It was quite the thing, coming back here to post new work after such a long time, and returning with something rather different to my earlier stories. I had no idea how this new story would be received.
Instead, to my humble delight, everyone who has messaged me here has been so kind, enjoying the story, enjoying how I've written it, and in a couple of cases, get a bad dose of it for Arlaud, too. Same.
To pull back the curtain a little, the fact is that Arlaud was almost an afterthought in terms of this story. Initially it was begun with only Laika and an intention to see if the Sith could be more reasonable than the Jedi caricature. I needed something for Laika to do, hence the stowaway who can 'hide' from her. Why would someone risk stowing away? For that I needed a character, and the character of 'Arlaud' is one I have been trying in a few different settings under her 'real' name rather than 'Arlaud' over the past year or so. Indeed, there is a completed draft of an 85K story of her going on a camping holiday with his single dad, the whole of which was the setup for something more than probably won't be written as intended, but which gave me a lot of insights into who 'Arlaud' is. As for her background in slavery, this is mostly drawn from when I was studying Roman law at university and we learned how, in the late empire, the rights of slaves and their owners became a lot more complicated than the snapshot of history we usually get, with obligations on the owner for a slave's wellbeing and very confused thinking over how you could 'own' a sentient being. All this, and more, was poured into my noodling around over the idea of a 'nice' Sith without the clutter of canon. Even better, I have no idea when in the timeline of Star Wars this is set, LOL.
Finally, for those who have asked or might be wondering, yes, there will be a sequel, set on Laika's home world, and with a ton of world-building for me as I build out her history, culture, and families. It's basically plotted and sketched that out now, and now I'm leaving it to bubble away in my subconscious for a week or so, to see what I come up with or have forgotten. After that I'll be into the writing, so, and making no promises, maybe three months from now. We'll see.
So, again, thank you everyone who has read it, enjoyed it, and messaged me about it. It does warm the cockles...
CH