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The Brotherhood of Darkness and the New Sith Order
Part I : Darth Ruin to Darth Bane
Some time in the aftermath following the destruction of Revan’s Sith Empire and Trayus Academy, the major hyperspace routes into former Sith territory became unstable. Travel between the Core Worlds and the jewels of the Ancient Sith Empire became nearly impossible. In the centuries that follow, the Jedi were watchful of Dark Side uprisings, afraid of anything that could spawn another era such as the Sith Wars. Jedi Masters began to teach a contradictory attitudes towards emotions, both to feel and understand one’s emotions, but also to deny those emotions that are the strongest. Doctrines emerge regarding the training of Jedi from infancy, forbidding emotional attachments such as marriage, and each Master devoting their entire time to a single apprentice.
Such dogma had several obvious effects. Faced with such unnatural teachings, a number of Jedi turned from the Order. Others who would have been fine candidates were found too late, and forbidden training. Any of these free sentient beings, strong with the Force, who attempted to learn more of their power without the Jedi, were hunted and destroyed. For centuries, the Jedi engage in these witchhunts, usually declaring their victim to be a “Dark Jedi” or an “agent of the Dark Side” or even a “Dark Lord”, when in reality they were usually hapless novices who had barely learned to tap into the Force, much less wield the full power of the Dark Side.
This state of affairs continued until the famed discovery of the Hydian Way. No longer were the routes into that arm of the galaxy unstable and few, but in fact the largest hyperspace lane ever discovered plunges into the very heart of the Ancient Sith Empire. Soon explorers of all kinds were discovering relics, treasures and lost knowledge of the Sith. Occasionally, something of power found its way into the right hands, a Force adept curious to expand their knowledge, but it never appears that anyone ever truly understands what they had. Certainly there is no one strong enough with the Force, who has the will to revive the Sith until Darth Ruin.
We still know little of Ruin, except that he was a Jedi Knight who discovered his Master had an ancient Sith holocron, and stole it, fleeing the Jedi Order. [The little information on Ruin comes from The Phantom Menace novel, Star Wars Journal: Darth Maul and Vader: The Ultimate Guide.] He learns the ways of the Sith and revives the Order based on the structure of the Ancient Sith Empire, with many Sith Lords and Ladies, but one Dark Lord of the Sith over them all. However, he chooses to adopt Revan’s abbreviation of Darth, for Dark Lord of the Sith, and takes the name Darth Ruin, with the Sith Lords and Ladies beneath him forming the Brotherhood of Darkness.
This group continued for a millennium, usually in secret but sometimes warring with the Jedi. Every time the Jedi thought they had destroyed the Sith, one Lord or Lady escaped and became the new Darth, recruiting a group of apprentices to become the next Brotherhood. This continued until the time of Darth Qordis, when the war between the Jedi and the Sith developed to the point where Jedi Master, Lord Hoth, devoted himself to the total destruction of the Sith and formed the Army of Light to that purpose. In response, Darth Qordis needed to take on more apprentices, some of whom had earned their place as a Lord or Lady, others who had not. In addition to swelling ranks of Force adept warriors, both sides were bolstered with a conventional army, and massive battles between Jedi and Sith forces were waged across dozens of worlds.
When Darth Qordis died, the Sith were thrown into a succession crisis that threatened to tear them apart from within. As most of the other Sith Lords, such as the Marauder Kaox Krul [Star Wars Gamer #6], had died previously in other battles, the only remaining Lords were Bane and the recently trained Kaan. As Kaan was rather charismatic, but Bane was far more powerful, Kaan suggested that all Sith were equal in a Brotherhood of Darkness. By ennobling all the Dark Side adepts to Lords and Ladies, Kaan unified them against Bane’s control.
With Hoth about to press his advantage and attack again, Kaan took a drastic measure. Poisoning Bane and leaving him for dead, the Brotherhood retreated to Ruusan, a world they had discovered to be immensely powerful with the Dark Side. They felt sure the Jedi would not attack them somewhere they would have such a clear advantage. However, Hoth saw this as the opportunity to destroy the Sith once and for all, and invaded Ruusan with the entire Army of Light.
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Lord Scourge
(( Main Administrator ))
Dark Sith Lord of the Council, Historian to the Empress
Master to Vulpine, Sith Apprentice
Under the Dark Patronage of Lady Lumiya
"You truly are evil."
-Abel Peña, Star Wars EU writer, to me
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the dark side is my ally.
Didn't realise the date you posted that. Must have read yours, then, while I was reading it again, felt that I knew it from somewhere, thinking it was the NEC if you had just posted it.
