Dark Library Archives

Moor

History of theSith

Greetings,

There have been several inquiries from the sides of our users as to the known history of the Sith. While the contents of these posts are seen as fictional, every story bears its own wisdom to be learned by the mindful reader. I would especially like to the thank the authors and staff of:
http://www.method.org/sith
for making the appearance of these additional lectures possible.

TIMELINE

-25,000:
Hyperdrive invented
Republic and Jedi order formed

-7,000?
Dark Jedi exiled
Sith discovered
First Dark Lord of the Sith rises to power

-5,000
Death of Marka Ragnos
The Great Hyperspace War
Naga Sadow exiled to Yavin IV

-4,400
Freedon Nadd rules on Onderon

-4,350?
The Beast Wars of Onderon begin

-4,000
The Beast Wars of Onderon end

-3,988
The Freedon Nadd Uprising

-3,996
Krath rebellion in the Empress Teta system
Exar Kun rules on Yavin IV

-3,995
Ulic Qel-Droma turns to the dark side
Exar Kun named Dark Lord of the Sith

-3,993
The Sith War
Extinction of the Sith
Exar Kun trapped on Yavin IV

-3,975?
Death of Ulic Qel-Droma

-2,030
The new Sith order formed by Darth Bane

-80?
Palpatine born on Naboo

-63?
Khameir Sarin born on Iridonia

-51?
Khameir Sarin becomes Darth Maul

-44?
Anakin Skywalker born on Tatooine

-35? Palpatine elected chancellor of the RRepublic

-25?
The Clone Wars
Anakin Skywalker marries Queen Amidala of Naboo
Rise of the Empire

-18
Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader
Birth of Leia and Luke Skywalker
Great Jedi purge begins

-6?
Rebel Alliance formed
Galactic Civil War begins

0
The Battle of Yavin

+3
The Battle of Hoth

+4
The Battle of Endor
Death of Palpatine and Darth Vader
Galactic Civil War ends

+10
The resurrected Emperor leads the Empire
Luke Skywalker turns to the dark side

+11
Death of Exar Kun

- The Rise of the Sith
No one knows exactly what happened in those ancient times before the rise of the Sith Empire. The fledgling Old Republic had established the new order of Jedi Knights as a police force to protect and nourish its growth. The Jedi were the guardians of peace, a beacon of pure flame to the galaxy.

But somehow, things turned. A band of Jedi, discovering the power of the dark side of the Force, forsook the Jedi Code and sought to destroy all the Jedi had worked so hard to build. Seeing its strength crumbling under the teachings of these rogue Jedi, the Republic took action. With the help of the light-side Jedi, it rounded up these renegades and exiled them, giving them a spacecraft and sending them into the unknown. The idea was that out in the vast undiscovered galaxy, with no place to call home, the dark Jedi would die but the Republic would not be held responsible for their deaths.

Except that it didn't happen quite like the Republic wanted it to. The exiled Jedi emerged on the other side of the galaxy to a system previously unknown to the Republic. This system was inhabited by a race called the Sith, aliens with red skin, cranial horns, bony chins, and insectile features. The Sith were black magicians, practicing magic arts but without the aid of the dark side of the Force. Their society was divided into three classes or castes: slaves, warriors, and nobles, and the different nobles of Sith clans often engaged in feuds and wars to show their power. It was a violent society, ripe for conquest.

Here the dark Jedi saw their chance. As they landed in their spacecraft, the Sith saw them as having fallen from the sky and worshipped them as gods. The dark Jedi then proceeded to enslave all the Sith, from nobles on down to slaves. Seeing that the Sith were so powerful in the black arts, the Jedi then interbred with the most powerful of them, forming a new breed of magicians both strong in the Sith arts and in the dark side of the Force.

Out of this new breed of Sith came the Dark Lords of the Sith, men who claimed the right to rule over all of the Sith and dark Jedi. Only one could rule at a time, and this led to more feuds and wars as the Sith lords struggled to gain the high position.

The world of the Sith lords was Korriban. Here, on this barren world, the Sith built temples carved out of the stone of the cliffs and entombed their dead. Vermin and other unnatural beasts populated the crevices and crannies and the essence of the dark side filled the tombs. Thousands of generations of Sith lords were buried here, and, later, the Dark Lords of the Sith were also entombed.

The Sith built a far-flung empire on their side of the galaxy and the Republic became memory, story, and then legend. And, strange as it was, the Republic never knew that the Sith existed.

The Great Hyperspace War Millenia after the dark Jedi conquered the Sith, the Republic was rising to its full power. Exploration was being conducted into the unknown reaches of the galaxy and hyperspace explorers, men and women who mapped new hyperspace routes, abounded. Hyperspace exploring was dangerous and many times suicidal, as the explorers would spin random coordinates onto the navicomputer and then follow the path, hoping to end up lucky. Most of the time, they wound up dead, flying their ships through a star or planet or black hole. This, however, did not deter the young and adventurous from following the same example, for the luckiest explorers became wealthy.

In that time, two young teenagers, Gav and Jori Daragon, stumbled upon the Sith Empire in an alarming series of coincidences. The seven worlds of the Empress Teta system had just been united in a series of wars, in which the parents of Gav and Jori were killed while smuggling supplies to the soldiers. The two decided to set out on their own and become hyperspace explorers. However, it did not work out quite as they had planned. After selling a disastrous route to a merchant who vowed revenge, Gav and Jori fled from the Teta system. With nowhere to go, they entered random coordinates and came out in the far side of the galaxy, where no Republic ship had flown for millenia: in orbit above Korriban.

Of all the times to arrive in the heart of the Sith empire, this was the worst. Down on the planet's surface, the funeral of the ninth Dark Lord of the Sith, Marka Ragnos, had just ended, and two powerful Sith lords, Naga Sadow and Ludo Kressh, were facing off in a duel to the death to decide the next Dark Lord of the Sith. Ragnos'spirit tried to intervene, but nothing caught the lords' attention until Gav and Jori appeared, asking cheerfully if the Sith wanted to establish a trade bargain with them.

Instead, the Sith took Gav and Jori hostage and then called a council of the Sith lords, asking what should be done. Kressh suggested that it was an invasion from the Republic and that the two should be destroyed immediately. But Sadow disagreed, saying it was instead a time of expansion and conquest for the Sith Empire. He wasunable to convince Kressh, however, and the Sith lord and his followers left in a rage.

In the days that followed, Sadow carried out his devious plans. Obtaining strange Republic weapons such as a blaster from the Daragon's ship, Starbreaker 12, hestaged attacks on the prison where Gav and Jori were being held. In the process, hekilled his old ally Simus and hid Gav and Jori in his secret fortress while pretendingthat it was a Republic attack. The Sith empire erupted into chaos, and, as expected,Sadow's followers elected him tenth Dark Lord of the Sith, pleading with him toprotect them from the Republic invasion they thought was coming.

However, Kressh found out about Sadow's deception and launched an attack on the Sith lord's fortress. Little did Kressh know that Sadow had been waiting for thismoment, and that the Dark Lord of the Sith actually had two fortresses and the one that Kressh was attacking was a decoy, a fake. Separating Gav and Jori, Sadowconvinced Jori to flee back to the Republic before Kressh destroyed them. Jori left in the Starbreaker 12 without knowing that Sadow had attached a homing beacon to it, thus letting him find out the location of the Republic. After she was safely past Kressh's force, Sadow then launched an attack from his real fortress on the dark sideof Khar Shian and used his Sith magic to turn the slaves of Kressh's followers againstthem, thus destroying most of Kressh's reinforcements.

After defeating Kressh's force, Sadow began teaching dark Jedi skills to Gav and made the boy head of his fleet. He then made plans to attack the Republic, using Sith magic to project images of ships to make his fleet seem larger than it really was. The Sith invasion fleet set out for the Republic and met the Republic ships at the world of Primus Goluud.

Sadow's plan would have gone without a hitch if it were not for Gav and Jori Daragon. Jori, escaping back to the Republic, had risked her life to warn the Republic forces about the Sith empire. The Republic navy met the Sith ships in battle, but for a while it seemed the Sith would triumph. But Sadow had underestimated Gav Daragon. Seeing through Sadow's lies, the boy attacked his master and damaged his meditation sphere from which Sadow sent the illusions. With the illusions gone, the Republicforces began crushing the Sith.

Sadow, in an attempt to escape, caused the star of Primus Goluud to explode and fled back to the Sith empire. But more trouble awaited him there. He found that Kressh had declared himself the Dark Lord of the Sith in Sadow's absence and had exiled Sadow from the empire. As the two Sith fleets met in battle, the Republic ships arrived. Jori Daragon, true to her word, had returned to destroy the Sith with the help of Empress Teta and her Jedi advisors. Sadow knew he was beaten, but as a last parting gift, he again made the Sith slaves turn on their masters, killing Kressh and all his followers. He then destroyed pursuing Republic forces by exploding the double star of Denarii Nova.

But Sadow still had other plans in defeat. He and his followers fled to the moon of Yavin IV and there he built a grand civilization, thus ensuring the survival of the Sith throughout the centuries.

The Beast Wars of Onderon It was a time of peace and prosperity for the Republic. The ranks of the Jedi Knights had swelled, numbering thousands, and promising Jedi were being trained in greatergreater numbers. Among these brightest and most powerful Jedi were Ulic Qel-Droma, his brother Cay, and the Twi'lek Tott Doneeta.

Their master, Arca Jeth, realized that to become truly great Jedi, his students must face danger and learn to use the Force without fear. He therefore dispatched the three to Onderon, a beautiful world with a dark history. On the planet's surface, a civil war had been raging for centuries between city dwellers and the barbaric Beast Riders, named for their talent in riding the great flying beasts native to the planet.

Arriving at the capital city of Iziz, they were received by the royal family of Onderon: the queen Amanoa and her daughter Galia. The Beast Riders attacked, but the Jedi were able to drive them off. However, in the process, the enemy captured Princess Galia. Ulic, Cay, and Tott made their way to the fortress of the Beast Riders, vowing to save the princess from the king of the Riders, Lord Modon Kira. When they arrived, however, they discovered that it was the city dwellers, not the Beast Riders, who were provoking war. Galia also confessed that she wanted to marry the son of the beast lord, Oron and told the Jedi that her parents were dark side users, heirs of the powers of an ancient Sith Lord, Freedon Nadd.

In the face of this shocking discovery, the Jedi revised their battle plans. Ulic traveled back to Iziz to speak to Queen Amanoa, but she refused to give in to his demands and then attacked him with the dark side. Ulic then gave the signal for his Beast Rider allies to attack, seeing battle as the only way to end this conflict and bring peace toOnderon.

However, the Beast Riders were hard pressed by the power of the dark side present in the capital and Cay Qel-Droma was wounded, his left arm cut completely off. As the battle raged on, the Jedi began to lose hope of victory. Victory, however, arrived in the form of Master Arca Jeth, who, with the light side of the Force, pushed back the enroaching darkness.

Arca as well was surprised by the power of the dark side here on Onderon and was determined to discover its source. He found it in the form of the crypt of Freedon Nadd himself. As he and his students opened the crypt, Queen Amanoa was killed by the dark side power emanating from it.

The death of the queen ended the civil war and Galia married Lord Oron. The Jedi had kept the peace once again.

The Freedon Nadd Uprising At the end of the Beast Wars of Onderon, Jedi Master Arca Jeth and his students left the planet of Onderon, their mission at an end. Peace had been restored on the planetin the form of a marriage alliance between the heir of the royal family, Galia, and the prince of the Beast Riders of Onderon, Lord Oron.

This peace quickly proved to be an illusion. The resentment and dark side influence that had ruled the planet for centuries could not be quelled by one simple act. Hearing rumors of unrest from Onderon, Jeth and his students returned to find that there was indeed something wrong. Though his student Queen Amanoa had been killed, the Sith Lord Freedon Nadd still wielded formidable influence on Onderon. In spirit form, he had attracted followers and was now planning to end Queen Galia's rule.

Master Arca quickly took action, transporting the coffins of Freedon Nadd and the newly dead Queen Amanoa to the fourth moon of Onderon, Dxun. Nadd's followers, however, had different plans. They attacked the ships carrying the coffins and made off with the bodies. Galia then took the Jedi to her father, King Ommin, an ailing, withered old man kept alive only by machinery and the dark side of the Force. Showing them Nadd's spirit, Ommin attacked Arca with force lightning. Nadd's minions then attacked the Jedi while Ommin made off with Arca.

Ulic and the others realized that this insurrection was more serious than they had previously thought. He sent distress calls to the planets of Ossus and Coruscant, requesting help. The help quickly arrived in the form of Republic warships and a team of young Jedi knights, among them Nomi Sunrider. As the Republic attacked Iziz and the Naddists, the Jedi made their way to Ulic's distress signal from the fortress of the Beast Riders. That battle won, they then pursued King Ommin, who was trying to keep the Jedi from following him by using his dark side powers. However, Nomi realized this and used the light side to combat the dark. Ommin defeated her with overwhelming amounts of dark power, but by then it was too late. The Jedi stormedhis hidden citadel and demanded Master Arca. The old man lashed out at them with force lightning, but Ulic Qel-Droma slashed through the machinery that held Omminupright, effectively killing him. As Ommin died, Nadd appeared, threatening them with dark prophecies.

The Jedi rescued Arca and Republic had won once again. But they would find that peace was not so easily kept on the world of Onderon. Nadd's promises of vengeance remained in their memories, and though the battle was over, they would soon find that the war was not.

The Sith War The rise of Exar Kun to the position of Dark Lord of the Sith shook the Republic to its core, but the turning of Ulic Qel-Droma to the dark side to become Kun's Sith apprentice presented a far more serious problem. For now, Kun had an ally who had once been in the inner ranks of the Republic. An ally who knew many of the Republic's secrets and weaknesses. And the Republic had lost a loyal Jedi.

The Sith base was on Yavin IV, where Kun ruled over his tribe of Massassi. Though Ulic had killed Satal Keto, leader of the Krath, a spinoff branch of the Sith, Keto's cousin Aleema was still alive and well. A powerful Sith magician, Aleema helped unite the Krath under her lover, Ulic. Another ally of the Sith was the mysterious warriorMandalore.

Building a fleet to rival the fleet of the Republic, Kun waged an all-out war against the galactic government, calling for an overthrow of the old Jedi order and the establishment of a new Golden Age of the Sith. He attacked various strategic points in Republic defense and at the same time seduced many budding young Jedi to the dark side, persuading them to kill their masters and join him. Among the Jedi Kun seduced was Crado, his fellow student under Master Vodo-Siosk Baas. The Sith then launched their greatest offensive: an attack on the capital of the Republic itself-Coruscant.

The Coruscant attack, however, did not go as planned. Ulic Qel-Droma, betrayed by Aleema, was captured by Republic forces and tried for war crimes and treason. As Ulic sneered at the assembled audience, Kun and Mandalore broke into the courtroom and rescued him, using a Sith spell that rendered all those in the room immobile except for the Sith. Kun's old master, Vodo Siosk-Baas, attempted to detain his student, tryingto make Kun realize how far he had fallen to the dark side. In a rage, Kun struck his master down.

After the rescue, Kun decided it was time for more drastic measures. Underneath the ruins of the Yavin temples, Kun had found Naga Sadow's ship, still intact for over a thousand years. Aboard this ship was a superweapon designed by Sadow to destroy worlds. As revenge for what she had done to Ulic, Ulic and Kun sent Aleema to ambush Republic forces using the weapon. When she activated it, the weapon caused the sun of the Cron Cluster to supernova, destroying most of the system and Sadow's ship, which Aleema had been aboard. One of the worlds in the system was Ossus, on which the Jedi Library had been housed for millenia.

By this point many of the Republic Jedi had despaired of ever stopping the Sith. But Nomi Sunrider, one of the strongest Jedi and formerly in love with Ulic Qel-Droma, still believed that he could be redeemed. She launched a rescue mission, composed of herself, Ulic's brother Cay, and many of Ulic's former friends, to save the man she had once loved. But Ulic would not listen. Finally, Cay, desperate to turn his brother back, forced Ulic into a duel with him. But Cay's skill was no match for Ulic's anger and his Sith arts, and he was killed.

The death of his brother shocked Ulic and he knelt by Cay's body, weeping. Grief-stricken at the tragic death of her friend, Nomi gathered her Force powers and, using a Jedi trick taught to her by Odan-Urr, former keeper of the Jedi Library on Ossus, blocked Ulic from the Force. The realization that he could no longer feel the Force forced Ulic to accept that he had been wrong all this time. Gathering what little strength he had left, he led Republic forces to Yavin IV to destroy the Sith and Exar Kun.

Republic forces incinerated the Yavin jungle and destroyed many of the Sith temples that Sadow and Kun had built. But Kun, discovering Ulic's treachery, had drained the life force from a massive gathering of his Massassi warriors to keep himself alive as the Jedi tried to destroy him. He succeeded, to a degree, becoming a spirit trapped within the walls of the Yavin temples. The rest of the Massassi were burned along with the forest and the Sith race passed into history.

The New Sith Order The extinction of the Sith race after the destruction of Yavin IV by the Republic brought peace to the galaxy. The forces of evil had been vanquished, and with the Sith gone, the Jedi knew that the dark side would never again challenge the light.

They were wrong. The Sith had vanished, but they had not been forgotten. It was only a matter of time.

About two thousand years before the beginning of the Galactic Civil War, these ancient Sith teachings were discovered by a powerful Jedi Knight. Like Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma and others before him, he thought he was strong enough to withstand the temptation of the dark side. Delving into the mysteries of the ancient Sith empire, he was sucked into the trap. And as he grew more and more powerful in the use of the black arts and dark side of the Force, he grew restless.

Why should the Sith not rise again? Not as a race, but as a dark side cult, dedicated to studying these ancient mysteries? He had visions of a new golden age of the Sith, dominated by dark side Jedi and ruled by him alone.

This dark Jedi then began to act out his vision. Recruiting Jedi and apprentices and swaying them to his views, he built the beginnings of his secret empire. One day, he told them, the Sith would appear to the light side Jedi and conquer the galaxy.

But that day was not to come. In his haste, the dark Jedi overlooked the fact that every one of the Jedi that he had swayed also had their own visions of a grand empire with themselves as supreme ruler. As in the Sith Empire of old, this destroyed them. Feuds and warring broke out and in a great holocaust of dark Jedi against dark Jedi, every one of the new Sith were destroyed.

Except for one. One Jedi, whether by trickery or by his control of the dark side of the Force, had survived. As he surveyed the wreckage around him, he vowed that never again would this happen. He would continue the Sith legacy, as the first dark Jedi had hoped, but in a different manner. From now on, there would be no huge band of followers ruled by one lord. From now on, there would only be two: a master and an apprentice. The master would teach the apprentice and when the master died, the apprentice would become the master and seek out a new apprentice. Thus, the Sith would live on, shadowy, unseen but everpresent, ever watchful, a phantom menace for the Republic and Jedi to reckon with.

This dark Jedi took on a new name, calling himself Darth Bane, the first of the Sith. Decreeing that every Sith should take the title "Darth," he began training his first apprentice. After his death, that apprentice then took the title of Sith Master and continued his legacy.

And for two thousand years, the Sith flourished unknown.

- The Galactic Civil War The galaxy's fragile peace crumbled when Senator Palpatine declared the republic inept and outdated, naming himself as the Emperor of a new Galactic order. Coruscant, the previous capital of the old Republic, was transformed into Imperial City, the Emperor's palace rising as its focal point. Thus the Empire was born, shattering the peace of the old Republic.

The Jedi Knights, defenders of the Republic, struggled against Imperial forces but were eventually nearly all wiped out by The Emperor's servant and Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader, in what would come to be known as the Great Jedi Purge. Those who would not seek the Dark Side or join the Empire either died in battle or vanished without a trace.

However despite death and destruction, or perhaps because of it, brave men and women retaining their loyalty to the old Republic vowed to destroy the empire and restore peace. A Rebel group ,the Alliance, intending to rise against Imperial forces, was formed by Mon Mothma, Garm Bel Iblis, and Bail Organa in the Treaty of Corellia.

The first blow to the Empire came at the destruction of their super weapon, the Death Star. A group of Rebel spies stole the blueprints to the Death Star and spirited them away aboard the Corellian Corvette the Tantive IV under the care of Alderaanian princess Leia Organa, adopted daughter of Bail Organa. Lord Darth Vader captured the princess and tortured her to make her hand over both the plans and the location of the secret Rebel base, but she refused. Unbeknowest to Vader, the plans were no longer in her possession, having been stored in an astromech unit and jettisoned to the surface of the planet Tatooine in a daring move before the Empire captured the Corvette.

And here a new chapter in the galactic story was about to unfold. The droids became the property of a young farmer named Luke Skywalker, who discovered the princess's frantic message to a certain Obi-Wan Kenobi. Through a strange series of circumstances, Skywalker arrived at the dwelling of Ben Kenobi, a desert hermit, to find that he was indeed the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Leia Organa's message, the same Obi-Wan who had fought with Anakin Skywalker, Queen Amidala, and Qui-Gon Jinn so many years ago. Kenobi and Skywalker hurried to Alderaan with the droids, hiring a smuggler named Han Solo to take them there, but it was too late. Grand Moff Tarkin, commander of the Death Star, and Vader decided that the princess's recalcitrance deserved a lesson and thus destroyed the planet of Alderaan, killing Bail Organa in the process.

Through the sacrifice of Kenobi's life in a duel with Vader, Skywalker and Solo were able to rescue the princess from the Death Star's detention center and escape to the Rebel base on the moon of Yavin IV. They knew it was only a matter of time before the Empire found them, and thus analyzed the plans of the Death Star, hoping to find a weakness. The weakness was finally discovered in the form of a small thermal exhaust port. In the battle against the Death Star, many brave Rebel pilots were killed, but Wedge Antilles, ace pilot, Luke Skywalker, and Han Solo managed what many had thought impossible and destroyed the Death Star, and in the process became heroes.

After this, the Rebellion transferred from base to base, in fear that they would be discovered by Vader and the Empire and that all would be over. Meanwhile, Vader discovered that Luke Skywalker was his son, born of his wife Amidala before he renounced the name Anakin Skywalker to turn to the dark side. Vader was determined to win Luke to the dark side, overthrow the Emperor, and take control of the galaxy. He confronted the young Jedi Padawan on the planet of Bespin by capturing his friends as bait, but Luke refused to acknowledge the truth and escaped Vader.

The Empire, determined to rid the galaxy of the Rebellion once and for all, began construction on a new, more powerful Death Star over the moon of Endor. But this proved their undoing. Though Palpatine tried to trap the Rebels by using false information about the Death Star's plans to lure them to Endor, his plan was thwarted by Luke Skywalker. Vader had brought Skywalker to the Emperor's throne room on the Death Star in hopes that Luke would turn there and they could destroy the Emperor together. But instead, the Emperor used the dark side to turn Luke against Vader and almost destroy him; then when that failed, Palpatine began to torture Luke with dark-side electrical lightning. It was then that Anakin Skywalker reemerged from the dark scarred shell that was Darth Vader and slew his master, not for his own selfish ends as he had once imagined, but in order that his son might live.

This act caused Vader's death, but it also effectively destroyed the leadership and unity of the Empire. Remnants of the Empire remained for years to come but the war came to an end and the New Republic brought hope back to the war torn Galaxy. Anakin Skywalker's sacrifice had brought ultimate balance to the Force.

Darth Moor