Welcome to the Holocron

Lord Scourge

Welcome to the Sith Holocron

In this wing of the Sith Temple, we study the history of the Sith, from their origins shrouded in mystery up to the current revival of the Sith Order. In addition to presenting a series of articles about important events and individuals throughout Sith history, I also welcome questions and comments, which I will attempt to address as well as I can.

Our knowledge is not contained within a single holocron, of course, but rather we have an entire archive of holocrons, scrolls, tomes, and an ever-growing databank. You can usually find me here, in the main holocron room, consulting with the memories of Sith long past.

In reading this section, you may occasionally notice that the history of the Sith is not in total agreement with some more “official” sources. Having been at the center of many important events in galactic history, and orchestrating many others, Sith records offer a number of important insights, and can even correct a few errors and common misconceptions.

Of course, others will protest that the Sith are known for deception, and that our records cannot be trusted—as if the Jedi and their political puppets are innocent of keeping secrets and manipulating others to their advantage! However, we do not suggest that our lore, or any source material, should be taken at face value, quite the opposite. For example, in the introductions to both editions of the Essential Chronology of galactic history, Archivist Emeritus Voren Na’al commented on how much knowledge is lacking from New Republic, and now Free Alliance, records. He blames much of this on Palpatine’s Empire, as it was Imperial policy to simplify the material used for public education, on more than twenty-five thousand years of history.

This is not to say that the Empire did not keep accurate records, but in many cases the original, non-digitized, materials were kept in vaults, presumably safe in the Manarai Mountains of Coruscant. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor, the vault’s location was forgotten during the period when Director Isard buried the Lusankya in a nearby location. When the Lusankya launched in her escape from the Battle for Coruscant, the main repository of records was destroyed. Great care had been taken to ensure many of the records had duplicates in locations such as the Mount Tantiss facility on Wayland, which was later demolished in an attack by Republic forces. Many more records were lost in the Yuuzhon Vong invasion of Obroa-Skai. As a result, Free Alliance information is admittedly vague about large portions of history.

While the Sith were completely uninvolved with many events in galactic history and cannot provide insight to those, there are other periods for which we have the only accurate information. In the light of the recent publication of the New Essential Chronology by the Historic Council of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, it is all the more important to make sure we Sith educate ourselves about our history. We have the direct testimony of the past through holocrons and sorcerous conversations with spirits of the dead. More importantly, we take all our sources in their proper context, and how close each source is to their subject matter.

In a few cases, our version of events directly contradicts the information provided by the Free Alliance’s “official continuity”, or has details not covered within the official documents. Whenever possible, these will be noted with editorial comments, and if I am unclear, just ask so I can elucidate.

Lord Scourge,
Sith Historian

[At this point it is apparent that the New Essential Chronology has numerous differences with other equally official sources. In some cases, this has been acknowledged as mistaken, such as Dan Wallace admitting he had not played Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords before writing the book, and basing information about the game entirely on summaries by others. In other cases, he is openly applying a “retcon”, or retroactive continuity, a situation in which a writer is intentionally changing the meaning of previously published material.

However, the NEC is presented as an “in-universe” work, which has been published by historians in 36 ABY to provide a solid record of galactic history in the aftermath of Palpatine’s Empire and the Yuuzhon Vong invasion. Now, it is a simple fact that any work of history actually tells more about the period in which it was written than the period it is writing about. The understanding of other periods of history, and the focus on what is or is not important enough to mention, is shaped entirely by the invisible biases of one’s own time. As a result, any discrepancies between the NEC and another source on the same topic, which was written with the modern perspective of an omniscient narrative, rather than the subjective work of characters within the Star Wars saga, can easily be taken as mistakes by those characters. In other words, Dan Wallace has accurately given us a book that was written in the Star Wars galaxy, including all the errors of the original.

I have done my best that all of my divergences from official sources are possible by logic such as this. In essence, it is no different from hearing Jocasta Nu state in Attack of the Clones, “If an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist,” knowing that the sentence is false. Even though a line from a movie is the highest level of Star Wars canon, in this case the movie is simply accurately showing us that the head librarian of the Jedi Archives is completely wrong. Likewise, I would be a little disappointed if a book like this, written to be an official state history from a fictional culture, did not include some historic revisions and propaganda to show their biases.]

_________________
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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