The Beginning of a New Trilogy

26th February 2025

Out today: The beginning of a new trilogy

Star Wars: The Mask of Fear (Reign of the Empire)
By Alexander Free

Before the Rebellion, the Empire reigns, in book one of a trilogy told through the eyes of Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Saw Gerrera—for fans of Andor.

“In order to ensure the security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire! For a safe and secure society!”With one speech and thunderous applause, Chancellor Palpatine brought the era of the Republic crashing down. In its place rose the Galactic Empire. Across the galaxy, people rejoiced and celebrated the end of war—and the promises of tomorrow. But that tomorrow was a lie. Instead, the galaxy became twisted by the cruelty and fear of the Emperor’s rule.During that terrifying first year of tyranny, Mon Mothma, Saw Gerrera, and Bail Organa face the encroaching darkness. One day, they will be three architects of the Rebel Alliance. But first, each must find purpose and direction in a changing galaxy, while harboring their own secrets, fears, and hopes for a future that may never come unless they act.Read an excerptThe Holy City was chiseled from the stone of the desert, rising into the twilight like an outcast in a wasteland. Its dun walls were coated in the dust of ages, and from afar it had seemed a lifeless place, blessed only in its failure to erode into the sands.Yet despite the suffocating clinch of antiquity, despite the dying sun that blanched all things on Jedha, the city streets were full of color: red-cloaked shoulders jostled sapphire pauldrons, and jade arms brushed opalescent antennae. Beings of every shape pressed down the cobbled avenues, striding, crawling, marching beneath archways and merchant awnings and listless banners unstirred by the air. The atmosphere was of grief and whispers, but the movement of thousands—the endless footfalls and the rustling of garments—created a susurrus like the harbinger of a storm.Someone cried, “The Jedi! The Jedi are gone!”

As if it were news. As if they’d vanished from inside their temples that morning and not been slaughtered weeks before in an act of violence and betrayal and cruel vanity.

Dressed in a Ztenortha pilgrim’s gray wrappings and stukleather boots, Bail Organa—Bail of House Prestor, Royal Consort to the Queen of Alderaan, father of the crown’s heir, once senator of the Galactic Republic and now senator of the Galactic Empire—went unescorted and unrecognized among the mourners, shivering in the winter chill. Deep in the crowd he was mercifully alone, and even the ghosts who pursued him seemed lost in the throng.

The crowd squeezed together. The procession turned a corner and crept down a narrow tunnel. Slits in the primordial brickwork suggested the ruins of a fortress, where hidden soldiers might have once fired upon intruders besieging a keep. Bail kept his head bowed, to keep from stumbling as much as to avoid the prying eyes of hidden cams. The mob was not swift or belligerent, but it possessed the force and inertia of a glacier; to be caught underfoot was to be crushed.