First Jedi Purge

"The Jedi Temple on Coruscant lies empty. The waters in the Room of a Thousand Fountains have fallen still, in reverence to the fallen Jedi&hellip; and those now lost."

- Kreia

The First Jedi Purge took place some time after the Battle of Rakata Prime, from 3,955–3,954 BBY until 3,951 BBY. This purge saw nearly the entire Jedi Order disappear from the galaxy; the Order publicly disbanded and most of the survivors were killed by the Sith.

After the conclusion of the First Sith Civil War circa 3,955 BBY, Darth Traya, Darth Nihilus, and Darth Sion took command of the remnants of Revan's Sith Empire. After the exile of Traya, Sion utilized his Sith Assassins to assassinate Jedi, while Nihilus consumed life on an entire planet in search of the Jedi. Nihilus's last attack was on the Miraluka world of Katarr, where nearly all of the remaining hundred Jedi died at a conclave on the planet.

The purge was brought to an end by the Jedi Exile. She trained a new generation of Jedi Knights and personally defeated the three Sith Lords. After the purge was over, the Jedi she trained proved essential to reviving the Order.

Origins
"The Jedi Civil War destroyed the Jedi. By the war's end, barely a hundred Jedi remained. Many fell in battle&hellip; and many more were seduced by Revan's teachings."

- Kreia

By the year 3,956 BBY, the Jedi Order had weathered one of the most turbulent periods in its long history&mdash;three galaxy-spanning wars that occurred in the short span of fifty years, two of which had been orchestrated by fallen members of the Order itself. In the aftermath of those devastating conflicts, the Order had dwindled and weakened to the point that it had become a shadow of its former self. Thousands of Jedi were lost in the Great Sith War, Mandalorian Wars, and Jedi Civil War, and those conflicts erupted across the galaxy in such close succession that the Jedi were not given enough time to rebuild their numbers. The Order simply could not sustain such heavy losses over such a short period of time.

The Order's problems were compounded by the fact that the Jedi faced a dramatic loss of knowledge stemming from the destructions of critical centers of learning, including the Great Jedi Library on Ossus and the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine. Too many important holocrons, records, and histories had been scattered, lost, or looted during the wars. As a result, there were too few experienced Jedi to instruct aspiring students and an inadequate knowledge base with which to teach them.

By the end of the Jedi Civil War, the already depleted Jedi Order had been all but wiped out. Less than one hundred individuals survived to rebuild. As the Galactic Republic hovered on the brink of collapse, the Jedi Order slowly began to deteriorate. Also, a redeemed Revan left Republic space, denying both the Republic and Jedi someone to rally around to rebuild. An intense climate of disillusionment permeated the Jedi ranks, as the few surviving members faced an unprecedented level of anger and resentment from the Republic citizenship who had begun to fear their former heroes. The Jedi themselves were losing faith in the Order, as they began to ask themselves how and why so many of their number had fallen to the dark side over the years. Even members of the Jedi High Council began to question the Jedi teachings.

The Sith Lords
"Only a handful of us remained after the Jedi Civil War, barely a hundred in number. Then even that hundred began to disappear, in places where the Force seemed blind. The only pattern we determined [was] that when Jedi gathered, they were seen no more. At the last Jedi conclave on Katarr, the entire planet was wiped out. An entire race, destroyed&hellip; because the Jedi chose to gather there. It was only then that we realized that we were facing something far more powerful than we knew how to fight."

- Zez-Kai Ell

After the death of Darth Malak and the destruction of the Star Forge, the infrastructure of the Sith Empire had disintegrated. Most of the Dark Jedi who had survived the war wiped themselves out in struggles for dominance, yet scattered remnants of Revan's Empire remained entrenched in secret places of power. With time, they regrouped, and new leaders emerged to guide them. On the ancient Sith world of Malachor V, Revan's secret sect of Sith Assassins still lingered. In the heart of the Trayus Academy, the Trayus Core, the Sith Lords Darth Traya, Darth Nihilus, and Darth Sion developed a new strategy. Waging a shadow war, the new Sith Triumvirate battled with only one goal in mind: the complete and utter extermination of the Jedi. They manipulated events from the darkness, causing local conflicts on key Republic planets. These worlds, if left to fall, would mean a quick and decisive end to the Republic.

It was a dark and chaotic time for the Order. A steady stream of Jedi, including the Jedi Watchmen overseeing several worlds, stepped down, renounced the Order, and were never heard from again. Entire Jedi gatherings began to vanish, leaving behind a strange disturbance in the Force that only a few members of the Jedi Council could recognize. In time, the Jedi began to suspect that they were being hunted. At last, the Jedi Master Atris summoned many of the most powerful and influential of the remaining Jedi Masters to a secret conclave on the Miraluka world of Katarr under the pretext of discussing the emerging threat. But the conclave was not as secret as the Jedi thought.

Atris leaked information about the conclave to the greater galaxy in an attempt to draw whoever was attacking them out of the shadows. As a result, Darth Nihilus arrived as the Jedi assembled and annihilated every living thing upon the planet, both the Jedi and the Miraluka colonists. The sole survivor of the attack was the Miraluka Visas Marr, whom Nihilus captured and trained as his apprentice. After that shocking event, the remaining Jedi Council members, Masters Vrook Lamar, Kavar, Zez-Kai Ell, and Lonna Vash, decided to go into exile. In so doing, they hoped that the mysterious and secretive new Sith threat would be lulled into a false victory and reveal itself.

The Jedi Exile
"We are at war, but it is unlike any war we have fought before&mdash;we have yet to even meet our attackers in battle. Somehow our enemy is targeting us through the Force, striking, then retreating to the shadows. The gathering of any Jedi seems to attract them like a beacon."

- Vrook Lamar

Return to known space
By the year 3,951 BBY, almost all the Jedi had been eliminated. One of the survivors was the figure known as the Jedi Exile. The Exile – who had spent time in the Outer Rim and the Unknown Regions, having been banished from the Jedi Order for following Revan to fight in the Mandalorian Wars – returned to Galactic Republic space in 3,951 BBY. The Harbinger, bound for Telos, suddenly received a distress call and, upon reporting it and the distressed vessel's ID, was ordered to assist the vessel.

Upon their arrival the captain of the Harbinger ordered a boarding crew onto the vessel, the Ebon Hawk, to bring aboard any survivors. They picked up the entire crew but were ambushed by a Sith warship. The crew of the Ebon Hawk escaped, but not before being attacked by the Sith warship commanded by Darth Sion. Suffering immense damage, the Ebon Hawk made the jump to hyperspace but was left damaged and adrift in space. With the help of the utility droid T3-M4, the Exile's wounds were healed and the Ebon Hawk was eventually guided to the Peragus Mining Facility.

Peragus
Several days later, the Exile woke up from a stupor in the mining facility and found an old woman who had been left for dead. This woman later revealed herself to be a Jedi Master named Kreia. She guided the Exile through their escape from the mining facility. They found the facility to be completely abandoned, except for malfunctioning mining droids, an HK-50 protocol droid, and an imprisoned Human named Atton Rand.

Before long, however, the Sith who had attacked the Harbinger arrived. Kreia, the Exile, and Atton escaped with T3-M4 onboard the Ebon Hawk, setting a course for Telos IV -- the only available destination in the Peragus navigational charts. While being pursued by the Sith in the asteroid field around Peragus, laser fire from the Harbinger ignited the volatile fuel within the asteroids. The resulting explosion destroyed both the facility and the planet of Peragus II itself, although the Ebon Hawk and the Sith onboard the Harbinger were able to escape.

Telos
After arriving at the massive Citadel Station in orbit around Telos, the crew of the Ebon Hawk were detained for the destruction of the Peragus mining facility. They were soon cleared of any crime -- but not before the Ebon Hawk, with T3-M4 onboard, had been stolen and flown to the Telosian surface. After being refused a new vessel by the Telos Security Force, the three utilized alternate transportation to get down to the surface, where they were shot down by Czerka Corporation air-defense turrets. They were pulled out of the burning vessel by a Zabrak engineer named Bao-Dur, who was responsible for designing Telos' planetary shields. While on the surface, they learned that the Ebon Hawk had been taken to the old planetary aqueducts in the polar region of the planet. Stealing a shuttle from an abandoned military compound, they traveled to the aqueducts and were once again shot down, this time by three HK-50 bounty hunter assassin droids. After defeating the droids, Atton, Kreia and the Exile (Bao-Dur was knocked unconscious by the crash) entered the polar aqueduct system.

There, they found themselves once again being detained by the Last Handmaiden and her sisters. They had entered the secret Telosian Jedi Academy. The Exile was granted an audience with Atris, the Jedi Master controlling the facility. After a heated debate over what the Exile should have and did do during the Mandalorian Wars, the Exile and her party were granted leave and left with the Ebon Hawk and T3-M4.

After leaving the academy, T3 revealed that he had managed to download Atris' database and navigational charts while at the academy, including a recording of the Exile's trial and records of where the last five remaining Jedi Masters were hiding: Atris on Telos, Kavar on Onderon, Vrook Lamar on Dantooine, Zez-Kai Ell on Nar Shaddaa and Lonna Vash on Korriban. The Exile, wanting to know why she had been exiled, traveled to these worlds in search of the Jedi in an attempt to unite them against the Sith and to find the answers to her questions.

Dantooine
During her search for the remaining masters, the Exile came to Dantooine to search for Master Vrook. When she arrived, she found that much had changed since she left for the Mandalorian Wars: the Enclave had been destroyed, and Dantooine was barely surviving as a planetary government. The remaining citizens had pulled together and built a new government based at the old Matale estate, that was known as Khoonda. After meeting with the administrator, she journyed into the ruins of the Enclave. There, she found out that Vrook had been captured by the mercenaries on the planet.

The Exile found and freed Vrook, but Vrook said he had allowed himself to be captured to avoid a conflict with Khoonda and the mercenaries. Now that they had lost Vrook, the mercenaries would launch a full-scale assault on the weak government. The Exile chose to help Khoonda, and under her military leadership the Khoonda Militia defeated the mercenaries.

Onderon
The Exile's journey also took her to Onderon where Master Kavar, who was also an old friend, was staying as an advisor to Queen Talia. But the Exile found that, like Dantooine, Onderon also had problems: Many people on Onderon blamed the Republic for all the suffering that had come during the resent wars. Taking advantage of this, General Vaklu, Talia's cousin, began to round up followers by saying Onderon should break away from the Republic and become independent again. His plans were to ultimately kill Talia and make himself king.

After nearly being shot down by Vaklu's forces, the Exile landed on Dxun, one of Onderon's moons. There, she found the Mandalorians, under the command of Canderous Ordo, were rebuilding. She was able to ally with the Mandalorians and get safe passage to Onderon. But her meeting with Kavar was cut short by Vaklu's troops. She left the planet with Kavar's word that he would contact her again.

By the time Kavar was able to contact the Exile, Vaklu was ready to strike. He launched a civil war in the streets of Iziz. When the Exile heard of this, she headed to Dxun. The Exile, along with the Mandalorians, launched a counter-attack from Dxun and succeeded in defeating Vaklu before Talia could be defeated.

Meeting with the Council
After locating and conversing with all of the remaining Jedi Masters, the Exile returned to Dantooine to find the rebuilt Jedi Enclave. There, Masters Vrook, Kavar and Zez-Kai Ell (Master Lonna Vash had already been killed by the Sith) had formed a council in which they would decide her fate. Right after they reestablished the Exile's banishment and just before they could strip her of the Force once again, Kreia stormed into the meeting. The Exile, held in stasis by the Masters, was left helpless to defend them as Kreia put the Jedi Masters through the same suffering the Exile had felt on Malachor V, leaving them not only dead, but void of the Force.

After she left, the Exile finally regained her strength and departed for Telos in search of Kreia, who had once again assumed the title of Darth Traya. There the Exile was again forced to confront Atris, who had been corrupted by the dark side by the Sith holocrons at the secret academy. After the Exile defeated her, she was able to persuade Atris to forgive her and helped herself see the folly of her beliefs. Atris then told the Exile that Traya had fled to Malachor V to wait for their final confrontation. Afterwards, Atris declared herself an ex-Jedi and went into exile to try to find understanding.

The Battle of Telos IV
Shortly thereafter, a Sith fleet headed by Darth Nihilus arrived at Telos, having been drawn to the academy in the polar region. With the assistance of the Mandalorians and Mandalore Canderous Ordo, the Exile boarded and engaged Nihilus aboard his ship, the Ravager, to keep him from destroying Telos in order to feed his hunger. With the assistance of Visas Marr and Canderous, the Exile defeated him and headed to Malachor V.

The end of the Purge
Having succeeded in defending Telos and defeating Darth Nihilus, the Exile and her associates made their way to Malachor V. After crash-landing on the surface of the planet, the Exile proceeded to the Trayus Academy, battling her way through storm beasts, Sith warriors, and assassins before confronting Darth Sion himself. After an intense and prolonged duel, the Exile finally brought Sion to the realization that Kreia was using him and didn't care what happened to him. Having been persuaded to let go of his hatred -- the only thing that kept him alive -- Sion finally succumbed to his numerous injuries. The Exile then made her way to the Trayus Core, where she confronted Darth Traya.

After a fierce battle, the Exile succeeded in defeating the Sith Lord but spared her life. Traya refused to give up however, and attacked the Exile again. But the Exile was able to defeat her again, and this time also redeemed Traya from the dark side. Before she gave her life to the Force, Kreia gave the Exile information about Revan's location in the Unknown Regions and about the fates of the Exile's allies and the planets they had visited. Shortly after this exchange, Bao-Dur's remote reactivated the Mass Shadow Generator in order to completely destroy the planet. The crew of the badly damaged Ebon Hawk retrieved the Exile from the Core and escaped the planet.

With the defeat of the Sith Triumvirate and the "restoration" of the Jedi Order, the Exile left the Republic in the hands of her Lost Jedi and began her journey to find Revan in the Unknown Regions.

Katarr

 * Dorak
 * Zhar Lestin
 * Vandar Tokare

Korriban

 * Lonna Vash

Dantooine

 * Zez-Kai Ell
 * Kavar
 * Vrook Lamar

Known survivors

 * Atris
 * Bao-Dur
 * Ood Bnar
 * Jedi Exile
 * Deesra Luur Jada
 * Visas Marr
 * Mical
 * Mira
 * Celeste Morne
 * Atton Rand
 * Bastila Shan
 * Vima Sunrider or descendant
 * Roni von Wasaki

Unknown status

 * Kel Algwinn
 * Yuthura Ban
 * Belaya
 * Cale Berkona
 * Jolee Bindo
 * Bolook
 * Zayne Carrick
 * Tott Doneeta
 * Krynda Draay
 * Lucien Draay
 * Haazen
 * Juhani
 * Jelph Marrian
 * Thalia May
 * Bala Nisi
 * Q'Anilia
 * Qual
 * Quatra
 * Revan
 * Aleco Stusea
 * Nomi Sunrider
 * Sylvar
 * Thon
 * Tooka
 * Oss Wilum
 * Bataui Zeel

Appearances

 * Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 5: Commencement, Part 5
 * Unseen, Unheard
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
 * Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader

Notes and references
Primera Purga Jedi