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.

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.

According to Star Wars Expanded Universe fiction, the Sith Order, or cult, was first established when dissident Jedi discovered that "true" power was achieved not through pensive meditation, as taught by their Jedi Masters, but through emotion. The tension between the Jedi and these dissident Dark Jedi, led by Xendor, the first Dark Jedi, grew until conflict erupted, thousands of years before the Battle of Yavin. This conflict, called the Great Schism, 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 these 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 occured between the Dark Jedi and the Sith, the term "Sith" came to mean not the original insect-like 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. Sometime during the early history of the Sith Empire, the coming of the Sith'ari, the prophesied savior of the Sith Order, was foretold. The Sith'ari was 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, a striking parallel to the Chosen One of Jedi legend, though it is most likely that the Sith'ari and Chosen One are one and the same.

The Fall of the Sith Empire and the Freedon Nadd Uprising

In 5,000 BBY, the Republic rediscovered the Sith and the Great Hyperspace War began. Though it ended with Dark Lord of the Sith Naga Sadow in suspended animation on Yavin 4 and his great war fleets destroyed, the Sith Empire survived. It was believed to have collapsed shortly afterward due to infighting and attacks by the Old Republic, but it was later discovered that the Sith Empire had retreated into the Unknown Regions, where the Lords of the Sith waited patiently for over a millennium for the right moment to return.

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 he perished and his spirit was destroyed at his pupil's hand. Freedon Nadd used his newfound powers to conquer the Onderon system. Even though Freedon Nadd's extraordinary rein of power eventully came to a close. His death echoed a great power vacuum all throughout the galaxy. His dark gloomy tomb, constructed on Dxun and greatly tainted by the darkside would remain a outpost for Sith knights 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 principal that they must continually prove their strength against each other. Rumors have it however, the Sith empire, the true sith empire watched and waited on the outer rim of the galaxy.

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 corrupted 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 several more Jedi turned to the dark side and many 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 Luke Skywalker's students thousands of years later. Most of what remained of his Sith Brotherhood by the end of the Great Sith War was hunted down by the Old Republic in a purge known as "the Cleansing of the Nine Houses".

The War of the Star Forge

Less than four decades later, the Jedi Revan and Malak, heroes of the Mandalorian Wars (a bloody conflict allegedly instigated by the remnants of the ancient Sith Empire in the Unknown Regions), 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 murdered 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 rediscovered the long-lost ancient Sith Empire in the Unknown Regions, and were therefore careful to preserve the Republic's shipyards to use against this forgotten threat once they had conquered the galaxy. Due to an attempted coup by Malak, however, Revan's mind was destroyed and Revan, captured by the Jedi, was re-trained in their ways. 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 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, Lord 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 ancient Sith, and had 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 insidious "shadow Sith," slaying 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 New Sith Wars

Slowly, over the next thousand years, the Jedi Order rebuilt itself back to its former strength.

Then, some 2,000 years BBY, yet another Jedi, chafing under the restrictions of the Jedi Council, fell to the dark side, 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 minions, 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 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 self-destructing 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. 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 sinister order would be cunning, stealth, and subterfuge.


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, of course, but would not resurface for almost one thousand years, with the depredations of Darth Sidious and Darth Maul that began shortly before the Battle of Naboo.

Though Darth Maul was slain in that battle at the hands of Jedi Knight 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 Chancellor of the Galactic Republic.

More than a decade passed, during which Palpatine manipulated the Senate into granting him more and more power. His new apprentice, former Jedi Master Count Dooku (renamed Darth Tyranus in the Sith tradition), formed the Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS), 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 CIS and its Kaleesh cyborg commanding military leader, General Grievous. The Clone Wars eventually stretched to Coruscant, where the cunning general captured Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. A great battle erupted above the planet-city. In that battle, Count Dooku was brutally executed by Anakin Skywalker, goaded on by Palpatine.

The Chancellor then started to use his "emergency" powers to control the Jedi Order. This caused suspicion among the Jedi of Palpatine's motives. They believed that Darth Sidious was a part of Palpatine's inner circle and was controlling him. Using Anakin as a spy, Palpatine appointed Anakin to the Jedi Council, and convinced him that the Jedi were trying to take over the Republic.

It was also during this time that Anakin began to be plagued with visions of the death of his pregnant wife, Senator 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 turned on his ally, allowing Palpatine to strike him down.

Skywalker became Sidious's new apprentice as Darth Vader, and instructed to dispose of all the Jedi in the Jedi Temple, including children. 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 Empire, an oppressive, galaxy-spanning dark-side dictatorship the likes of which had not been seen for a millennium

The Fall of the Galactic Empire

The Great Jedi Purge continued, led by Vader and other Force-sensitive minions of the Emperor (including groups known as the Inquisitorius, the Emperor's Hands, and the Prophets of the Dark Side), 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 minions, of course) as an arcane philosophy, almost like a fairy tale.

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 finally freed Anakin Skywalker from the Emperor's grip, 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. Luke escaped with his father's body shortly before the new Death Star was destroyed, marking the end of the Galactic Empire.
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Dark Jedi

The Lords of the Sith are not the only ones capable of calling upon the corrupting powers of the dark side of the Force, though they are by far the most dangerous Force-wielding foes of the Jedi. The blanket label "Dark Jedi" is often used to refer to non-Sith Force-users, though these darksiders may never have been true Jedi, as can be seen by the countless "Dark Jedi" trained during the reign of the Empire, during which the Jedi Order was dead and gone.

During the Clone Wars, Sidious and Tyranus had a number of Dark Jedi serving the Separatist side. Among the most notable of Count Dooku's inner circle were Asajj Ventress, Sora Bulq, Artel Darc, Dustrose, Karoc, Vinoc, Sev'rance Tann, Nikkos Tyris, Saato, Tol Skorr, Kadrian Sey, Drevekka Hoctu, Trenox, and Quinlan Vos. Sidious, as Emperor, continued this trend after the formation of the Empire, with Dark Jedi such as the Inquisitorius, the Secret Order, the Emperor's Hands, the Dark Side Elite, the Emperor's Royal Guard, and various Dark Side Adepts. After the death of the Emperor, the Inquisitor Jerec and his cadre of six Dark Jedi made an attempt to seize the Valley of the Jedi, the place of imprisonment of the souls of all those who were destroyed by Kaan's thought bomb during the Battle of Ruusan; Jerec and his cohorts, however, were eliminated by Kyle Katarn.

New Dark Jedi are constantly crawling out of the woodwork, some of them fallen students of Luke Skywalker, like Gantoris, Kyp Durron, Brakiss, Kueller, Bey Gandon, Dal Konur, and Desann.

The Sith Legacy

Six years after the Battle of Endor, Palpatine returned to threaten the New Republic. Unbeknownst to the Rebellion, the Emperor had maintained a secret supply of Spaarti cloning cylinders on the planet Byss in the Deep Core. Years before his death at Endor, Palpatine's body had begun to decay so rapidly from the ravaging dark side energies it contained that he had been forced to begin periodically transferring his soul into fresh clones of himself. Vader's treachery, however, had been unexpected, and the spirits of the ancient Dark Lords of Korriban had been forced to intervene and draw Palpatine back from the "madness beyond death" themselves. Palpatine's spirit, lacking a nearby clone body to inhabit, took possession of the Emperor's Hand Jeng Droga. Though Droga went mad in the process, he journeyed to Byss, where Grand Vizier Sate Pestage exorcized the disembodied Emperor, allowing him to possess a fresh clone. Unfortunately for the Sith Lord, spending such an extended period outside his body had driven the Emperor partially insane. Though he and his loyal Imperial forces managed to briefly retake the galactic capital of Coruscant and wreak havoc on the galaxy for a year, the mental health of the resurrected Palpatine continued to deteriorate due to his repeated deaths and the genetic tampering done to his clones by the treacherous Sovereign Protector Carnor Jax. He died a final death on the planet Onderon, when dying Jedi Knight Empatajayos Brand, a survivor of the Jedi Purge, bound the Emperor's departing life essence to his own, taking the Dark Lord with him as he became one with the Force. So Emperor Palpatine, Darth Sidious, arguably the greatest Dark Lord of the Sith, descended into eternal madness in the Chaos beyond death.

Though Jedi have continued to fall into darkness since then, none have proved as great a threat as that posed by the newest Sith Order. Lumiya, a former Emperor's Hand and Darth Vader's secret apprentice, became Dark Lady of the Sith following her master's death at Endor. She trained two apprentices: Flint, who was redeemed by Luke Skywalker, and Carnor Jax, who was killed by Palpatine loyalist Kir Kanos shortly after the Emperor's final death on Onderon. Afterwards, Lady Lumiya went into hiding, returning the Sith Order to the secret, underground existence begun by Darth Bane a millennium before.

Following the Yuuzhan Vong War, however, Jedi Knight Kyle Katarn encountered a Force-strong Yuuzhan Vong female in the mysterious Cloak of the Sith region of the galaxy, where it was rumored that post-Palpatine Sith still lived. Powerful though she was, Kyle sensed an even darker hand behind her training. Apparently, this Yuuzhan Vong had a Master . . .

Lesser Sith Lords
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The Ancient Sith Empire

* Bo Vanda
* Dathka Graush
* Dor-Gal-Ram
* Garu
* Horak-Mul
* Kla
* Komok-Da
* Larad Noon
* Mondrak
* Najus
* The Patron
* Poxall
* Shar Dakhan
* Simus
* Tritos Nal

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The Brotherhood of the Sith

* Crado
* Nayama Bindo
* Rin Shuuir
* Ulic Qel-Droma
* Utris

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Darth Revan's New Sith Empire

* Bastila Shan
* The Dark Underlord
* Darth Bandon
* Darth Nihilus
* Darth Sion
* Darth Traya
* Jorak Uln
* Uthar Wynn
* Visas Marr
* Yuthura Ban


The Brotherhood of Darkness

* Belia Darzu
* Kaox Krul
* Larad Noon
* LaTor

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another edit (too lazy to find more stuff so now time for some pics)

Sith Fighters-


Sith Starships-


Sith Trooper-