Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion, I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything! You’ll stay with me, Lonni. I need all the heroes I can get. - Luthen Rael
My name is Maarva Carassi Andor. I’m honored to stand before you. I’m honored to be a Daughter of Ferrix, and honored to be worthy of the stone. Strange, I… feel as if I can see it. I was six, I think, first time I touched a funerary stone. Heard our music, felt our history. Holding my sister’s hand as we walked all the way from Fountain Square. Where you stand now, I’ve been more times than I can remember. I always wanted to be lifted. I was always eager, always waiting to be inspired. I remember every time it happened, every time the dead lifted me… With their truth. And now I’m dead. And I yearn to lift you. Not because I want to shine or even be remembered. It’s because I want you to go on. I want Ferrix to continue. In my waning hours, that’s what comforts me most. But I fear for you. We’ve been sleeping. We’ve had each other, and Ferrix, our work, our days. We had each other, and they left us alone. We kept the trade lanes open, and they left us alone. We took their money and ignored them, we kept their engines churning, and the moment they pulled away, we forgot them. Because we had each other. We had Ferrix. But we were sleeping. I’ve been sleeping. And I’ve been turning away from the truth I wanted not to face. There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it’s here. It’s here, and it’s not visiting anymore. It wants to stay. The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness, it is never more alive than when we sleep. It’s easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it’s true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it’s too late. But I’ll tell you this… If I could do it again, I’d wake up early and be fighting these bastards from the start. Fight the Empire! - Maarva Carassi Andor
Fellow senators, friends, colleagues, allies, adversaries, I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped form our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. This chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman plaza. What took place yesterday, what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide. Yes, genocide. And that truth has been exiled from this chamber. And the monster screaming the loudest, the monster we helped create, the monster who will come for us all soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine. - Senator Mon Mothma