Sith Archives




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 a rogue Jedi dissident from the order. Two thousands 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 practioners dwindled their numbers.

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 and his apprentice, Darth Maul. By that time, 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 when required. A shadowy master like Darth Sidious was able to keep his presence a secret, even when sharing a world with the Jedi Temple.

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.

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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 on 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.