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• For the Irish fairy, see Sídhe.
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• For the Final Fantasy VII character, see Cait Sith.
• For the Star Wars movie, see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Within the fictional Star Wars universe, the term Sith is used to describe two separate but related groups. The most common use of the word applies to the cult devoted to the dark side of the Force, serving as the evil counterparts to the good Jedi. Their leaders are known as "Sith Lords," and the most powerful as the "Dark Lord of the Sith." Many members are fallen Jedi who join the dark side. Sith Lords often adopt names that are preceded by "Darth." This article deals primarily with this group.

The second group were a humanoid race enslaved by a group of warrior priests devoted to the dark side, who later took the name of this race as their own and became the aforementioned Sith cult.

History of the Sith Order

Sith Lords are devoted to the dark side of the Force and are expected to draw on their anger, fear, and hatred in order to gain power. Due to this, the Sith maintain a certain psychological isolation where they continue to hold themselves above all others.

With the coming of Darth Bane, the Sith Order shrank to only a Master and an apprentice, and the tradition of passing the name "Darth" on to each successor began. Soon, they began to adopt new names, such as Palpatine becoming Darth Sidious and Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader. The origins of these names are also unclear. Outside of continuity, these names usually refer to the modus operandi of a character: Darth Sidious is insidious, Darth Maul is brutal killing and mauling machine, Darth Tyranus is an evil nobleman, Darth Vader's initial role was an invader of the Jedi Temple, and so on.

The Great Sith War

===The

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 before the Battle of Yavin, yet another Jedi, chafing under the restrictions of the Jedi Council, fell to the dark side, stole a Sith Holocron, renamed himself "Darth Ruin", 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 truly 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 again engaging in fratricidal internecine war 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. "Two there should be; no more, no less," he is said to have explained; "One to embody power, the other to crave it." 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. "Always two there are—no more, no less: a Master, and an apprentice" (Master Yoda). The new tenets of this sinister order would be cunning, stealth, subterfuge, and a virtue learned from their worst enemy, patience.

The Revenge of the Sith

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their Dark Jedi minions, of course) as an arcane philosophy, almost like a fairy tale.

The Fall of the Galactic Empire

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 Emperor's Reign, until his clones appeared.

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. Such agents of the Sith were the Dark Jedi Mara Jade and Jeng Droga who would often be sent on missions of subterfuge. After the death of the Emperor, the former 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 Jedi Master 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 Hierarchy

Like the Jedi Order, which has a clearly defined hierarchy of titles (Jedi Initiate, or "youngling," to Jedi Padawan to Jedi Knight to Jedi Master to Jedi Grand Master), the Sith Order has a ranking system to divide the strong from the stronger, though it should be noted that, due to the great number of successive incarnations of the order, Sith hierarchy didn't maintain a single continuous ranking system throughout its history. Like the Jedi and the Old Republic, the Sith underwent a great reformation after the apocalyptic Battle of Ruusan, and the ranks of the Sith Order were among the things changed. Prior to that, however, Sith hierarchy remained much the same for almost 6,000 years: Sith Minion to Sith Acolyte to Sith Warrior to Sith Lord to Dark Lord of the Sith. For the most part this ranking system remained the same, through the ancient Sith Empire, Exar Kun's Brotherhood of the Sith, and Darth Revan's Sith Empire, until Lord Kaan declared that all of his highest ranking followers in the Sith Brotherhood of Darkness were Dark Lords of the Sith. Following the Sith Order's destruction at the Seventh Battle of Ruusan, Darth Bane reformed the order and decreed that there would only two Sith at a time from that point onward: a Master and an apprentice. Both would bear the title "Dark Lord of the Sith," which at that point in time became interchangeable with the term "Sith Lord." Everitt Cage

Sith Prestige Classes

Note: the following text refers to the Sith class structure as presented in the Star Wars D20 RPG System; the division of classes is for gameplay purposes and does not necessarily represent the "real" structure of the Sith.

In addition to their standard hierarchy, the Sith maintained a system of titles called "prestige classes," similar to the Jedi sub-categories of Guardian, Consular, Sentinel, Master, Watchman, and Weapon Master.

Sith Assassins

Sith Assassins are Sith who prefer to attack from the shadows and assassinate targets rather than engaging them in standard combat. Almost always working solo or in small groups, they stride through crowded areas undetected using special stealth field generators or the rare art of Force camouflage, launching a surprise attack on a victim. While most may use lightsabers, some may use electro-staffs or blasters especially designed for sniping. Darth Sion commanded legions of Sith Assassins in the aftermath of the Second Sith War, causing the near-destruction of the Jedi.

Sith Marauders (or Warriors)

Sith Marauders are often responsible for the most brutal murders carried out by the Sith; they are trained to become a living embodiment of a combat master empowered by the dark side. They are drawn from diverse groups, as varied as Jedi Knights, survivalists, martial artists, dark side marauders, mercenaries, and pirates, but they all use a lightsaber more often than the Force, with few emotions other than hate, rage, and cruelty; the dark side rewards these emotions with immense power, thusly a single Sith Marauder can often go toe-to-toe with any normal single Jedi in saber combat and win. While Marauders are not always the masterminds behind dark plots, they are usually the ones carrying out the plans of their Sith Lord masters. Both Darth Vader and Darth Maul were powerful examples of this.

Sith Lords

Sith Lords (this a title distinct from the appellation given the most powerful Sith) are the geniuses behind the most insidious plots and murders. Using the dark side of the Force to inflict misery, suffering, and corruption, few dare step in their way; Sith Lords are also charged with preserving the ancient lore of the Sith by passing them onto other Sith and their acolytes, and delving deeper into the mysteries of Sith alchemy and the Dark side itself. While they don't enter combat as often as the other classes (for they have more pawns and servants), they are the most fearsome of the Sith prestige classes, as they are the pinnacle of a Sith's evolution- almost all Sith Lords were previously a Warrior or Assassin, as rarely is an Acolyte talented enough to make the transition. Each Lord takes the long view. Their goal is to utterly destroy the Jedi, assuring themselves dominion of the galaxy. Their role is to nurture this grand project, extending their tendrils of influence throughout the galaxy. Each Lord may never see the fruition of his life-long dream, and must be content in the knowledge that they have advanced the project in the shadows a little bit, and that one day it will succeed. The most effective and infamous Sith Lords would likely be Darth Sidious, Darth Revan and Darth Traya.

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 manipulated that he had been forced to consider 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 exorcised 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 and physical 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 permanent death on the planet Onderon, when the dying Jedi Knight Empatojayos 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. Palpatine, the greatest Dark Lord of the Sith, descended into Chaos—the eternal "madness 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 Master 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. Ominously, this Yuuzhan Vong had apparently had a Master.

Dark Lords of the Sith

The Dark Lords of the Sith are acknowledged as the leaders of their order, and the most powerful Sith of their time. Only one Dark Lord existed at a time until the reign of Kaan.

Lesser Sith

The Ancient Sith Empire

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

Freedon Nadd's Legacy

• Ommin
• Amanoa
• Aleema Keto
• Satal Keto

Exar Kun's Brotherhood of the Sith

• Nayama Bindo
• Crado
• Ulic Qel-Droma
• Rin Shuuir
• Utris
• Oss Willum
• Set Harth
• Zona Luka

Darth Revan's Sith Empire

• Yuthura Ban
• Darth Bandon
• Bastila Shan
• Jorak Uln
• Uthar Wynn

Post-Revan Remnants

• Visas Marr
• Darth Nihilus
• Darth Sion
• Darth Traya

Lord Kaan's Brotherhood of Darkness

• Darovit

External link

• The Sith Explained (Howstuffworks.com)

Footnotes

1. Although it is never stated in the movie that Sidious was Plagueis's apprentice, it is included in the novelization of Revenge of the Sith and implied in the film. See Darth Plagueis.

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