Sith Empire

Sith philosophy

 * Fear leads to anger.
 * Anger leads to hate. 
 *    Hatred leads to power. 
 *    Power leads to victory. 
 *    Let your anger flow through you. 
 *    Your hate will make you strong. 
 *    True power is only achieved through 
 *    testing the limits of one's anger, 
 *    passing through unscathed. 
 *    Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable. 
 *    The dark side of the Force 
 *    offers unimaginable power. 
 *    The dark side is stronger than the light. 
 *    The weak deserve their fate.
 * –tenets of Sith philosophy

Sith Lords are devoted to the dark side of the Force and are expected to draw on their anger, fear, and hatred in order to gain power. The Sith therefore maintain a certain psychological isolation where they continue to hold themselves above all others.

The Sith Code
The Sith Code was the mantra that reinforced the core beliefs of the Sith Order. This code was developed many millennia before the Galactic Civil War, and was taught specifically as a foundation of Sith Philosophy at the Sith Academy on Korriban as far back as the Old Republic:


 * Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
 * Through passion, I gain strength.
 * Through strength, I gain power.
 * Through power, I gain victory.
 * Through victory, my chains are broken.
 * The Force shall free me.

Timeline for ancient Jedi-versus-Sith conflicts

 * Note, BBY stands for Before the Battle of Yavin.

The Second Great Schism

 * 7,000-6,900 BBY — The Hundred-Year Darkness
 * 6,900 BBY — The Battle of Corbos

The Golden Age of the Sith

 * 5,000 BBY — The Battle of Khar Dhelba
 * 5,000 BBY — The Great Hyperspace War
 * The Battle of Coruscant
 * The Battle of Koros Major
 * The Battle of Kirrek
 * The Battle of Primus Goluud
 * The First Battle of Korriban
 * The Second Battle of Korriban

The Old Sith Wars

 * 4,015 BBY — The Great Droid Revolution
 * 4,002 BBY — The destruction of Ambria
 * 4,000-3,996 BBY — The Great Sith War, First Sith War, or Exar Kun War
 * The Beast Wars of Onderon
 * 4,000 — The Battle of Onderon
 * The Freedon Nadd Uprising or Naddist Revolt
 * 3,998 — The First Battle of Onderon
 * 3,998 — The Second Battle of Onderon
 * The Krath Holy Crusade
 * 3,996 BBY — The Battle of Basilisk
 * 3,996 BBY — The Dark Reaper Campaign
 * 3,996 BBY — The Battle of Foerost
 * 3,996 BBY — The First Battle of Coruscant
 * 3,996 BBY — The Battle of Vento
 * 3,996 BBY — The Second Battle of Coruscant
 * 3,996 BBY — The Battle of Kemplex IX
 * 3,996 BBY — The Battle of Ossus
 * 3,996 BBY — The Battle of Al'Har
 * 3,996 BBY — The Battle of Onderon
 * 3,996 BBY — The Battle of Yavin IV
 * 3,996 BBY — The Battle of Empress Teta
 * 3,995-3,993 BBY — The Great Hunt
 * The Cleansing of the Nine Houses
 * 3,965-3,960 BBY — The Mandalorian Wars
 * 3,965 BBY — The First Battle of Onderon
 * 3,965 BBY — The First Battle of Dxun
 * 3,963 BBY — The Battle of Serroco
 * 3,963 BBY — The Battle of Cathar
 * 3,963 BBY — The Battle of Iridonia
 * 3,962 BBY — The Battle of Dagary Minor
 * 3,962 BBY — The Battle of Eres III
 * 3,962 BBY — The Battle of Duro
 * 3,962 BBY — The Battle of Althir
 * 3,961 BBY — The Battle of Taris
 * 3,961 BBY — The Battle of Jaga's Cluster
 * 3,960 BBY — The Second Battle of Onderon
 * 3,960 BBY — The Second Battle of Dxun
 * 3,960 BBY — The Battle of Malachor V


 * 3,959-3,956 BBY — The Jedi Civil War, Second Sith War, or War of the Star Forge
 * 3,959 BBY — The Battle of Foerost
 * 3,959 BBY — The bombing of Telos IV
 * 3,957 BBY — The capture of Darth Revan
 * 3,956 BBY — The Battle of Taris
 * 3,956 BBY — The attack on Dantooine
 * 3,956 BBY — The Battle of Rakata Prime
 * 3,955-3,951 BBY — The Sith Civil War
 * 3,952 BBY — The destruction of Katarr
 * 3,951 BBY — The Battle of Dantooine
 * 3,951 BBY — The Onderon Civil War
 * The First Battle of Onderon
 * The Second Battle of Onderon
 * 3,951 BBY — The Battle of Telos IV
 * 3,951 BBY — The destruction of Malachor V

The New Sith Wars

 * The Battle of Uba IV
 * 1,532 BBY — The Battle of Gap Nine
 * c. 1,500 BBY — The Dark Underlord Campaigns
 * 1,466 BBY — The Battle of Mizra
 * 1,250 - 1,230 BBY — The Sictis Wars
 * The Battle of Hoth
 * The Battle of Dromund Kaas
 * The Battle of Malrev IV
 * The Light and Darkness War
 * 1,000 BBY — The Battle of Harpori
 * 1,000 BBY — The Battle of Balowa
 * 1,000 BBY — The Battle of Almas
 * 1,000 BBY — The First Battle of Ruusan
 * 1,000 BBY — The Second Battle of Ruusan
 * 1,000 BBY — The Third Battle of Ruusan
 * 1,000 BBY — The Fourth Battle of Ruusan
 * 1,000 BBY — The Fifth Battle of Ruusan
 * 1,000 BBY — The Sixth Battle of Ruusan
 * 1,000 BBY — The Seventh Battle of Ruusan

The Hundred-Year Darkness
The Sith Order, or cult, was first established when dissident Jedi came to believe that "true" power was achieved not through reflective meditation, as taught by their Jedi Masters, but through emotion. The tension between the Jedi and these dissident "Dark Jedi" grew until conflict erupted, seven thousand years before the Battle of Yavin. This conflict, called the Hundred-Year Darkness, the Second Great Schism of the Jedi Order, led to the Dark Jedi being banished by the Old Republic. These outcasts found a new home on the distant planet of Korriban, a desolate world inhabited by the relatively primitive Sith people. However, the Force flowed strongly with the Sith, allowing them to create their own brand of black magic. The Dark Jedi saw this as an opportunity to gain additional power. Using their training in the Force, the Dark Jedi amazed the Sith and elevated themselves to god-like status on Korriban, becoming the rulers of the Sith people. As years passed, and interbreeding occurred between the Dark Jedi and the Sith, the term "Sith" came to mean not only the original near-human inhabitants of Korriban, but their Dark Jedi masters as well. It is from this rise to power and integration into Sith culture that the term Dark Lord of the Sith was first conceived as a title bestowed upon the leader of the Sith Empire by a council of lesser Sith Lords.

The Great Hyperspace War and the Naddist Uprising


In 5,000 BBY, the Republic rediscovered the Sith and the Great Hyperspace War began. It ended with Dark Lord of the Sith Naga Sadow hiding in suspended animation on Yavin 4, his great war fleets destroyed. Within 10 years, the Sith Empire was all but annihilated.

Centuries later, a Jedi Knight named Freedon Nadd fell to the dark side. On Yavin 4, he awakened former Dark Lord Naga Sadow, who trained him in the ways of the Sith. Though Sadow's definite fate is not known, it is believed that he perished and his spirit was destroyed at his pupil's hand. Freedon Nadd used his newfound powers to conquer the Onderon system. But Freedon Nadd's extraordinary reign of power eventually came to a close. His death created a great power vacuum all throughout the galaxy. His dark gloomy tomb, constructed on Dxun and greatly tainted by the dark side, would remain an outpost for Sith lords for many years to come.

Sith teachings would bring constant civil war throughout their civilization however, as the primal instinct of their teachings was based upon the principle that they must continually prove their strength against each other or even challenging their masters.

The Great Sith War


Four hundred years after Nadd's death, the Jedi Exar Kun sought out his tomb, a place strong in the dark side. Nadd's spirit materialized and succeeded in corrupting Kun, but was eventually destroyed by his student. Exar Kun was pronounced the new Dark Lord of the Sith by the ghost of the ancient Dark Lord Marka Ragnos. As his first apprentice he took another fallen Jedi, Ulic Qel-Droma, and the Great Sith War began. Although many Jedi turned to the dark side and still more were killed, Exar Kun was finally defeated when Ulic realized the error of his ways and led the Old Republic's forces to Kun's stronghold on Yavin 4. Using the drained life energies of his Massassi warriors, Kun shed his physical body and imprisoned his spirit within the walls of Yavin 4's Massassi temples. His ghost, driven half-mad by millennia of isolation, was destroyed by a group of Jedi students thousands of years later. Most of what remained of his Sith Brotherhood by the end of the Great Sith War is believed to have formed an organization known as the Mecrosa Order, which was hunted down by the Jedi in a purge known as the Cleansing of the Nine Houses.

The Second Sith War
Less than four decades later, the Jedi Revan and Malak, heroes of the Mandalorian War (a bloody conflict instigated by an unidentified group within the Unknown Regions known only as the "True Sith"), fell to the dark side and founded a new Sith Empire. Using the ancient Rakatan Star Forge factory, they built a massive war fleet and began attacking the Old Republic. Thus began the second Sith War, later called the Jedi Civil War (and, still later, the War of the Star Forge), a conflict that proved even more devastating than Kun's war as more Jedi fell to the dark side, were killed in battle, or were murderered by Sith Assassins. Revan was the greatest military genius the Jedi had ever seen. It was through his cunning alone that the Mandalorian Wars had been won, as the Old Republic soon discovered. During the Mandalorian Wars, Revan and Malak had discovered a mysterious force called the so-called True Sith in the Unknown Regions, and were therefore careful to preserve the Republic's shipyards to use against this threat once they had conquered the galaxy. After an attempted coup by Malak, however, Revan's mind was destroyed and he was captured by the Jedi. He was re-trained in their ways and sent against his traitorous apprentice. Taking up the mantle of Dark Lord, Malak redoubled his empire's offenses against the Old Republic, no longer caring about preserving his enemy's resources. Following a long and arduous quest for the five Star Maps that would lead him to the Sith's stronghold, the new Revan led a frontal assault on the Star Forge. He battled his way through the Forge's droid army and legions of Sith and Dark Jedi. After redeeming Malak's apprentice, Bastila Shan, he slew Malak himself in a final confrontation between the two old friends, allowing the Old Republic to destroy the Star Forge and win the day.

Despite this great victory won for the Old Republic by Revan, the galaxy soon grew even darker. Barely a hundred Jedi remained after the Jedi Civil War, and those who did soon found their ranks thinning at an alarming rate. Everywhere Jedi congregated, they were murdered, struck down by an invisible enemy who, incredibly enough, was somehow attacking them through the Force itself. Darth Nihilus, the Lord of Hunger, and Darth Sion, Lord of Pain, were students of Revan's former Jedi Master, Kreia (now a Sith called Darth Traya, Lady of Betrayal), had begun a shadow war against the surviving Jedi. Despite their incredible powers, they did not believe themselves strong enough to defeat the Jedi in the same kind of open warfare employed by Revan and Malak. (Revan himself had disappeared into the Unknown Regions a year after the destruction of the Star Forge, hoping to put an end to the ever-present threat posed by the mysterious True Sith, and has not been heard from since.)

Five years after Malak's defeat on the Star Forge, a Jedi exile who had served Revan as a general during the Mandalorian Wars returned from the Outer Rim to find the Jedi Order virtually extinct. Thought to be the last of the Jedi by Nihilus and Sion, the exile was hunted mercilessly by Sith Assassins from planet to planet as the "last of the Jedi" tracked down the surviving members of the Jedi Council. In the end, several of these Jedi were killed, but the exile managed to turn the tide against the shadow Sith, killing Nihilus, Sion, and Traya in battle, thereby ending their Jedi purge and giving the Jedi Order a chance to rebuild.

In modern history texts, the Great Sith War, the Cleansing of the Nine Houses, the Mandalorian Wars, and the War of the Star Forge are often grouped together under the collective appellation of "the Old Sith Wars."

The Sith'ari
Around the time of the Jedi Civil War, the coming of the Sith'ari, an ancient Sith prophecy, became somewhat well known in Darth Revan's Sith Empire. The Sith'ari was said to be a perfect being who would rise to power and bring balance to the Force. According to prophecy, the Sith'ari would rise up and destroy the Sith, but in the process would return to lead the Sith and make them stronger than ever before. It is believed that the prophecy of the Sith Sith'ari and the prophecies of the Jedi Chosen One refer to the same individual; namely Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, who made the Sith stronger than ever by destroying the Jedi Knights. He later destroyed the Sith when he betrayed and killed Palpatine, thus fulfilling the ancient prophecy of the Sith'ari.

The New Sith Wars


Slowly, over the next thousand years, the Jedi Order rebuilt itself back to its former strength. Then, some 2,000 years before the Battle of Yavin, yet another Jedi, chafing under the restrictions of the Jedi Council, fell to the dark side, stole a Sith Holocron, renamed himself "Darth Ruin," formed a new Sith Order, and began recruiting others to his cause. This spawned a new series of conflicts, called the New Sith Wars, which lasted for a millennium.

However, the Sith very nearly proved to be their own undoing. Hungry for power, they turned on each other, all but destroying their order. The survivors reformed under the leadership of Lord Kaan, calling themselves "the Brotherhood of Darkness." To appease his disheartened servants, Kaan abandoned the millennia-old tradition of one ruling Dark Lord and granted the title to a good number of his followers, though very few of them were truly deserving of it.

The final conflict of the New Sith Wars, the War of Light and Dark or the Light and Darkness War (sometimes also referred to, as Exar Kun's war had been, as the Great Sith War), came to a head in the titanic seventh Battle of Ruusan, in which the Jedi Lord Hoth and the Army of Light clashed with Lord Kaan and the Brotherhood of Darkness for the last time. In the end, a deranged Kaan activated a thought bomb, an ancient Sith technique that sapped the life energy of all Force-sensitives in the vicinity. Both armies were all but destroyed, and only one Sith Lord survived: Darth Bane.

To guard against the Sith again engaging in fratricidal internecine war or losing sight of their "ideals" again, Bane took only one apprentice, starting a "one master, one apprentice" tradition to prevent the Sith from destroying themselves again. "Two there should be; no more, no less," he is said to have explained; "One to embody power, the other to crave it." He also restarted the tradition of passing the name "Darth" to each of his successors, a trend which appears to have originated with Darth Revan millennia before. In a nod to Kaan's earlier pronouncement, both master and apprentice in Bane's Sith Order held the title "Dark Lord of the Sith," making them, nominally at least, equals. The new tenets of this order would be cunning, stealth, subterfuge, and a virtue learned from their worst enemy, patience.

The Revenge of the Sith


Bane's reformed Sith Order went into hiding, though they were soon discovered by the Jedi and believed to be destroyed. They survived, but would not resurface for almost one thousand years, with the depredations of Darth Sidious and Darth Maul that occurred shortly before the Battle of Naboo.

Though Darth Maul was slain in that battle at the hands of Jedi Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, the day proved an unparalleled victory for the Sith; Darth Sidious, generally known to the public as Senator Palpatine of Naboo, was elected to the office of Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, and set his sights on making Anakin Skywalker, newly discovered by the Jedi and rumored to be the prophesied "Chosen One," his new apprentice.

More than a decade passed, during which Palpatine was granted more and more emergency powers. His new apprentice, former Jedi Master Count Dooku (renamed Darth Tyranus in the Sith tradition), formed the Confederacy of Independent Systems (or the Separatists), which seceded from the Galactic Republic, beginning a long and bloody conflict known as the Clone Wars.

During the Clone Wars, many Jedi lost their lives at the hands of the Separatists and their Kaleesh cyborg military leader, General Grievous. The Clone Wars eventually reached even Coruscant, where the cunning general captured Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. A great battle erupted above the planet-city. In that battle, Anakin Skywalker, now a full-fledged Jedi, brutally executed Count Dooku, as he was goaded by Palpatine.

The Chancellor then started to use his emergency powers to control the Jedi Order. The Jedi were instantly suspicious of Palpatine's motives, and suspected that Darth Sidious was a part of Palpatine's inner circle and was controlling him. Palpatine appointed Anakin to the Jedi Council as the Chancellor's representative, and convinced him that the Jedi were trying to take over the Republic as later evidence proved this true.

It was also during this time that Anakin began to be plagued with visions of the death of his pregnant wife, Padmé Amidala, in childbirth. Haunted by the murder of his mother three years earlier by Tusken Raiders on Tatooine, Anakin had been determined to find a way to prevent death using the Force.

Eventually Palpatine revealed to Anakin that he was, in fact, Sidious. In doing so, he offered him the secret he had been looking for (claiming it had been discovered by his former master, Darth Plagueis), so long as he joined him as his new apprentice. Instead, Anakin went to the Jedi Council and told Jedi Master Mace Windu of Palpatine's true identity. Windu, along with the Jedi Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin, and Kit Fisto, moved to arrest the Chancellor. However, Sidious quickly cut down the latter three and was battling with Windu when Anakin arrived. Skywalker demanded that Palpatine be arrested and stand trial, but the Jedi master argued that Sidious was far too dangerous to be allowed to live any longer. As Windu moved to kill the Sith Lord, Anakin severed Windu's right hand, allowing Palpatine to strike him down.

Skywalker became Sidious's new apprentice, assuming the Sith title Darth Vader. Sidious quickly instructed Lord Vader to move against the Jedi Temple, imploring him to dispose of all the remaining Jedi, including younglings. Most surviving Jedi not present at the temple were disposed of by "Order 66," which instructed all clone troopers to execute their Jedi commanders. Very few Jedi survived this treachery, the most notable among them Yoda and Obi-Wan.

When it was over, the Jedi ranks had been thinned considerably. At last, the moment had come for the Sith to reclaim their former glory. Sidious/Palpatine replaced the ancient Republic with the Galactic Empire, an oppressive, galaxy-spanning dictatorship the likes of which had not been seen for a millennium.

The Great Jedi Purge continued, led by Vader and other Force-sensitive servants of the Emperor, such as the Inquisitorius and the Emperor's Hands, until only a handful of Jedi were left alive. It was a dark time for the galaxy, in which the Force became thought of throughout the Empire (except in the cases of Vader, Palpatine, and their Dark Jedi servants) as an arcane philosophy, almost like a fairy tale. (This was used as an explanation for absence of the term "Sith" in the original trilogy.)

The fall of the Galactic Empire


Eventually, however, the Rebel Alliance arose to threaten the Empire's unchallenged sovereignty. The Galactic Civil War drew many into its fold, perhaps the most notable of whom was Luke Skywalker, the son of Anakin. Shortly after Luke destroyed the Empire's terrifying Death Star superweapon, the Emperor and Vader became aware of the young man's identity. Both Sith Lords hoped to corrupt Luke to the dark side, but each had a different motive. Vader desired to kill the Emperor and rule the galaxy with his son, but Palpatine wished to replace Vader with the boy. During the Battle of Endor, Skywalker refused to join the Emperor, who then began torturing him with Force lightning. His son's suffering and pleas for help freed Anakin Skywalker from the Emperor's service, and he threw his master down the Death Star's reactor shaft, in the process subjecting himself to the full force of the Emperor's lightning. Severely injured by the Emperor's assault and with his life-sustaining armor non-functional, the former Sith Lord died a few minutes later. Luke escaped with his father's armour shortly before the new Death Star was destroyed. Luke later burned his father's armour on a funeral pyre on Endor, marking the end of the Emperor's reign.