akin to that Zabrak father he had never met, at least as they had been while Maul was still Sidious's apprentice. It was now Shadow who wanted to be the greatest Sith in history. It was the youthful Darth Maul's outlook that most resembled Shadow's own. With the knowledge that his father had failed, so too, came the knowledge that the same thing could happen to him.

Still however, that was a remote possibility to the seventeen-year-old Shadow when the Empire turned twenty. Then Luke Skywalker happened. Suddenly Shadow's position fell into jeopardy.

If Anakin's Skywalker's son, who was supposed to have died in Padmé Amidala's womb, was still alive, there existed someone with greater force-potential than himself. His objective immediately became the opposite of his masters': kill Skywalker rather than turn him. They had always said they'd keep him around in case Skywalker couldn't be turned, but Shadow knew he was under threat. He twice engaged Skywalker in inconclusive lightsaber duels in the years between the Battle of Yavin and the Battle of Hoth; he'd used his uncle's criminal connections to try to assassinate Skywalker, only for Xizor to report him to Sidious, and his mother to once again be disinherited.

Shadow was ordered away from Skywalker during the months leading up to the Battle of Endor. He was prepared to go rogue like his father, Darth Maul, when the best news he'd ever heard was delivered. Skywalker had turned Vader back to the Light side of the Force. Now the redeemed Anakin Skywalker had killed Darth Sidious, fatally wounding himself in the process. The Skywalkers, father and son, were both Jedi, leaving Shadow as Sidious's only apprentice when he died. Sidious was now dead, meaning that the mantle of master had passed to Shadow! Now he and he alone was the Dark Lord of the Sith.

Like so many other things in Darth Shadow's life, his victory was a moment of great paradox.

While his own position as the heir to the Sith legacy was stronger than ever, the Sith were weaker than ever. The Empire was out of Sith hands and the various Dark side adepts that Sidious had trained were at war with one another.

Shadow knew exactly where the fault lay: Darth Bane's rigid interpretation of the Rule of Two.

Two links were not strong enough to keep a chain from breaking. He understood why Bane had made the Rule harsher than it had previously been-there had at one time been so many Sith Lords competing for absolute power that they had virtually destroyed themselves. Now there were too few. To ensure his own legacy had the best chance of survival, Shadow knew that he needed more than one apprentice. But he would have to have some way of establishing order. The Sith would have to deny something that was in their very nature: their pursuit of personal power—in favor of the pursuit of the collective goals of their order.

It would take a long time to train as many apprentices as he thought would be necessary.

He first wanted to study how a Dark Side community—the two terms being oxymonoronic in late Sith thinking-worked. For that he needed to spend time on Dathomir. There were other clans of Nightsisters besides his grandmother's coven that were still active. First though, he had unfinished business to settle on Falleen.

He had convinced his uncle that the greatly changed state of affairs in the galaxy meant it was time to reevaluate their strained relations, so for the first time in his life, Shadow was on the world of his conception. As he the guards opened the doors to the throne room, he took notice of his uncle in the iron throne. Xizor was wearing an Ysalamir in harness. That would do him little good in a fight.

Xizor gestured to the guards, and they left the two relatives alone. He then fixed his gaze on his nephew.

"I'll not insult your intelligence by pretending to have had a change of heart toward you. Your mother made a reckless and impulsive decision that could have brought the emperor's wrath on me when she brought you into being, but—"

"No, she didn't," Shadow contradicted his uncle without any hesitation.

Frustration surfaced on the Dark Prince of Black Sun's face, but quickly dissipated. They both knew that Shadow's Force abilities gave him far more leeway with Xizor than any of the Black Sun Vigos, and Xizor's lack thereof gave Shadow a room to be disrespectful that did not exist with Sidious or Vader.

Returning to his uncle's comment, he said, "She made sure you wouldn't know so that Sidious wouldn't blame you. I was Vader's heir presumptive for years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star, and I was of your blood. I thought you wanted a Sizhran to be emperor?"

"You were no Sizhran. Your loyalty was to the Sith. Your apprentice would have succeeded you. One generation is not enough. What I wanted was something permanent!" His uncle's tone shifted, "But the Sith are gone now. We are all you have."

"The Sith are not all gone. I'm still here."

Xizor laughed.

"You are only twenty! You're a child…"

"And Luke Skywalker was nineteen at the Battle of Yavin, with far less trainging than I had."

"Skywalker isn't Falleen."

"Nor am I, entirely," he rubbed one of his horns as he spoke. "But I have experience beyond my years in how the galaxy works. And my last physician assured me I will still have full Falleen lifespan to put what I know to use."

"An Imperial physician?"

"From a time when I was still being considered a viable alternative should Skywalker not be turned."

"So you won't let go of your Sith ambitions?"

"No, but I'm happy to use my obligations to House Sizhran as a means of furthering them, now that there is no emperor to offend."

"So I suppose you want your idiot mother restored to this backwater's line of succession?"

Shadow's blood boiled. He reached out a hand and clenched his fist.

Xizor began to choke as Shadow paced the room.

"You still insult her after I explain how she was trying to serve you and your ambition without you getting blamed?! You are an ingrate. What's even worse is that you are an ingrate with the highest skills of manipulation. That makes you too dangerous to let live."

Xizor gasped out a confused, "How?"

"Eventually Sidious decided to share his inoculation with Vader and myself. Your pet won't save you today."

Shadow ignored his uncle's gasps as he said, "It would have been easier to control Black Sun if you'd chosen to cooperate, but all it takes is strong-willed Force-sensitive individual to make them bend. My father and Darth Sidious got success that way."

Savan entered the throne room after being summoned by her son. The guards were already following his orders, though they did not know whether he or his mother was the current monarch. Two stood erect at each side of the door; two others behind the throne were Sizhran Savazh now sat with Xizor's Ysalamir in his lap.

Savan was proud of what her son had accomplished. Unlike her grandfather's death, she had no regrets about her uncle's. He had brought it on himself.

Her face beamed with pride as she said, "Congratulations are in order for your victory, Grand Duke."

"Not 'Grand Duke,'" he shook his head.

Savan began to worry. Had her son's obligations toward the Sith meant that he would forsake his place as heir to the principality? If so, Savan who was only sixty-one could still have more children to succeed her, but she'd prefer her successor to be Force-sensitive, and she had never quite gotten over Maul. His descendants should be royalty after everything he'd proved capable at.

"So you wish to abandon the State of Ix?" Savan asked.

"Abandon it?" Savazh placed the Ysalamir on the floor. "No."

He rose from the throne.

"Use it as a base? Yes."

"That would be easier if you were the prince."

He nodded.

"Exactly. 'Prince,' not 'Grand Duke.'"

Savan now realized what her son wanted.

"I'm not stepping down! I'm next in line. You'll have your turn and place after me…"

Savan felt her throat constrict. She cast a pleading gaze at her son and he released her.

Savan looked down for a moment and coughed.

"I need this state, mother, and while I love you, the Sith's purposes must come first. If you get in the way I'll no longer have any choice about what I must do."

His words were grim. She realized that the throne was permanently beyond her grasp as she was not willing to do what was necessary in order to remove him.

"What role would you have your princess dowager do, my son?"

"Run this state with full authority in my absence. I need to spend time on Dathomir, learn the ways in which the communities of the Nightsisters work. They hold the key to the Sith's future."

Savan saw her son tracing invisible lines on his green scaled face. "Sizhran Savazh is a mask. I need that mask, so I can't tattoo myself like a Nightbrother, but I but think that I should honor them in some way. How does black and white face paint mimicking a skull sound?"

The End

I intend to bring Darth Shadow back as one of the (but not the only) main villains in my crossover story "Galaxies Collide," set about a hundred years after Episode VII. It would a Movie Crossovers/Comic Crossovers fic featuring many OCs from Star Wars, and both OCs and canon characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (not the Turtles themselves, they're long dead), Alien vs Predator, and canon characters from Generation-1/Beast-Wars Transformers.