KotOR: 'True Sith' and 'Ancient Sith' Confussion

[The Source]

I placed this posting in another thread, but I thought it may need some clearification. KotOR III's story is going to be simple and not complex. I have read hundreds of theories, and I would like to put some information up for speculation. While replaying KotOR I, clearity hit me like a brick. Since I have not played the game for some time, I must have suffered from knowlegde loss.

 

Here is my posting:

 

KotOR: 'True Sith' and 'Ancient Sith' Confussion

I didn't want to speculate about KotOR III, for I thought that everything that needed to be said was said.

 

As you know, I am replaying 'KotOR I'. Since I haven't played the game for more than a year, I didn't realize what knowledge I have lost. If you want to know what KotOR III is about, I suggest that you replay 'KotOR I' again. Believe it or not, several of the NPCs gives you the answers that we all seek. Pay attanetion to: Suvam Tan.

 

1. The "True Sith' and 'Ancient Sith' are two different types of Sith.

 

2. The 'Ancient Sith' lived on Korriban, and their teachings were brought to Yavin IV by Exar Kun.

 

3. Exar Kun had slaves build weaponry and Sith Temples on Yavin IV.

 

4. The Great Sith War: Occured 50 yrs before KotOR I, which it would be 55 yrs before KotOR II.

 

5. According to 'Suvam Tan', there are still items hidden beneath the surface of Yavin IV. Anything on the surface has been destroyed, but beneath the surface could hold many interesting key Sith artifacts and tombs.

 

Revan is going after someone who had learned from the 'Ancient Sith' teachings. Now, KotOR I refers to everyone in the Great Sith War as students of 'Ancient Sith' teachings. Otherwords, the Republic and Jedi fought against the 'True Sith'. (Durring the Great Sith War). These Sith did not exist thousands of years ago. KotOR II refers to these Sith as the 'True Sith'.

 

Now, Exar Kun traveled to Korriban to confront a sect of 'Ancient Sith'. This sect of 'Ancient Sith' you meet as Revan in KotOR I. (Force Ghost). Otherwords, there are two sets of Sith. The ones that lived 50 yrs ago (True Sith), and the ones that were hundreds of years older (Ancient Sith). After he confronted and learned from the 'Ancient Sith', he brought their teachings to Yavin IV. He then created a large Sith Army, which fought against the Ancient Republic and Ancient Jedi.

 

Revan is going to finish the job.

 

http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/exarkun/index.html

 

Now, the problem is that KotOR II confussed the whole story. Who ever wrote the KotOR II story utilized words in a way, which left the player slightly confussed. I can only speculate that when 'True Sith' is mentioned, they were refering to 'the Sith who studied under Exar Kun'. These Sith are the product of old teachings, which you can find hints to in KotOR I on Korriban.

 

Ancient Sith = A thousand year old humanoid force user, which you do confront in KotOR I on Korriban. They are dead, but not their teachings.

 

True Sith = The students of Exar Kun who were taught through and about Ancient Sith teachings on Yavin IV. By Exar Kun.

 

What species? Well, the 'Ancient Sith' look like the Force Ghost you confront in one of the Sith Tombs on Korriban (KotOR I). They are humanoid.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that Yavin IV will be in KotOR III, for it is a key element to the 'Ancient Sith' and 'True Sith' story. I believe you as the PC will explore underground temples for clues, which will eventually lead you to a 'True Sith' (Someone who was taught by Exar Kun, and he/she has learned the 'Ancient Sith' ways.).

 

The question is: Who is this 'True Sith' threat, and what 'Ancient Sith' teachings is he/she handing down to another generation? Does he/she have an army?

 

-------------------------

 

KotOR II's Sith were taught on Malacore V. They were not taught on Korriban or Yavin IV. Therefore, KotOR II's Sith were not 'Truely Sith' of 'Ancient Sith' teachings.

[Emperor Devon]

If you want to know what KotOR III is about, I suggest that you replay 'KotOR I' again. Believe it or not, several of the NPCs gives you the answers that we all seek. Pay attanetion to: Suvam Tan.

 

KotOR I gives no insight as to what the True Sith are. I find it very unlikely that during the development of KotOR I the enemy in KotOR III was being planned.

 

1. They are not called the 'True Sith', nor are they called the 'Sith' race. They are called: 'The Ancient Sith'.

 

That doesn't matter. The term 'ancient Sith' applies to the Sith who obviously lived in ancient times, and as such cannot apply to any of the current Sith, even if they are the direct descendants of the ancient ones. Although Kreia could have used the term 'Sith race' to describe the True Sith, True Sith was a more a more accurate term, as Revan's Sith were the false ones, so there had to an identifier and 'the race of True Sith' sounds awful.

 

2. They lived on Korriban, and their teachings were brought to Yavin IV by Exar Kun.

 

A point if I may... the ancient Sith lived on many more worlds than Korriban. They had an empire.

 

Revan is going after someone who had learned from the 'Ancient Sith' teachings. Now, KotOR I refers to everyone in the Great Sith War as students of 'Ancient Sith' teachings. Otherwords, the Ancient Republic and Ancient Jedi fought against the 'True Sith'. These Sith did not exist thousands of years ago. KotOR II refers to these Sith as the 'True Sith'.

 

Another point if I may... there was never a war between those three groups, as two of those groups were the same. In addtion, multiple groups are capable of learning from the same source.

 

Now, Exar Kun traveled to Korriban to confront a sect of 'Ancient Sith'.

 

Exar Kun went to Korriban, but he never confronted any sects. He did meet with the spirit of an ancient Sith, though. (Although old Sith would be a more accurate term.)

 

After he confronted and learned from the 'Ancient Sith', he brought their teachings to Yavin IV. He then created a large Sith Army, which fought against the Ancient Republic and Ancient Jedi.

 

He brought no teachings to Yavin IV. All he did at Korriban was turn to the Dark Side. He created a very small part of his army at Yavin IV.

 

Ancient Sith = A thousand year old humanoid force user, which you do confront in KotOR I on Korriban. They are dead, but not their teachings.

 

Another point if I may... the ancient Sith are over 6,000 years old. Although they are dead, I think that their descendants are still alive.

 

True Sith = The students of Exar Kun who were taught about the through Ancient Sith teachings on Yavin IV.

 

Exar Kun did not have a large enough group of students to form an empire, hence why they needed the Krath and the Mandalorians. During the war he lost many students, and after the war many of them were hunted down by the Jedi. It's likely there were survivors, but there were not enough to control a sector, let alone the galaxy.

 

What species? Well, the 'Ancient Sith' look like the Force Ghost you confront in one of the Sith Tombs on Korriban (KotOR I). They are humanoid.

 

Irrelevant. After the Second Great Schism of the Jedi, the Dark Jedi were exiled (they were humans), and eventually settled upon Korriban, encountering the native Sith species. Centuries of in-breeding led to the two species eventually becoming one. Since Ajunta Pall was one of the Dark Jedi that was exiled (he recalls rebelling against his Jedi Masters) it was impossible for him to look like one of the True Sith.

 

KotOR II's Sith were taught on Malacore V. They were not taught on Korriban or Yavin IV. Therefore, KotOR II's Sith were not 'Truely Sith'.

 

Where they were taught is irrelevant. With that logic, Revan's Sith could be counted as true ones, since the Trayus Academy was constructed by the ancient Sith. As said by Darth Sion, "It has been here for thousands of years".

 

I would encourage you to read the Tales of the Jedi comics, MacLeodGR. They contain a very large amount of information on the ancient Sith and Exar Kun. The people who wrote them came up with all of Exar Kun and the ancient Sith's exploits. KotOR is a very poor source of information for this.

[The Source]

"KotOR I gives no insight as to what the True Sith are. I find it very unlikely that during the development of KotOR I the enemy in KotOR III was being planned."

I disagree. I believe the key to the future lays in the past. When you write a story, you design an outline to follow. I think this was pre-planned.

 

If KotOR is a very poor source, then we have a conundrum (contridictions). Since I am looking at the KotOR story as the source, I am drawing on the details that I have in hand. Just because you read a comic does not mean it is relevant to the game.

 

Does anyone know if the writter of KotOR I was the writter of KotOR II?

 

I am reading up information on the databank.

[Emperor Devon]

I disagree. I believe the key to the future lays in the past. When you write a story, you design an outline to follow. I think this was pre-planned.

 

Unlikely. During KotOR's development, they probably had a limited idea as to how it would react with fans. It would have been a poor decision to plan out two sequels to a game no one had reacted to.

 

Since I am looking at the KotOR story as the source, I am drawing on the details that I have in hand.

 

Which are not all the details that can be applied to the matter.

 

Just because you read a comic does not mean it is relevant to the game.

 

If this comic had not existed, all the details about Exar Kun would not have been included in KotOR.

 

Does anyone know if the writter of KotOR I was the writter of KotOR II?

 

As a different company developed KotOR II, it is unlikely.

[Clone L68362]

I tried to read it but...jeez. You lost me, man.

[RedHawke]

ust because you read a comic does not mean it is relevant to the game.

But in this case it is Mac, as the Tales of the Jedi comics are the first source of these story points. And where the people who made KotOR gleaned the info from.

 

Jolee's backstory especially, wouldn't exist without the comics.

[The Source]

I guess that is what I get for stopping my comic-book collection. I must have missed an entire series or something. I just did some digging online, and noticed an entire series of 'Tales of the Jedi'. Bummer...

[Manny C]

yeh, you missed alot of stuff, stuff thats actually mentioned in Kotor 1.

 

For those who havent read "tales of the jedi", the origin of the sith is as follows:

 

In ancient times, when the jedi were relatively new, there were a group of jedi who were the first to turn to the dark side and challenge the light jedi. They were defeated by the light and banished into unknown space, where they stumbled upon a relatively primative humanoid species (primative at least in comparison) known as the sith, who weren't as advanced as humans/civilization as the banished dark users knew it but were physically a strong race.

 

The dark users used their power to conquer the sith race and enslave them, and use them to establish the original "sith empire" which comprised of many worlds, (Korriban being one of them, but korriban was nothing more than a grave world to the original sith empire, not unlike the valley of kings in egypt) over time the sith empire expanded, and the human dark lords interbred with the sith, until eventually they came across a brother-sister duo of space explorers who ended up on the sith capital as a result of a random hyperspace jump.

 

I wont go into too much detail, but one thing lead to another and the sith crossed paths with the fairly young republic, resulting in the conflict known as "the great hyperspace wars", which are mentioned in KOTOR.

 

So when KOTOR refers to the "ancient sith" they're referring to this original sith empire that was defeated by the republic in the great hyperspace wars, although I don't think they were completely destroyed in the hyperspace wars, i cant really remember.

[kookaburra]

Greetings

 

 

 

 

True Sith are indeed very enigmatic. But since spending some time in teh KotOR forums I've discovered some long info about the Sith. I hope this will help anyone whos interested in the True Sith and the "normal" Sith.

 

 

 

Creditation goes to http://www.starwars.com

 

another link:

 

http://www.starwars.com/hyperspace/member/insideronline/88/indexp2.html

 

 

Over the millennia, the Sith have existed in many forms: as a people, as a religion, as a dictatorship, as a philosophy. The Sith have been brought to the brink of extinction time and again, yet they have always found a way to survive. Many times the title of "the last Dark Lord" has been erroneously applied. First the Dark Lord Naga Sadow, vanquished by the Galactic Republic in the Great Hyperspace War 5,000 years before the Battle of Yavin, was thought to be the last. Then a thousand years later, the fallen Jedi Exar Kun was considered the last of these dark siders' twisted kind.

 

Then Darth Nihilus... then Lord Kaan... then Darth Vader.

 

In the words of the arcane scholar Murk Lundi, the Sith, though oft-vanquished, understood and fully embraced a fundamental concept that was certain to assure their survival and resurrection -- an idea that most Jedi refused to accept.

 

Simply, if the will of the Force demands balance, then evil can never die.

 

Since the Beginning

 

 

"It is relevant to note that the word 'Sith' can be found in Pre-Corellian lexicons as a term meaning 'due to' or more plainly, 'since.' Sith that time -- wait, that's not right [student laughter] -- since that time, the word has evolved with Corellian phraseology to give us highly useful expressions, such as the expletives, 'Sithspit!' and 'Sithspawn!' [student laughter]." -- Lecture recording from The Lundi Series, Vol. 3: Origins of the Darth Dynasty, Soundbyte Texts

The term Sith was once used to describe a variety of beings, and was not always synonymous with the dark side. Originally not only a cult but a cultured species before they were subjugated by dark Jedi exiles, the blood-colored humanoid Sith people lived a superficially barbaric though surprisingly harmonious existence on their homeworld Korriban. Sentient sacrifices to their gods, dining on bloodsoup, a rigid and prejudice caste system, and war between nations were all common in Sith culture. These barbarous practices were accepted not as contrary or antagonistic to life, but integral to it. War was quite literally a concept on par with peace or serenity; conceptually, the Sith people did not or could not differentiate one state from the other. There was, ultimately, only existence.

 

Some historians have speculated that the attitudes of the early Sith people were owed to a prehistoric encounter between their species and the vampiric beings known as the Anzati. Volfe Karkko, a rare Anzat Jedi known for his prolonged study of one of the Jedi Temple's rare Sith holocrons, was fond of reminding his fellow Knights that the Anzati "remember the very first Sith." Beyond the anecdotal, though, there is no solid evidence to support this theory.

 

A peculiarity of the Sith people was their innate tendency toward left-handedness. This led to their creation of the lanvarok, a forearm-mounted weapon adapted strictly for left-handed use (human Sith Lords later crafted a right-handed version). Pure-blooded Sith were also steadily bred out as their genes were eventually alchemically mixed with those of humanoid dark Jedi. Even after the genetic fusion, the Sith's rigid caste system remained in place. Priests and warriors, called Kissai and Massassi respectively, were two of the prominent classes. Later in their history, those that bore the elevated title of Sith Lord were became relatively common, but in 100,000 years of their existence, the Sith only ever had one monarch overlord.

 

Ruling nearly 3,000 years before the rise of the Galactic Republic, King Adas was a massive, regal being encased in majestic ebon warrior armor. Raised from his youth as a chosen being due to the charcoal pigment of his skin, Adas demonstrated great intelligence, fighting prowess, and a tremendous aptitude for Sith magic. With his alchemically forged battle-ax, Adas led the bloody unification of Korriban's disparate nations and became its undisputed world ruler. The Sith people came to believe that King Adas was immortal and that his reign would be eternal.

 

In fact, Adas was almost three hundred years old and had earned the title Sith'ari (meaning "the Lord" or "overlord") when alien invaders came to Korriban. Misshapen Force-sensitive beings, these Rakatan soldiers of the so-called Infinite Empire first attempted to lull King Adas into their confidence by teaching him how to record his essence into a pyramidal, magical device called a holocron. But the Rakata soon showed their true colors and tried to conquer the Sith people. But even at that ripe age, the Sith King refused to go quietly and introduced the invaders to his oversized axe and the unconquerable will of his people. The dark siders were defeated, but the king gave his life to secure the Sith's freedom. After his death, King Adas' holocron passed to his "Shadow Hand," his trusted advisor and second in command. Without Adas' unifying influence, wars once again raged for rule of the Sith people, with the reigning combatants arrogantly claiming the title of Sith'ari, and eventually forcing a relocation of the Sith capitol to the planet Ziost. Eventually, almost two-dozen millennia after Adas' death, a proper successor to Adas seemed to come at last. Known in Republic space as the Exiles, traitorous Jedi defeated in a galactic war called the Hundred-Year Darkness arrived on Korriban and cowed the Sith people with their astounding Force abilities, lightsabers, and superior technology. With the help of the ruling king's Shadow Hand, these Jen'jidai, as the Sith called them, lured the Sith monarch into their confidence and destroyed him. Never anticipating this stunning sequence of events, the Sith people concluded that the dark Jedi were themselves more powerful gods than even the Sith'ari. Bestowing the Exiles with Adas' holocron, the reign of the first Jen'ari, or "Dark Lord" of the Sith began.

 

The last lord of the Sith Empire to possess Adas' holocron was Lord Garu, who died around the time of the Great Hyperspace War. The holocron was abandoned on the planet Ashas Ree until its rediscovery centuries later by the fallen Jedi Freedon Nadd. Nadd used it to rule the planet Onderon, where the teachings of King Adas helped usher in a new age of darkness. When the Jedi eventually freed Onderon of the dark side, they gained possession of the Sith holocron and banished it to a place where it could, presumably, never be recovered -- under millions of tons of water on a scarcely known world called Kodai.

 

The Mecrosa Order

Immediately following their conquest of the Sith people (circa 7,000 years before the Battle of Yavin), a few upstart Exiles, now self-proclaimed Sith Lords, returned to Republic space believing they could revenge themselves on their Jedi enemies with their new knowledge of Sith magic. The attack proved premature, however, and instead they succeeded only in revealing that some Jedi schismatics had found a new home and a people to rule outside of charted Republic space. The true scale of the Sith menace lurking in unknown space remained invisible for millennia, however. Two thousand years later, the Great Hyperspace War indelibly proved to the Jedi how dangerous the Sith Lords could be.

 

The thoroughness of the Jedi extermination efforts following this first full-scale Sith war was criticized by many as being executed with a gusto rivaling a Bothan declaration of Total War. Nevertheless, Sith teachings survived, and a thousand years later, a new war erupted, this time called the Great Sith War. This conflict came to be grouped with a series of major Sith-related encounters that followed soon after: the Mandalorian Wars, the Jedi Civil War, and the Cleansing of the Nine Houses.

 

The Mecrosa Order was the focus of the Cleansing. The order started out benevolently enough. Emerging during the Tapani sector's Dynastic Era, approximately a quarter millennium before the Great Sith War, the Mecrosa began as an order of nobles from House Mecetti who took an oath to protect the house against external attack and insurrection. For the next two hundred years, Mecrosa flourished from its castle on the planet Nyssa, gaining wealth and erecting chapter houses and fortresses on Mecetti worlds. To assist in its crusade, the order also oversaw the creation of an elaborate spy network. It is believed that the virtues of the Mecrosa Order were compromised somewhere during this two century stretch. Jedi from rival House Pelagia insisted that the order's founder, Viscountess Mireya, was the root of Mecrosa's Sith corruption.

 

When Mecetti High Lord Tritum XI realized there was a threat of inbreeding facing his house, he sought to introduce new noble blood. In one of those all-too-common circumstances when politics and noble pride must be reconciled, Tritum looked to a suitor outside the Tapani region -- to the nobility of a world called Vjun. Vjunite Viscountess Mireya brought to House Mecetti not only her noble pedigree, but Sith teachings as well. Sith rituals were subtly integrated into Mecrosa initiation rites and ceremonies, and soon Sith "lords" of a very different breed terrorized Tapani sector, assassinating Tapani house leaders that appeared to threaten Mecetti power and infecting Pelagia's Jedi with Sith poisons.

 

The Great Sith War turned out to be advantageous for Tapani citizens, for it focused Jedi attentions toward the Sith in their sector. After crushing Exar Kun, the Jedi collectively turned their might against the Mecrosa Order and flensed the Sith corruption in what came to be known as the Cleansing of the Nine Houses. However, contrary to popular belief, the Jedi didn't destroy the Mecrosa Order itself. The surviving Mecrosa, many of them non-Force-sensitive to begin with, went even deeper underground, trading the flash of Sith magic and supernatural poisons for the silence of frinka venom and martial arts.

 

The humbled Mecrosa survived the next 4,000 years, maintaining their secret through careful member selection and their tradition of assassination. Only during the New Sith Wars and the Jedi Purge did the order participate in sector events more actively, respectively poisoning Sith Lady Belia Darzu for her unwanted incursions into Tapani Space and taking revenge against the Pelagian Jedi for their role in decimating Mecrosa during the Cleansing. It was during the Jedi Purge after the Clone Wars that King Adas' holocron fell back into the hands of Sith descendants, when Mecrosa's most skilled agent Sir Nevil Tritum, snuck his way into Pelagia's holocron library. Despite not having any Force abilities, Tritum reported to his superiors his successful recovery of Adas' holocron from three very dead Jedi guardians.

 

Some time after the Battle of Endor, the Mecrosa were visited in their fortress on Nyssa by a woman appearing for all the galaxy like the abominable offspring of Darth Vader, requesting access to the order's most ancient documents and their Sith holocron. With little option and a sense of obligation, the Mecrosa ceded to the Dark Lady Lumiya's demands.

 

The New Sith

Sentients have often debated what has been the bloodiest, most wasteful war in galactic history. Jedi historians often recall the Jedi Civil War, while retired Old Republic rear-admirals name the Clone Wars. But whether it is referred to as "The War of the Fittest," "The Betrayal," or "The Curse of Qalydon," the Sith invariably cite the New Sith Wars.

 

The Old Sith Wars neutralized the Sith as an overt threat. But pressured by criticism of Jedi zeal exhibited in the aftermath of the Great Hyperspace War, the clean up job wasn't nearly as thorough this time around as it should have been. Political concerns were already beginning to take precedence over justice within the Republic, and instead of hunting down the remaining members of Exar Kun's Brotherhood of the Sith, the Republic chancellor urged the Jedi to finally destroy the Mecrosa Order, which had terrorized the influential Tapani sector for decades. The results were mixed. While the Tapani dark siders were eradicated, Sith survivors of the Great Sith War spread their evil into several distinct traditions, which would eventually wreak galactic-scale havoc as they brought themselves to the brink of extinction in non-stop combat.

 

It began when one Jedi abandoned the Knighthood 1,000 years before the last Battle of Rusaan. Known by the name Phanius and believed to be an Umbaran, the pale-skinned man was a charismatic and gifted Jedi Master who exhibited hints of a disturbingly relativistic, some said solipsistic, morality. He became one of "The Lost" when he abandoned the Jedi Order to pursue "alternative" knowledge. Unknown to the order, he infiltrated and united the various surviving Sith clans, intensifying his self-centered views. Phanius, convinced he'd obliterated the mental barriers that had kept him from understanding that his will superceded all things (or, in fact, was everything), took the name Darth Ruin. A number of Jedi joined his Sith cause, and war with the Jedi brotherhood inevitably followed. It wasn't long before the Sith turned the war upon themselves. After countless numbers of Ruin's minions died for seemingly little else than his sheer whim, the Sith acolytes soon came to realize that they meant nothing -- quite literally -- within the scheme of their Dark Lord's abstract philosophy. They conspired and destroyed Darth Ruin, ushering in a millennium-long period of betrayal and darkness.

 

Chaos largely reigned for the next 250 years until a powerful Sith leader emerged. Known only as the Dark Underlord, his presence was clouded with rumor and Sith folklore. Some said he was called from the realm of Chaos by an inexperienced Sith acolyte who was never heard from again. Others even speculated that the Dark Underlord was the spirit of the Lettow general Xendor himself. The only thing that was certain was that he was a bloody marauder of the first quarter of the New Sith Wars. Consolidating a large Sith group known as the Black Knights on the planetoid Malrev 4, the Dark Underlord was one of the few Sith powerful enough to actively take the battle to the Jedi during this era, hacking through battlefields with his twin Sith swords. However, the Jedi Master Murrtaggh cut a deal with Mandalorian mercenaries, who staged a diversionary attack on the Dark Underlord's forces. While the Dark Underlord's Zeltron commander faced the Mandalorian intruders, Master Murrtaggh stole into his enemy's territory and assassinated the Sith Lord, martyring himself to the dark side in the process.

 

The last quarter of this bloody, backstabbing period saw the rise of the Dark Lord Belia Darzu, the major historical intermediary between Darth Rivan and the last Sith of this era, Lord Kaan and his Brotherhood of Darkness. A changeling and master of monster creation, Darzu was infamous for assimilating her conquered enemies into her own army, the Metanecrons, though the conversions were anything but voluntary. Using the Sith power known as mechu-deru, she created the frontline of her force: hulking part-creature, part-machine technobeasts infested with nanogene droids. In combat, the tiny droids could infect their enemy, rewriting the unfortunate being's genetic code until she became a undead technobeast herself. Another sizable portion of Darzu's army was made up of her dead opponents, spurned to life by Sith incantations. Darzu's apoptotic army was ultimately sabotaged by Mecrosa poisoners, ending her evil. Centuries later, the Emperor's Hands Roganda Ismaren and Blackhole would use Sith scrolls preserving Darzu's secrets for their own sinister purposes.

 

Eventually the prominence of the Darth lineage was reestablished. The narcissistic Dark Lord Kaan ruled the Brotherhood of Darkness with an iron fist in the final days of the New Sith Wars. He commanded his Sith followers to create a Thought Bomb that wiped out both their forces and the Jedi enemies. This left the Dark Lord called Darth Bane the last Sith standing. With his apprentice Darth Zannah, Bane reshaped the Sith Order with two rules: henceforward, the Sith would only be two in number and until such time as they revenged themselves on the Jedi, they would maintain their existence a secret.

 

 

 

 

Cults and Acculturation

The Jedi heard next to nothing of the Sith after the Battle of Rusaan. There were the vague threats by dark sider Kibh Jeen at his moment of desperation during the Dark Jedi Conflict (circa 150 years before the Battle of Naboo), who spouted seeming gibberish about there always being no more or less than two Sith, but few Jedi gave his mad utterances any credence. But then the Sith cultists began emerging. These "Sith" were disorganized and harmless for the most part. Many were merely youths in rebellion, without any solid idea of Sith doctrine or even any Force-sensitivity. But not all of them.

 

One of the more dangerous cults was the Thyrsian Sun Guard. Not Force-sensitive, nonetheless these soldiers-for-hire were fearsome fighters. Consolidated in the Thyrsus system by Darth Sidious, the Sun Guard wore helmets reminiscent of the elite Senate Guard, although instead of ceremonial robes these Sith mercenaries were mailed in black armor from head to foot. Several of these Sith mercs guarded Sidious' Coruscant stronghold, and were also instrumental in the Dark Lord's plans surrounding the events of the Battle of Naboo, assassinating a discreet, though pivotal, number of Senators prior to the election for a new Supreme Chancellor. However, after Sidious' schemes ran their course, Count Dooku had most of these devotees killed by his executor Asajj Ventress -- though more than a few of the most fanatical Sun Guards found their way into Chancellor Palpatine's Red Guard.

 

One Sith cult can trace its origins back to the days of the Great Sith War. Larad Noon was one of the Jedi corrupted into the Brotherhood of the Sith by Exar Kun. When Kun and his Shadow Hand Ulic Qel-Droma were defeated, Noon and the other Sith acolytes fled to various parts of the galaxy. Some flew to the Expanse, dooming themselves and the Sith of House Mecetti.

 

Noon, however, was forever scarred by Sith ideology and the countless deaths he caused. He distanced himself from the Jedi and became a recluse on the moon Susevfi. Here he discovered a peculiar ore called cortosis capable of rendering lightsabers inoperative on contact. From this ore he fashioned a suit of armor to protect himself against the Jedi he believed would inevitably come, though in actuality, none did. Noon died alone, survived only by his journal in which he wrote extensively on his theory of Jiaasjen or "integrating the shadow." It was Noon's attempt to amalgamate his Jedi learning with his Sith experiences in order to justify the atrocities he committed and to keep himself from going insane with guilt.

 

Thousands of years later, during the Clone Wars, an Anzat Jedi named Nikkos Tyris learned of his predecessor, the Jedi Volfe Karkko, and how he fell to the dark side. Curious, Tyris made a great effort to obtain Karkko's apocryphal teachings in which he found frequent reference to and snippets from Sith tomes. Looking on Karkko as a role model and lured to Count Dooku by his possession of one of Karkko's most cherished Sith holocrons, Tyris was slowly seduced into the darkness. Claiming he'd found the Saarai or "True Way," Tyris split from the Jedi Order, attracting many Jedi to himself, including the infamous Bpfasshi marauders. However, Tyris and most of his followers were slain by Jedi forces.

 

Tyris was survived by only a handful of Jensaarai pupils, Sith for "Followers of the True Way." Their training was far from complete, but as such they had not been corrupted as Tyris had. Tyris' primary apprentice felt it was her duty to make certain her master's ideals, or what she perceived to be his ideals, didn't die, and that the "evil" Jedi wouldn't triumph. She took it upon herself to continue Tyris "truth" by finding what Sith texts she could. She was largely unsuccessful, but when she came to Susevfi, she found Larad Noon's journal. The result was the creation of a Force tradition that uniquely blended Sith and Jedi teachings.

 

Proliferation among the Sith cults can at least in part be attributed to one man, or one Quermian, as it were: history professor Murk Lundi, who made his career exploring esoteric topics. An excellent teacher but a mediocre researcher, he found himself struggling in the "publish or perish" world of academia. In peril of losing his position at the University of Coruscant, Lundi began to explore topics outside of stale classics like Xim the Despot and the Atrisian Empire. Eventually, he zeroed in on a single controversial subject: the Sith. To advance his research, the academician delved into the trenches, creating a communications network between the disparate Sith sects to grant himself greater accessibility to information.

 

Then, Lundi learned of the ultimate prize. A Sith holocron was buried deep beneath the oceans of the planet Kodai. Lundi attempted to retrieve the artifact, but was stopped by the Jedi. Afterward, one of his classroom students almost succeeded where the teacher had failed, but the pupil was destroyed by one of Darth Sidious' Sun Guard mercenaries and the holocron was restored to Jedi hands. Lundi later went irrevocably insane and died a madman's death. Meanwhile, the Jedi Council ultimately entrusted the Sith holocron to House Pelagia's extensive holocron library in the Tapani sector.

 

A Dark Religion

The order of the Prophets of the Dark Side goes back nearly a thousand years to the three-eyed mutant Darth Millennial, a Sith Shadow Hand whose instincts drove him to see more sense in Lord Kaan's cutthroat Rule by the Strong than Bane's limiting Rule of Two. Gifted with the ability to foresee the future, Millennial was often at odds with his Sith Master, Darth Cognus. Barely escaping his Master's wrath, Millennial fled to the planet Dromund Kaas. There he meditated on Sith teachings and combined them with the theories of early and pre-Republic thinkers like Plaristes and Dak Ramis. The result was an intricate religion the dark sider called the Dark Force. Hailing himself as a prophet chosen by the will of the Force, Millennial and his religion attracted many Force-users of considerable intelligence, as well as multitudes of naïve Sith cultists. Those who disagreed with the tenets of the Dark Force were labeled heretics and destroyed.

 

Centuries passed and so did Millennial, but his faith lived on, at one point seducing the Jedi Kibh Jeen. Eventually, Darth Sidious discovered the secret order, and bent these Prophets of the Dark Side to his will. When the Prophets were obliquely reintegrated into Darth Bane's line of the Sith, Palpatine secretly gave them the duty of providing early training for some of his dark siders. Occasionally, Palpatine asked the Prophets to train a devotee to the exalted levels of Emperor's Hand, Emperor's Eyes, or Emperor's Reach. Just as the Prophets only ever trained one individual to the rank of Emperor's Reach for Palpatine, likewise they only trained one to the status of Emperor's Eyes. However, this latter individual was one of the Prophets' own.

 

A former Nightsister of Dathomir, High Prophetess Merili was one of only two Emperor's Eyes that Palpatine ever employed. The Emperor's Eyes were those Dark Side Adepts with a particular propensity for seeing into the Force. Like the other Prophets, Merili was able to gaze into the future; the invaluable difference, however, was that Merili's mind seemed to partially exist there. She was thus not only able to witness coming events with uncanny clarity, but on rare occasion she was able to in fact manipulate them, much like a skilled Jedi Master can influence the outcome of a conflict using Battle Meditation. Needless to say, the stresses of temporal ambiguity made Merili's hold on reality tenuous at best. Of Palpatine's other Emperor's Eye, a mutant called Triclops, little is known, save that Palpatine considered the being a great personal failure.

 

The Prophets of the Dark Side have always maintained their sovereign right to accept additional adherents of the Dark Force at their discretion. The Prophets have three ranks in their order: acolyte, followed by prophet, with each subdivided into sub-ranks such as "Lesser Prophet" and "High Prophet," and ultimately the overarching position of Supreme Prophet (all acolytes and prophets of lesser orders are easily identifiable by their lack of a beard). The Prophets were one of Palpatine's most jealously guarded secrets, kept concealed even from Darth Vader for a time.

 

When Supreme Prophet Kadann adamantly disagreed with Palpatine concerning a guaranteed Imperial victory at Endor, Palpatine sent his Inquisitors to Dromund Kaas to reeducate Kadann's priesthood, causing the ecclesiastics to take flight to the secluded planet Bosthirda. After Endor, while the Prophets were believed dead, former Imperial Intelligence Director Blackhole -- himself a former Prophet of the Dark Side -- helped acting-Emperor Sate Pestage set up a "Dark Side Church" on Imperial Center with a clergy of false Prophets, including a diminutive Bimm and a Null to impersonate the current Supreme Prophet Kadann and his High Prophet Jedgar, respectively. As religion had been largely outlawed under Palpatine, these charlatans filled a tremendous spiritual need for the population and became highly idolized. This later empowered the fakers to actually dictate rule of the Empire. They determined to bestow Emperorship on whomever secured the glove of the dead Darth Vader's severed right hand -- a Mandalorian crushgaunt which Vader had fitted around one of Lord Kaan's indestructible Sith amulets. The Imperial Grand Admiral Afsheen Makati eventually destroyed these prophet imposters, though one of them, Orloc, escaped to continue his con. Meanwhile, the real Prophets continued to plot from the planet Bosthirda, until they were found by their most dangerous and embittered pupil, Azrakel, on a tip from a mysterious source. Armed with his double-bladed lightsaber and Darth Vader's prophesied gauntlet, Azrakel managed to destroy a number of the flabbergasted Prophets, including Supreme Prophet Kadann, before being permanently put down. Though the surviving Prophets thought they were now safe, within minutes of Azrakel's death, the Dark Lady Lumiya and her apprentice Carnor Jax finished the job.

 

Life After Darth

The problem Bane addressed when he bound the Sith to secrecy and their number to a pair was that only under such conditions could dark side ambition be checked. But Emperor Palpatine eventually broke the rule of secrecy and "bent" the rule of two by keeping a multitude of dark siders in reserve. Like his emperor, Vader also bent the rules, secretly training Sith disciples of his own so that he himself might usurp the title of Sith Master. Among them were Lumiya, an Imperial double-agent-turned cyborg, and Flint, a stormtrooper whose father was killed by General Grievous during the Clone Wars.

 

Vader had planned to pit these pupils against one another as past Dark Lords had done, taking the victor as his Shadow Hand. The Sith Lord died before that could happen, however. Flint, who had looked to Vader as a father, felt the loss deeply. He retreated to the planet Vjun where he mourned within Vader's Bast Castle. It wasn't long before he was found there by Lumiya. Though they'd never seen one another, without words they came to a mutual understanding. A towering statue of Vader looked on as Flint ignited his lightsaber and Lumiya her Sith lightwhip. The furious battle left both warriors battered, but in the end Flint's despair was no match for Lumiya's hatred, and the roles of master and the apprentice were determined.

 

Lumiya tasked Flint with subjugating the Phelleem sector and killing Luke Skywalker while she prepared an alien species called the Nagai (or N'Gai) for the invasion of galactic space. Nothing could make Flint happier, but instead of killing Skywalker, Flint was persuaded by an old friend to turn back to the light. For many years thereafter, Flint was kept in a cell of Mandalorian iron on an Alliance safeworld, healing from the traumatic influence of the dark side. Eventually, he returned to his home planet Belderone to live out a simple life. Lumiya vowed to deal with Flint when circumstances allowed and sought a new apprentice. She didn't have to look far.

 

As the dominant black color of his robes suggests, the dark sider Carnor Jax had ties not only to the Imperial Royal Guard, but his father was once a Sith mercenary of the Thyrsus Sun Guard who was killed by Darth Sidious following his failure to recover King Adas' holocron. Jax himself was a superior soldier, savvy and ambitious. Like Flint, he excelled as a stormtrooper, but Jax was handpicked from the ranks of the Blackhole's special stormtrooper unit for the Royal Guard.

 

After Palpatine's death, a number of Royal Guards partook in a mass suicide. Some distraught guards joined the cause of Lord Shadowspawn, while others found solace in the words of the Prophets' Church of the Dark Side, who promised the Emperor would one day return. Jax was disgusted at the weakness he witnessed blind loyalty produce and resolved to have no part of it. Thus, it was easy for Jax to transfer allegiance from Palpatine to his successor Sate Pestage, then again to Empress Ysanne Isard. Ultimately, Jax was loyal only to himself.

 

That became problematic, however, when Isard transferred Jax and a number of other Royal Guards into the hands of Lumiya as part of a deal. Sensing the Force in Jax, Lumiya offered him something altogether different than any of his previous masters: the power of the dark side.

 

After giving Jax limited training, Lumiya informed her apprentice of her need to now gather the necessary elements to rebuild the Sith Order. The New Republic already thought Lumiya dead, and the circumstances surrounding her encounter with the Emperor's Hand Mara Jade on Caprioril led the Empire to the same conclusion. Before she disappeared on this quest, however, Lumiya ordered Jax to infiltrate the Empire's upper echelons and prepare, by whatever means necessary, for the ultimate threat to the Sith legacy. Jax pursued this agenda, collecting political and military allies and incriminating secrets within the Imperial Ruling Council and using Dark Side Adepts like Sarcev Quest to learn new Force powers. Jax soon had the Empire eating out of his palm.

 

Then came the unthinkable. Emperor Palpatine, dead for six years, miraculously returned. Suddenly, Jax realized what threat his master Lumiya had been referring to, and was not prepared to give up the power he'd accumulated. As a Force-sensitive Royal Guard, Jax easily became part of the Reborn Emperor's elite and trusted Sovereign Protectors. With Quest's help and particular relish, Jax convinced the Imperial Ruling Council to bribe Palpatine's physician into poisoning the clones the Emperor was using to stay alive. Palpatine died his last death as a result, and Jax set himself up as Imperial ruler. Afterward, he attempted to reestablish communication with Lumiya -- not to rejoin her but to lure her into a trap. That's when one of Palpatine's loyal former Royal Guardsmen killed him.

 

Lumiya was nonetheless thankful, for not only had Jax permanently eliminated Palpatine, but before his attempted betrayal, he'd passed on word to her of a mysterious stranger called Nom Anor who was interested in a possible alliance with the Dark Lady.

 

Evil Lives

 

 

"Will the Sith ever return? It's a probabilistically historical inescapability. But, what makes you think they haven't already? [uneasy laughter]." -- Lecture recording from The Lundi Series, Vol. 5: Historical Reincarnation, Soundbyte Texts

Despite all the efforts of the Jedi and the Republic, the Sith seem to be an inextinguishable plague. Seven years after the Battle of Endor, when Luke Skywalker established an academy with the intention of rebuilding the Jedi Order, the spirit of the ancient Sith Lord Exar Kun returned to prevent the Jedi Brotherhood's resurrection. Three short years later, another Sith daemon, this time the Dark Lord Marka Ragnos, also was called back from the realm of Chaos to terrorize the galaxy. This latter event was not isolated. Some of the disciples of Ragnos had formerly been aligned with the dark sider Hethrir and his Empire Reborn, which had been defeated only a short time prior. Worse, soon after the encounter with Ragnos, the lifeless body of the reformed Sith acolyte Flint was found on Belderone: an ancient Jedi lightsaber in hand, a cauterized hole through his throat.

 

The Force seethed with the suggestion of a grand, sinister scheme. But Luke could only guess at who was pulling the strings. Either the dark sider Irek Ismaren or Jaalib Brandl? One of Luke's rogue Jedi students, perhaps...Brakiss or Dolph? The list of suspects was considerable. In the wake of these events, Master Skywalker began to keep a formal compilation of known dark siders and to actively unearth any facts on the Sith that he could find, some of Doctor Lundi's teachings among them.

 

On the world of Korriban, through the ancient Sith Oracle and with King Adas' holocron now in her possession, the Dark Lady of the Sith Lumiya watched circumstances unfolding with deep satisfaction.

[Jediphile]

One particular persist ghost I really feel we need to exorcize is this persistent idea that the "original Sith" or "Sith species" were these incredibly powerful and enigmatic humanoids that no Sith has ever compared to since. They were not. They were just a species living on Korriban, enslaved by the exiled Dark Jedi, who then interbred with the dark jedi and whose descendants then assumed many of their ways in the force over the years.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sith_species

 

These Dark Jedi, who more than anyone are the "ancient Sith" in the sense of being powerful, evil force users of ancient times were originally part of the jedi order, but were exiled from the Republic after the Hundred-Year Darkness.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hundred-Year_Darkness

[The Source]

I wonder if George wanted his characters to be this complex. I thought the Sith were simply Jedi, but they had fallen due to temptation. I didn't think there was a mess of detail to their background.

[Feagildin]

I wonder if George wanted his characters to be this complex. I thought the Sith were simply Jedi, but they had fallen due to temptation. I didn't think there was a mess of detail to their background.

 

 

The Sith as we know them are just dark Jedi, but the name had to come from somewhere. Here's what the official databank says:

 

 

Although the modern era of the Sith is attributed to Darth Bane, and the Dark Jedi that preceded him, the cult can find its roots further back in the galaxy's ancient past. Long before the Republic rose, there lived a culture on the planet Korriban. These primitive people were called the Sith, and the Force flowed strongly through their bloodlines. Although they didn't practice the Force as the Jedi would, they were talented in their own brand of magic.

 

In the early days of the Jedi, a great schism tore the order apart. Jedi who had tapped the forbidden power of the Force's dark side rebelled against their light-sided brothers. After a terrible war, the Dark Jedi were exiled from the Republic. Past the Republic's growing borders, these castaways discovered Korriban and the Sith people.

 

Powerful with the dark side, the Jedi outcasts set themselves up as gods on Korriban. The primitive Sith worshipped them as their lords, and so the Jedi grew, and built temples and monuments to celebrate their power. Millennia of interbreeding blurred the distinction between Sith native and offworlder, and the term Sith came to encompass not only the indigenous people of Korriban, but also the powerful overlords that ruled them.

 

Five thousand years ago, during the Sith Empire's golden age, a Republic explorer vessel stumbled upon the secluded worlds of the Sith. One Sith Lord, Naga Sadow, saw this as an opportunity to invade the Republic, and exact vengeance on the Jedi who had banished them. History would record the invasion that followed as the Great Hyperspace War, and it would be the first of many terrible conflicts between Jedi and Sith.

 

Time and again the Sith and Jedi would clash, with devastated worlds lying in their wake. The last great conflict took place on the scarred plains of Ruusan. The Sith Lord Kaan and his Brotherhood of Darkness did battle with the Jedi Army of Light. From this onslaught, one Sith escaped: Darth Bane. It was he who would resurrect the order with duplicity and secrecy in mind

[The Source]

^^^^

I was just looking at that. You took that from the 'Expanded Universe' databank. I was also looking at the 'Movie' databank.

 

http://www.starwars.com/databank/organization/thesith/

An ancient order of Force-practitioners devoted to the dark side and determined to destroy the Jedi, the Sith were a menace long thought extinct. The current incarnation of the Sith is the result of a rogue Jedi dissident from the order. Two thousand years ago, this Jedi had come to the understanding that the true power of the Force lay not through contemplation and passivity. Only by tapping its dark side could its true potential be gained. The Jedi Council at the time balked at this new direction. The Dark Jedi was outcast, but he eventually gained followers to his new order. Awakening beliefs from the dark past, the new Sith cult continued to grow. With the promise of new powers attainable by tapping into the hateful energies of the dark side, it was only a matter of time before the order self-destructed. Internecine struggle by power-hungry Sith practitioners dwindled their numbers. Weakened by infighting, the Sith were easily wiped out by the Jedi.

One Sith had the cunning to survive. Darth Bane restructured the cult, so that there could only be two -- no more, no less -- a master, and an apprentice. Bane adopted cunning, subterfuge, and stealth as the fundamental tenets of the Sith order. Bane took an apprentice. When that apprentice succeeded him, that new Sith Lord would take an apprentice.

 

Thus, the Sith quietly continued for centuries, until the time of Darth Sidious. It was Sidious who was responsible for the revenge of the Sith against the Jedi. His measured and carefully engineered plot spanned decades. Sidious was apprentice to Darth Plagueis, a wise Sith Lord whose knowledge of arcane and unnatural arts was reputed to extend to manipulating the very essence of life. By Sith tradition, Sidious killed Plagueis in his ascent to Master from apprentice. This left an opening for the fearsome Darth Maul to become Sidious' Sith apprentice.

 

In this age, the final decades of the Republic, the galaxy at large had believed the Sith to be extinct, a fabled threat from the past. Qui-Gon Jinn's report of a Sith attack on Tatooine was met by the Jedi Council with hesitation and skepticism. Surely if the Sith had returned, the Jedi would have detected it, they reasoned.

 

The dark side, for all its power, is ultimately hard to detect if so desired. A shadowy master like Darth Sidious was able to keep his presence a secret, even though he maintained a guise as a very public figure. Sidious was a politician, a seemingly humble Senator from Naboo. Though he would eventually rise to the position of Supreme Chancellor, and worked closely with the Jedi during the Clone Wars, they failed to detect his true nature until it was too late.

 

With the death of Darth Maul at Naboo, the Jedi Council realized that the Sith menace was true. What they hadn't puzzled was whether Maul was the master, or the apprentice. Years would pass before the Sith menace arose once more, a menace that would eventually come to engulf the entire galaxy.

 

It began with a Separatist crisis that threatened to split the galaxy. Count Dooku, a former Jedi, became a political firebrand, fanning the flames of secession across a disillusioned Republic. Unbeknownst to the Jedi at the time, Dooku was a Sith Lord -- Sidious' next apprentice after Maul. As Darth Tyranus, Dooku engineered the vast armies that would fight on both sides of the Clone Wars: the assembled droid armies of the united Confederacy of Independent Systems, and the secretly created clone army of the Republic.

 

The Clone Wars were an elaborate and costly sham: a massive ruse that spread the Jedi ranks thin across the galaxy, and drew more political power to Darth Sidious. When the time was right -- when Sidious had in his grasp his ideal apprentice, the powerful Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker -- he dispatched a command to the clone forces that identified their Jedi generals as traitors to the Republic. The Jedi were wiped out by their loyal clone underlings. What few survivors remained were branded as enemies of the state.

 

With Sidious as the Galactic Emperor, and Darth Vader as his loyal apprentice, the Sith ruled the galaxy and plunged it into darkness. It remained so for years until a new hope arose to bring Darth Vader back from the dark side and extinguish the menace of the Sith once and for all.

An ancient order of Force-practitioners devoted to the dark side and determined to destroy the Jedi, the Sith were a menace long thought extinct. The current incarnation of the Sith is the result of a rogue Jedi dissident from the order. Two thousand years ago, this Jedi had come to the understanding that the true power of the Force lay not through contemplation and passivity. Only by tapping its dark side could its true potential be gained. The Jedi Council at the time balked at this new direction. The Dark Jedi was outcast, but he eventually gained followers to his new order. Awakening beliefs from the dark past, the new Sith cult continued to grow. With the promise of new powers attainable by tapping into the hateful energies of the dark side, it was only a matter of time before the order self-destructed. Internecine struggle by power-hungry Sith practitioners dwindled their numbers. Weakened by infighting, the Sith were easily wiped out by the Jedi.

One Sith had the cunning to survive. Darth Bane restructured the cult, so that there could only be two -- no more, no less -- a master, and an apprentice. Bane adopted cunning, subterfuge, and stealth as the fundamental tenets of the Sith order. Bane took an apprentice. When that apprentice succeeded him, that new Sith Lord would take an apprentice.

 

Thus, the Sith quietly continued for centuries, until the time of Darth Sidious. It was Sidious who was responsible for the revenge of the Sith against the Jedi. His measured and carefully engineered plot spanned decades. Sidious was apprentice to Darth Plagueis, a wise Sith Lord whose knowledge of arcane and unnatural arts was reputed to extend to manipulating the very essence of life. By Sith tradition, Sidious killed Plagueis in his ascent to Master from apprentice. This left an opening for the fearsome Darth Maul to become Sidious' Sith apprentice.

 

In this age, the final decades of the Republic, the galaxy at large had believed the Sith to be extinct, a fabled threat from the past. Qui-Gon Jinn's report of a Sith attack on Tatooine was met by the Jedi Council with hesitation and skepticism. Surely if the Sith had returned, the Jedi would have detected it, they reasoned.

 

The dark side, for all its power, is ultimately hard to detect if so desired. A shadowy master like Darth Sidious was able to keep his presence a secret, even though he maintained a guise as a very public figure. Sidious was a politician, a seemingly humble Senator from Naboo. Though he would eventually rise to the position of Supreme Chancellor, and worked closely with the Jedi during the Clone Wars, they failed to detect his true nature until it was too late.

 

With the death of Darth Maul at Naboo, the Jedi Council realized that the Sith menace was true. What they hadn't puzzled was whether Maul was the master, or the apprentice. Years would pass before the Sith menace arose once more, a menace that would eventually come to engulf the entire galaxy.

 

It began with a Separatist crisis that threatened to split the galaxy. Count Dooku, a former Jedi, became a political firebrand, fanning the flames of secession across a disillusioned Republic. Unbeknownst to the Jedi at the time, Dooku was a Sith Lord -- Sidious' next apprentice after Maul. As Darth Tyranus, Dooku engineered the vast armies that would fight on both sides of the Clone Wars: the assembled droid armies of the united Confederacy of Independent Systems, and the secretly created clone army of the Republic.

 

The Clone Wars were an elaborate and costly sham: a massive ruse that spread the Jedi ranks thin across the galaxy, and drew more political power to Darth Sidious. When the time was right -- when Sidious had in his grasp his ideal apprentice, the powerful Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker -- he dispatched a command to the clone forces that identified their Jedi generals as traitors to the Republic. The Jedi were wiped out by their loyal clone underlings. What few survivors remained were branded as enemies of the state.

 

With Sidious as the Galactic Emperor, and Darth Vader as his loyal apprentice, the Sith ruled the galaxy and plunged it into darkness. It remained so for years until a new hope arose to bring Darth Vader back from the dark side and extinguish the menace of the Sith once and for all.

[Vaelastraz]

"KotOR I gives no insight as to what the True Sith are. I find it very unlikely that during the development of KotOR I the enemy in KotOR III was being planned."

I disagree. I believe the key to the future lays in the past. When you write a story, you design an outline to follow. I think this was pre-planned.

 

QUOTE]

 

Considering that Bioware designed the first part of the story, and Obsidian the second plus there is no evidence of the true sith (or a Revan who was not evil, whojust wanted to protect the galaxy...) plus the ending in Kotor I seems to complete, both the Dark and the Light one makes me think you are wrong.

 

But we can't know unless some offical Bioware/Obisidian source tells us.

 

But, what i know is, that most game developers don't plan stories of games in advance. They release a game. What? Huge success? They give us money to make a sequel? Ok.

[The Source]

***Rolls Eyes***

What ever. Hehehe...

 

Maybe not pre-planned, but they do look at the past to develop the future. I also conceided that I didn't follow the comic-book.

 

I noticed that I have a more 'movie canon' biased opinion about the Sith. When I refused to look at EU as a whole, I missed some things that were allready developed. As I designed my speculation, I drew my opinion on the things I knew, but I didn't account for the things I didn't know. By jumping the gun in this manner, I was wrong in my assumptions. I should have questioned the things I didn't know.

 

When it comes to EU, I tread near the pre-prequel and pre-NJO novels. The 'Tales of the Jedi' comic series in question were created aroubnd 1994ish, and I completely missed this series when I was collecting comics.

[Meeshman]

The true sith, are not Exar Kun's students, they are just the inhabitants of the sith homeworld, the were regular people, but the dark jedi were exiled, and went tothe sith homeworld, and over a millenia the two people became one.

[Emperor Devon]

Welcom to the forums, Meeshman! That point was made a few days ago, though.

[The_Catto]

i read it .. understood it? i did not lol .. im just going to wait for Kotor III to see exactly who the 'true sith' are and all that stuff :D

[Jediphile]

Well, let's just look at what Kreia says about this subject in KotOR2, which always seemed like foreshadowing of KotOR3 to me...

 

Kreia: "These Sith... they seek the death of all Jedi. As have all the Sith since the Jedi Order was first split.Yes... the Jedi Civil War is not the first one of its kind - thousands of years ago, the Jedi had another civil war that split the Order. It was a... terrible thing.A faction among the Jedi abandoned the teachings of the order, following their own path. They waged war on their fellow Jedi, a war that raged across the galaxy.But these fallen Jedi were cast out, defeated, and they retreated to worlds in the Outer Rim. Over time, they took on the mantle of the Lords of the Sith.But in their hearts, they never forgot the Jedi. The hatred for the Jedi Order burns in their veins like fire, and echoes in their teachings. Revan tasted it... as Malak did."

[T.Nova]

Well, let's just look at what Kreia says about this subject in KotOR2, which always seemed like foreshadowing of KotOR3 to me...

 

Kreia: "These Sith... they seek the death of all Jedi. As have all the Sith since the Jedi Order was first split.Yes... the Jedi Civil War is not the first one of its kind - thousands of years ago, the Jedi had another civil war that split the Order. It was a... terrible thing.A faction among the Jedi abandoned the teachings of the order, following their own path. They waged war on their fellow Jedi, a war that raged across the galaxy.But these fallen Jedi were cast out, defeated, and they retreated to worlds in the Outer Rim. Over time, they took on the mantle of the Lords of the Sith.But in their hearts, they never forgot the Jedi. The hatred for the Jedi Order burns in their veins like fire, and echoes in their teachings. Revan tasted it... as Malak did."

 

This begs for a few questions. She says they retreated to 'worlds', note the plural. So is it possible that the Dark Jedi weren't just exiled to Korriban? (Perhaps some ended up on Malachor V) But then that might mean the primal Sith species could be found on multiple worlds.

 

My theory would be an ancient race; the Rakatan most likely, may had succeded in taking a number of Sith species from Korriban during their reign as the Infinite Empire. They then used the Sith species as slaves on a small variety of worlds. Over time the Infinte Empire fell and the Rakatan fell victim to a lethal plague (We know how that story goes). Now lets say Malachor V was one of these worlds the Rakatan brought the Sith species to. When the Rakatan began to decline, they rebelled against their masters and drove the Rakatan off of Malachor V. However they were to be forever isolated for the fact that they had no interest in using the Rakatan technology themselves due to their primitive nature.

 

So finally a ship of Dark Jedi comes crashing down around 7,000 BBY. Like the ones on Korriban, the Sith species thought of the Dark Jedi as gods. And over time the Dark Jedi and Sith species became one.

 

Now this is where it gets interesting. Unlike the Sith on Korriban, perhaps some how these Sith were a bit more... darker, so to speak. Which would explain why Malachor V is practically 'twisted' by the force itself. If you read the chronicles on TSL's official site, you learn that Revan litteraly fell to the Dark Side because he/she simply walked on Malachor V.

 

Now these Sith on Malachor V carefully planned for about a thousand years to destroy the Jedi and the Republic, out of vengence of course. They moved their empire away from the known galaxy, deep into the unknown regions where they slowly built up an immense army. They observed the known galaxy however, and eventually goaded the Mandalorians into attacking the Republic, knowing full well that it would lead to the Jedi Civil War and the 'shadow war' waged by the remaining Jedi.

 

So in essence this turns out to be a mastermind plot by forgotten Sith, who have little affiliation to the Sith Empire of the Great Hyperspace and Great Sith wars. It goes into a little detail that might stray off-topic a little, but it's my theory on who the 'True Sith' might be.

[Jediphile]

This begs for a few questions. She says they retreated to 'worlds', note the plural. So is it possible that the Dark Jedi weren't just exiled to Korriban? (Perhaps some ended up on Malachor V) But then that might mean the primal Sith species could be found on multiple worlds.

 

Yes and no. The primal Sith species is no more, since it interbred with the dark jedi. Their mutual desdendants, however, are spread all over the worlds of the ancient Sith Empire such as Khar Delba/Khar Shian, Thule, Ch'hodos, Rhelg, Ziost and likely a host of others that formed the ancient Sith Empire. The dark jedi were never exiled to Korriban specifically - they were just exiled from the republic and then found their own way to Korriban in their travels and lay the foundations of their empire there. The throne world of the Sith Empire was Ziost.

 

My theory would be an ancient race; the Rakatan most likely, may had succeded in taking a number of Sith species from Korriban during their reign as the Infinite Empire. They then used the Sith species as slaves on a small variety of worlds. Over time the Infinte Empire fell and the Rakatan fell victim to a lethal plague (We know how that story goes). Now lets say Malachor V was one of these worlds the Rakatan brought the Sith species to. When the Rakatan began to decline, they rebelled against their masters and drove the Rakatan off of Malachor V. However they were to be forever isolated for the fact that they had no interest in using the Rakatan technology themselves due to their primitive nature.

 

So finally a ship of Dark Jedi comes crashing down around 7,000 BBY. Like the ones on Korriban, the Sith species thought of the Dark Jedi as gods. And over time the Dark Jedi and Sith species became one.

 

Now this is where it gets interesting. Unlike the Sith on Korriban, perhaps some how these Sith were a bit more... darker, so to speak. Which would explain why Malachor V is practically 'twisted' by the force itself. If you read the chronicles on TSL's official site, you learn that Revan litteraly fell to the Dark Side because he/she simply walked on Malachor V.

 

Now these Sith on Malachor V carefully planned for about a thousand years to destroy the Jedi and the Republic, out of vengence of course. They moved their empire away from the known galaxy, deep into the unknown regions where they slowly built up an immense army. They observed the known galaxy however, and eventually goaded the Mandalorians into attacking the Republic, knowing full well that it would lead to the Jedi Civil War and the 'shadow war' waged by the remaining Jedi.

 

So in essence this turns out to be a mastermind plot by forgotten Sith, who have little affiliation to the Sith Empire of the Great Hyperspace and Great Sith wars. It goes into a little detail that might stray off-topic a little, but it's my theory on who the 'True Sith' might be.

 

Bear in mind what we do know from K2...

 

 

Kreia (in her predictions at the end of K2): "You must go where Revan did, into the Unknown Regions, where the Sith, the true Sith, wait in the dark for the great war that comes. And he came because Malachor, like Korriban, lies on the fringes of the ancient Sith Empire, where the true Sith wait for us, in the dark.Have we? You thought that the corrupted remnants of the Republic, the machines spawned by technology that Revan led into battle were the Sith? You are wrong. The Sith is a belief. And its empire, the true Sith Empire, rules elsewhere.And Revan knew the true war is not against the Republic. It waits for us, beyond the Outer Rim. And he has gone to fight it, in his own way.He left the Ebon Hawk and its machines behind, for he knew he would not need them.And, like you, he knew he must leave all loves behind as well, no matter how deeply one cares for them. Because such attachments are not the way of the Jedi, and they would only bring doom to them both in the dark places where he now walks. It would have helped had he made her understand. But she was always strong-willed, that one, and did not understand war as Revan did."