On the surface, Luthen Rael’s gallery is a front. A shell company for a saboteur. But step deeper and you see it’s more than that - it’s a reliquary. A defiant act of preservation in a galaxy built on erasure. The walls aren’t just lined with antiques. They’re lined with graves.
Once Dedra Meero enters that space, something fractures. The stillness bends.
Luthen is asked about the collection, his playful reply that:
At the moment, only two pieces of questionable providence in the gallery. Any guesses?
Suddenly, it’s not just about the knife Luthen hides - it’s about the presence of three things that shouldn’t exist in that room at the same time.
Luthen.
Dedra.
And the blade.
Let’s start with the collection. This is not random décor.
Behind glass sits a Kalikori - a Twi’lek heirloom passed from parent to child, each piece telling a family's story. The Empire seized them by the dozens during the occupation of Ryloth, many destroyed in the name of “compliance.”
Elsewhere, a Jedi Temple Guard mask - likely scavenged from the ashes of the Coruscant Temple after Order 66. A fossilized Rakatan blade, echoing the ancient Infinite Empire, one of the first to fall to the dark side, whose legacy Palpatine quietly mimicked.
A Mortis mural fragment, referencing the Father, Son, and Daughter - the closest the Force ever came to manifesting as gods. Lost theology in a galaxy that now teaches only obedience.
Each item in Luthen’s gallery is a cultural fingerprint the Empire tried to smudge out. His store is a museum of near-extinction. And not the curated, sterile kind you’d find in a Core World. These objects aren’t celebrated - they’re survivors.
And Luthen is their last archivist.
So when Dedra enters - ISB authority, black gloves, unimpressed glance - she’s not just invading a room. She’s desecrating it. She doesn’t feel the Force history soaked into the walls. Doesn’t recognize the trail of blood behind each object.
That’s the Empire’s fundamental flaw: it doesn’t see.
It scans. It audits. It deletes.
Dedra sees a threat.
What she doesn’t see is that she’s already lost.
Because while she’s interrogating Luthen, the Rebellion has already metastasized.
Pockets of resistance exist from Onderon to Lothal, from Enfys Nest’s cloud-riders to the hidden cells on Aldhani and Ferrix. Even scattered remnants of the Jedi - Cal Kestis, Ahsoka Tano, Cere Junda - have felt the stirrings. Luthen’s purpose is fulfilled. His network is no longer just sabotage.
It’s momentum.
And he knows it.
That’s why he doesn’t pull a thermal detonator. Doesn’t turn the gallery into one last spectacular fireball. Because that room is bigger than either of them. It represents what the Empire can’t grasp: memory without permission. Culture without compliance. History that refused to die.
And Luthen himself? He’s become the contradiction.
Once, he stood for preservation. Now, he’s drowned in compromise. He sent Anto Kreegyr to die. Sacrificed Cassian’s team on Aldhani. Cut deals in shadows with partisans like Saw Gerrera, whose methods disgust him.
He’s lost his morality - but not his mission.
The blade in his hand isn’t just to survive. It’s not just a way out, it's penance.
And Dedra?
She came for domination. To unmask a threat and win the day.
But she finds a man already finished. A movement already spread.
She thinks she’s silencing something.
Instead, she’s walking through its tomb.
That’s what’s really out of place in that room.
Not the knife.
Not the relics.
Luthen and Dedra are the intrusions.
Dedra, the agent of erasure, walking blind through a shrine to everything her Empire tried to eliminate. She sees strategy where there is sorrow. Data points where there are tombstones.
And Luthen? A man who once preserved cultures now burns lives to fuel them. The things in those display cases had meaning once. So did he. But now he’s become what he swore to resist: a means to an end. Not a protector, but a weapon.
They stand in the room like invaders. One draped in control, the other drowning in guilt. Both eclipsed by the quiet power of what surrounds them.
Because the gallery, and by extension, the will of the people, endures.
Not in spite of them - but without them.
The rebellion doesn't need Luthen anymore...
And history will never remember Dedra.
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