With a history dating back nearly 28,000 years, the original Sith Empire was founded by King
Adas, who united the tribes of the sith species on their homeworld of Korriban.
Their people’s natural affinity for the dark side made them the perfect targets for
conquest many years later, when the Dark Jedi Ajunta Pall and his followers were exiled
from Republic Space for rebelling against the Order in the Hundred Year Darkness.
Under the rule of Ajunta Pall, who became the First Dark Lord of the Sith, an Empire
was founded which expanded beyond Korriban, and through the use of Force Alchemy, they
interbred with native sith to birth new generations of highly force sensitive children trained
all their lives in the dark Side and Sith Code.
The Sith Empire eventually reached a golden age under the leadership of Marka Ragnos,
but soon fell to division after his death, resulting in their defeat during the Great
Hyperspace War and fracturing of the order.
Over and over again, the Sith emerged from hiding with incredible strength, threatening
to destroy the Republic and Jedi, but lies, schemes, and civil wars almost always ended
their ambitions prematurely.
When Darth Ruin formed the New Sith and once again went to war, the pattern repeated and
over the next thousand years, betrayal and division prevented them from achieving victory.
Nearing the end of this period, a jedi master with extremist views left the Order with a
group of loyal followers and declared himself a Dark Lord of the Sith.
Embarking on a campaign to conquer the many warring factions of the Order, Skere Kaan
recognized that their greatest enemy was in-fighting, and so formed the Brotherhood of Darkness,
an organization where everyone was equal and shared the title Dark Lord, forbidding the
use of Darth, which implied supremacy.
For a time, this seemed to work and the Sith grew in strength, taking the fight to the
Jedi and Republic.
Though most Sith Lords seemed to agree with Kaan, a student of the Sith Academy on Korriban
soon emerged to challenge the system and defy the underlying philosophy of the Brotherhood.
Bringing back the title of Sith Lords past, Darth Bane as he became known, agreed that
in-fighting was a problem but believed the Kaan’s solution was equally self-defeating.
The force was not fire, to be passed from torch to torch, but venom, powerful in concentrated
form and weak when diluted.
In other words, with so many Sith Lord’s sharing the power of the dark side, none could
achieve their true potential, and the Order as a whole would never be strong enough to
defeat the Jedi and conquer the galaxy.
Born in 1026 BBY on the poor Outer Rim Planet of Apatros, the future Sith Master was the
son of an alcoholic and abusive father, who referred to his son as the Bane of his existence.
At the age of 18 he killed his father through raw force power, and years later killed a
Republic Ensign in self defense.
Knowing the Ensign’s friends would lie about what they saw, he used the connections of
a friend to flee the republic and join the Sith Army where he proved an exceptional soldier
and commander in the Gloom Walkers.
Coming to the attention of a Sith Dark Lord, who sensed his force potential, he was sent
to the Sith Academy on Korriban, where he took the name Bane and became one of their
most promising students.
Though he suffered setbacks, he attended special training sessions, studied ancient texts ignored
and dismissed by others, formed an alliance with another top student Githany and defeated
his greatest rival in single combat.
Yet as Bane became gained more knowledge he started to question the leadership of Lord
Kaan, believing that a true Master of the Dark Side must be unrivalled and unmatched.
Equality was a lie, and victory belonged to the powerful.
Abandoning the Brotherhood, he declared himself Darth Bane, and left the academy to search
for ancient knowledge, soon finding the Holocron of Darth Revan, a powerful Sith Lord from
thousands of years in the past.
Learning much from his new master, Bane manipulated events during the decisive Battle of Ruusan
and the mind of Lord Kaan, resulting in the use of a special dark side weapon called a
thought bomb, killing all Sith Dark Lords and 100 Jedi, trapping their spirits in a
cave system for thousands of years.
With the Brotherhood destroyed, Darth Bane was last of the Sith Lords, and remade the
order according to the personal philosophy he developed throughout his life, guided in
large part by the Rule of Two.
Believing there must be only one Master to embrace the power of the Darkside, and a single
Apprentice to desire that power.
In this way they could hide their existence and work in the shadows, secretly manipulating
events to destroy the Jedi order and return the Sith to dominance throughout the Galaxy.
Realizing it would likely take centuries to prepare the galaxy for their eventual rule,
Bane believed the Rule of Two ensured his knowledge and power survived through his heir,
with each successive generation becoming more powerful than the last.
His need for an apprentice was then quickly satisfied, as Bane soon found a young girl
named Rain, alone in the Ruusan wilderness, with 2 dead jedi at her feet, killed through
raw force power.
Seeing her potential at once, he offered the chance to become his student, and with no
other options, the girl agreed, choosing to be reborn as Darth Zannah, apprentice of Darth
Bane.
Among the many incredible feats accomplished by Darth Bane, he revived the lost skill of
creating a personal holocron by studying the knowledge of Darth Andeddu and wore a suit
of orbalisks, small black insects which caused tremendous pain at all times, but acted as
an impenetrable suit of armour, greatly increased his physical prowess and dark side abilities.
He then survived the horrendous experience of removing the suits from his body.
While mounted on a flying Drexxl, Bane created a force bubble around them and flew so high
they escaped the atmosphere of the moon Dxun, to reach the nearby planet of Onderon.
As the decades passed, Bane grew concerned his apprentice did not challenged him for
supremacy and so learned the ancient art of Essence Transfer, to move his consciousness
into a new body so he might extend his life and take on a new apprentice, choosing an
Iktochi assassin who took the name Darth Cognus.
Zannah meanwhile, made her own plans and took the Dark Jedi Set Harth as her apprentice,
in preparation for defeating her master.
The first time they fought, it was in a chaotic situation that ended in a stalemate when they
were forced to flee, and so they met on the planet Ambria, engaging in a fair and decisive
battle to determine the true Master of the Sith.
Although Set Harth fled and was no longer a Sith hopeful, Darth Cognus remained and
agreed to becoming the apprentice of the victor.
A hardened killer from a young age, Darth Zannah was an excellent student but could
not hope to best her master in lightsaber combat, and so used her specialized skill
in Sith Sorcery to gain the advantage.
Yet before Darth Bane was defeated, he made an all or nothing gamble by attempting an
Essence transfer, and while part of his spirit did manage to enter her mind, Zannah proved
resilient and repelled his consciousness, condemning it to the great void.
Declaring herself Master of the Sith, Darth Zannah vowed to continue the legacy of Darth
Bane, and with everything she had experienced, Darth Cognus also became a strict adherent
to the rule of two.
So much so, that years later, when she became Master of the order, she cast out her apprentice
Darth Millennial, because he questioned the ways of Bane and restrictions of his rules.
No longer a Sith, Millennial fled to Drumond Kaas, where he started a religion called prophets
of the Dark Side, which ruled the planet for centuries.
Darth Cognus meanwhile found a new apprentice and ensured the Baneite line continued, eventually
leading to the rule of Darth Vectivus, a unique Sith Lord who earned a fortune as a successful
business man and retained his disciplined mind and ethical code throughout his life.
Unlike his predecessors and heirs, he had no interest in violence or conquest, and dedicated
his life to studying the dark side and intricacies of the universe, becoming so powerful he could
create an army of phantom spirits.
Darth Vectivus died in his home, of old age, surrounded by friends and family.
Later dark lords like Darth Guile did not share his thoughtful approach to the dark
side and instead viewed the Sith like malignant cells, to small to be detected but powerful
enough to spread and kill.
When Darth Gravid rose to power, the Sith Order suffered a severe setback, as he tried
to combine the teaching of the dark side and light, eventually losing his sanity and destroying
many of the sith artefacts and teachings they’d collected over the years.
Learning what he was doing, the apprentice Darth Gean killed her master and in doing
so lost her left left arm as well as part of her face and torso.
When Darth Ramage was in power, he created a holocron teaching about how the bota plant
and pyronium metal could increase their connection to the force, and experimented on Cephalons,
a species who viewed the universe in 4 dimensions, hoping to gain mastery over time travel.
The revenge of the Sith took another step forward during the reign of a Twilek male
who opened a rift in the force, allowing the jedi to sense the dark side for the first
time in centuries.
Yet when his apprentice Darth Tenerbous killed him and became Master, the Sith started to
see the endgame approaching, and each successive generation believed they would be last Master
of the Banite order.
Tenebrous foresaw the coming of the chosen one, a being who would end the rule of two,
so the rule of the One Sith could emerge.
With that in mind, Tenebrous made it his goal to keep his consciousness alive long enough
to inhabit the body of the chosen one, so he might rule forever as the One Sith.
But like the masters before him, Tenebrous was eventually killed by his apprentice, a
brilliant Munn from an influential family who took the name Darth Plagueis.
Plagueis also thought he was the final heir of Bane’s legacy, and after defeating a
rival named Darth Venamis, a secret student of Tenebrous, he dedicated himself to mastering
midichlorian manipulation, becoming so powerful he was able to restore life and prevent death.
By combining his powers with those of his apprentice Darth Sidious, they attempted to
design a being of pure force energy, but failed and instead triggered a counter-strike which
created Anakin Skywalker, the chosen one who would destroy both Jedi and Sith.
Making the final preparations for the long awaited revenge of the sith, Plagueis manipulated
the senate, outer rim, interstellar corporations, and criminal underworld to create the conditions
through which his apprentice Darth Sidious, posing as Palpatine of Naboo, could become
a senator and eventually chancellor of the of galactic republic.
Unfortunately his victory led plagueis to momentarily let his guard down, allowing Sidious
to kill him with force lightening.
Becoming Master of the Sith, Sidious was in the perfect position to unleash 1000 years
of vengeance against his enemies, creating the clone wars to gain emergency powers and
enacting Order 66 to turn their army against the Jedi Order.
Establishing the First Galactic Empire, the Sith Lord finally achieved the dream of Darth
Bane by destroying the republic and wiping out its jedi protectors to establish a Dark
Lord as ruler of the galaxy.
Believing the lineage of Bane ended with him, Sidious took on apprentices like Darth Maul,
Darth Tyrannus and Darth Vader, using them to help forge his empire but not teaching
them near enough to become a rival for power.
Yet in the midst of a war with a rebel alliance, Luke Skywalker convinced his father Darth
Vader to return to the lightside and he sacrificed his life to kill the Emperor during a moment
of weakness.
Although Sidious was so powerful his consciousness survived and was transferred into clone bodies,
he was eventually defeated for a final time by the new jedi order of Luke Skywalker, and
with him died the last direct dark side descendant of Darth Bane.
While his sith order ultimately failed to secure their long-term rule over the galaxy,
their thousand year journey succeeded in its primary mission of destroying the republic
and exterminating the jedi.
And even after the death of Palpatine, a remnant of the Banite order remained, as the Dark
Lady Lumiya formed her own Sith Order in the hopes of continuing the Bane’s lineage by
taking Jacen Solo as an apprentice and turning him into Darth Caedus, Master of the Sith.
Now leading the Order, Caedus took the former jedi Tahiri Veila as an apprentice only to
be betrayed when she returned to the light side.
Darth Caedus then died at the hands of his twin sister Jaina, ending the last Master of the Banite Sith