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The
Sith had come into being almost two thousand years ago. They were a
cult given over to the dark side of the Force, embracing fully
the concept
that power denied was power wasted.
A
rouge Jedi Knight had founded the
Sith, a singular dissident in an order of harmonious
followers, a rebel who understood from the beginning the real power of
the Force lay not in the light,
but the
dark. Failing
to gain approval of his beliefs from the Council, he had broken
with the order, departing with his knowledge and his skill, swearing in
secret that he could bring down those who had dismissed him.
He
was alone at first, but others from the Jedi order who believed as he did
and who
had followed him in his study of the dark side soon came over. Other were
recruited, and soon the ranks of the Sith swelled
to more than fifty in number. Disdaining the concepts of cooperation
and consensus, relying on the belief that acquisition of power in any form
lends strength and yields control, the Sith began
to build their cult in opposition the Jedi.
Theirs
was not an order created to serve; theirs was an order created to dominate.
Their war with the Jedi was vengeful
and furious and ultimately doomed. The rouge Jedi
who founded the Sith
order was its nominal leader, but his ambition excluded any sharing of
power. His disciples began to conspire against him and each other almost
from the beginning, so that the war they instigated was as much with each
other as it was with the Jedi.
In the end, the Sith destroyed themselves. They destroyed their leader first,then each other. What few survived the initial bloodbath were soon dispatched by the watchful Jedi. In a matter of only weeks, all of them died
The
Sith who had survived when all of his fellows had
died had understood that. He had adopted patience as his virtue when the
other had forsaken it. He had adopted cunning, stealth, and subterfuge
as the foundation of his way-old Jedi virtues the others disdained. He
stood aside while the other Sith
tore
each other
like kriks and were destroyed. When the carnage was complete, he went into
hiding, biding his time, waiting for his chance.
When
it was believed all of the Sith were destroyed, he emerged from his concealment.
At first his worked alone, but he was growing old and he was the last of
his kind. Eventually, he went out in search of an apprentice.
Finding one,
he trained him to be a Aster in his turn, then to find an apprentice, and
so to carry one their work. But there would only be two at any one time.
There would be no repetition of mistakes of the old order, no
struggle
between Siths warring for power within the cult. Their common enemy was
the Jedi, not each other. It was for their war with the Jedi they save
themselves.
The
Sith who reinvented the order called himself Darth
Bane A thousand years had passed since
the Sith were believed to be destroyed, and the time
they had waited for had come at last
Sith lords,