The Office of the Emperor

A brief bit of emotion crossed his face, the edges of his lips seemingly playing into a smile, though he did not smile fully. This statement was curious. Expected, perhaps, but curious nonetheless. Motivations were something that, indeed, greatly fascinated him. Not so much his own, as he knew where they stemmed from with resolve and unwavering faith, but of others. Most people were weak minded, and did things erratically, based on emotion, or based on some short term vision of what might be good for them. In such cases, motivations were easy enough to deduce from actions. Money, power, dominance, love. They were all things that had hobbled even the most skilled of individuals. Things he had seen countless times before, and would almost undoubtably see in the future.

"That's the real question, isn't it? The why of it."

Often times, strategy was influenced by such whims. An inexperienced or impulsive commander might make decisions based on the immediate tactical situation that presented itself, on some perceived concept of ideological superiority, or based on the singular goal of dominance, supremacy, and the complete annihilation of the opponent facing them. Such commanders were predictable, almost by clockwork. It was not at all difficult to predict where the mind of such individuals would take them tactically, therefore making it possible to nearly predict the future when faced against such individuals. This, however, he found extremely boring. It was not at all difficult to predict the mind of a simple individual.

"One might assume a complex motivation when it came down to why I did it. Perhaps I felt that I was mistreated, that my only method of escape was by means of removing the one who was causing me hardship in attaining my own freedoms."

No, what interested him was the mind of a tactician. A real tactician. One who could not simply be predicted by looking into the history of his species; their art, their culture, their philosophy, or one that could simply be predicted by almost guessing their motivations. No, a tactician who truly understood his craft. one who could not easily by foxed by a simple deception tactic. One who required effort to defeat, who could not simply be guessed into a corner. It was these individuals who Lash was most interested in. It was they who posed the greatest competition to his own aims, to his own abilities. And therefore, it was these individuals who he strove to understand. Not out of some abstract idea of "respect," although he greatly respected these sorts of enemies. No, it lay in the pragmatic belief that to defeat an enemy, one must know them.

He let out a bit of a sound of apprehension, before shaking his head.

"No, it was not in this which my reason for doing this lay. If I had simply desired escape, I could have achieved it on my own. If I had simply wanted revenge, I could have killed the man in his sleep, then made my escape from the academy; he was not exactly brilliant in defending himself, particularly against threats which he might consider to be below his own level of intelligence. No, I did this for two reasons. Firstly, because simply doing this would have not undone the damage his inefficiency might leave behind. It would simply be chalked up to a rebellious servant, and as such, the proper precautions to re-examine the teaching staff, and re-evaluate the cadets would not have been taken."

While this was somewhat important in his reasoning, it was not his primary drive for what he had done.

"However, that is secondary to the other reason I did this. I suppose there's no way of getting around this, I did want to meet you. Not only to see to all these matters, but because I wanted to see you. To see how you reacted to the situation. To see if I could trust you as a leader. And, penultimately, if I learned I could, which I certainly have discovered to be the case, to offer my services to the First Order."