"By the Heavens, did you hear? The Yiling Patriarch has been invited to the Discussion Conference in Qinghe!" Gossip was, by far, the fastest way for information to spread. "What! Whose idea was that!?" It was not the most accurate or most reliable method, but people were people, and the tedium of daily life would always bore them. "I heard it was the Nie Sect leader's suggestion." ---------- After thirteen years in the Burial Mounds, the Yiling Patriarch finally makes a public reappearance. Civilians are scared. Cultivators are outraged. Sect Leaders are concerned. Wei Wuxian has been too quiet, they say, and nobody knows what dark horrors the Burial Mounds may now contain. Wei Wuxian wouldn't quite call them dark horrors, but the description wasn't too far off. (tl;dr Wei Wuxian lives, raises a whole gaggle of demonic cultivator children, and the cultivation world panics.)

When he rejoins the Order in the middle of the Clone Wars, all Ferus wants is to help as many people as possible. An emergency mission lands him in control of the 501st before he even has time to catch his balance, though, and the disappearance of the Chancellor means there's no time to waste. The galaxy's Deep Core is a treacherous maze of deadly planets and old traps, and fighting their way through is the sort of thing that would push Ferus to his limits, even without a squad of clones to protect at the same time.

When Mace joins the 212th on a dangerous world, it's meant to help them end the campaign there more quickly. But his presence there sets into motion something that started a thousand years ago, and won't be stopped so easily.

It all comes down to this: the babies in his arms are just so little. “You should sit down, Sir. Let Waxer and I take the tubies for a minute,” Cody gentles. Despite the even, easy tone, despite knowing that it’s Cody and that, as the last twenty-four hours have successfully proved beyond a doubt, Cody would rather die than see any harm come to him, Obi-Wan can’t suppress his immediate reaction to the thought of putting the twins— his twins, his now, and he’ll die before he lets anything touch them—down. “Full disclosure, I don’t believe I am capable of letting go of them, at the moment.” He thinks for a beat and then adds, “Possibly ever.”