The "True Sith" - Definitive Facts [SPOILERS INSIDE]

[Force Slayer]

The "True Sith" - Definitive Facts - [spoilerS INSIDE]

(PLEASE NO WIKIPEDIA/WOOKIEPEDIA SOURCES)

 

A few weeks ago, I just finished the novel "Darth Bane: Path of Destruction". As the story carries through, there is a good amount of information on the concept of "True Sith". After an extensive search for answers, I found some very important key facts to consider.

 

Source #1: 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.

 

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.

 

What other facts do we know?

 

(PLEASE NO WIKIPEDIA/WOOKIEPEDIA SOURCES)

Edited September 8, 2007 by Force Slayer

[KBAegis]

Hey, cool. In lieu of facts, I'll offer an explication of the dialectic.

 

First, the Knights of the Old Republic gets some literary license. I really hope they don't do as much research on Lucas' back story as you ostensibly have. I'd recommend we look at lore from the previous two games instead.

 

The creators of the Star Wars universe have arrayed the forces of their universe in an arbitrary Darwinian/Utilitarian dichotomy reflecting the puerile ideals of their consumers. Thus constrained, Obsidian attempted to make an intelligent game and began weaving a complicated plot. I, for one, liked the second game better than the first. They created an inherent conflict against the good and removed the idiocy of evil through tragedy. For example, Kriea epitomizes the ideal of self-sacrifice without the stupidity of power-mongering. The dialogue trees are similarly intricate, exploring past motivations in a very realistic fashion allowing the player to rationalize a history while simultaneously creating a new one. To recapitulate, we know that if Obsidian gets the game, they will continue to make an interesting story. We're almost guaranteed that if a larger company gets it that it will be merely epic.

 

Sadly, I don't think people can draw a distinction.

 

We also know that the intrigue is typically limited to a level mirroring Lucas' own ineptitude with the medium. In a world where everything's explicit and literal, intrigue cannot really exist. I've never liked the fact that what you say is what you mean. The entire idea of obfuscation is to ensnare the critical senses and reinforce the non-literal. Limiting the PC's ability to discover and challenge the motivations of others limits the ability to create real characters. How many rogues, especially malicious ones, are going to tell you that they're going to kill you three seconds before they actually do it? None. That's monumental stupidity. They're going to ask you what you're standing in front of and go to investigate the small of your back; but I digress. We know that the Sith are evil because they are stupid. We know that the Jedi are good because they're righteous.

 

We also know that the Sith are there as a plot device, metonymizing the dark and powerful enemy. Regardless of how stupid they are, they are equally powerful. The magic for this device: the force.

 

Based on the fact that they fired the pre-development team, I don't imagine they've gotten much further than the above, but I'd imagine Bioware had something like the following planned out:

 

Your character is born into the conflict and is some sort of force prodigy/genius/whole-world-resting-on-your-shoulders-protagonist who must save the galaxy based on his ability to swing a lightsaber and say roughly 100 sentences to tip the balance one way or teh othre.

 

Not that this is a bad thing. It's merely epic.

 

And that is what we know (based on past experience).

[Force Slayer]

You brought up some intellegent points. When a writter creates a form of fiction, they have an artistic liscence in their possession. How much of "Knights of the Old Republic II" was was inspired by allready established canon (EU), and how much of the story was created to develop a whole new story. Like all science-fiction extension to movies, there is a wide free range of ideas to play with. Even though the expanded universe of Star Wars started off from movie canon, that doen's mean that the novels, comics, and games should follow canon. Its an interesting gray line to walk.

 

The most complex stories are sometimes the hardest to follow. That doesn't mean that the story being told is horrible, but it does mean that it may have been too hard to make sense. Otherwords, too complex.

[KBAegis]

Thanks. :D

[SilentScope001]

Guess I might as well throw in the True Sith are holocrons theory.

 

I agree with KB though. Sometimes an enemy that appears out of nowhere to justify a story is just that, an enemy that appears out of nowhere to justify a story. Note though, Bioware wants to have its own IP, so I doubt it will ever make K3. Or even K3 will get made. /shrugs

Edited September 9, 2007 by SilentScope001

[Kissamies]

I assumed that the TS are either the remnants of that old sith empire of Naga Sadow et al. that managed to survive the Great Hyperspace War, or they were someone new invented on the spot. That holocron theory is pretty cool actually.

[Bass-GameMaster]

Just to sum this up the infinity empire which was from Kotor 1 with the guy named "The One" that race is what created almost everything, where revan headed is where that is located, so maybe the "Real Sith" are just the existing species since kreia sad its all a belief now.

[DAWUSS]

The "True Sith" - Definitive Facts - [spoilerS INSIDE]

(PLEASE NO WIKIPEDIA/WOOKIEPEDIA SOURCES)

 

If Wookieepedia says it, it must be true

[Musopticon?]

I assume that the True Sith are a mcguffin still.