Dark side of the Force/Legends

"The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities that some consider to be unnatural."

- Palpatine

"Anger. Fear. Aggression. The dark side are they."

- Yoda



History
The dark side of the Force, called Bogan by the ancient forerunners of the Jedi, was the primary tool of the Sith Lords.

The dark side of the Force was the element aligned with the powerful negative emotions of fear, hatred, and anger; practitioners fueled their power through these passionate emotions. Additionally, death and pain are associated with the dark side of the Force; inflicting them appears to be a primary goal of many dark side users. The dark side is extremely addictive, and almost impossible to renounce. Every time a person in tune with the Force called on the dark side, they became more and more addicted to the power it brought them.

Throughout galactic history, the most infamous users of the dark side are the assorted iterations of the Sith, who were also the most powerful, with a bevy of talents impossible for Jedi to duplicate. The Jedi reject the dark side and all it has to offer, as following it leads to destruction and chaos, often for trillions of people, where the Sith embrace the dark side selfishly, putting themselves over the Galaxy. Sith philosophy sees no need to rationalize or apologize for the destruction and conflict to which it led; they believed that using the dark side gave them enough power to take that which was rightfully theirs. Although most Sith, such as Yuthura Ban, beleived that they could control the Dark side, many thought otherwise;



Dark Side Pracitioners
"A Sith believes he commands the Force, but it is the dark side that commands him."

- Jolee Bindo

The Sith

-Darth Revan

-Darth Malak

-Darth Bandon

-Darth Nihilus

-Darth Sion

-Darth Bane

-Darth Sidious

-Darth Maul

-Darth Tyranus

-Darth Vader

Prophets of the Dark Side

-Supreme Prophet Kadann

-High Prophet Jedgar

-Prophet Gornash



Corruption of the Dark Side
"How can a Jedi, trained in the ways of the light, fall victim to the Dark Side?"

- Ulic Qel-Droma

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

- Yoda

The path of the dark side is mentally and sometimes physically corruptive. As use of the dark side of the Force leads to deeper immersion in it, this malevolent power takes its toll on the body of a dark side practitioner. A well known characteristic of a dark side user is that his or her irises become a sulphurous, hideous yellow color. In extreme cases, the taint will mottle and disfigure the flesh into a corpse-gray color, as seen with Darth Sidious. Many dark side organizations were also inherently unstable. The Master-Padawan relationship of the Jedi, for instance, was perverted under the Sith, as both the apprentice and the Master would inevitably plot against each other, and almost all of these apprenticeships end with one killing the other. The Empire was no exception: If there were no enemies (mainly Jedi) for Sith Lords or Dark Jedi to face, the practitioners of the dark side frequently destroyed one another, and their organizations would consume themselves through internal struggles for power.

The Sith Lord Darth Bane considered the Force to be finite, and thus ideally restricted to the use of the Sith Lord. He eliminated the practice of having vast numbers of Sith at the same time and concentrated the dark side of the Force into two individuals: a master and an apprentice. This tradition, or "rule of two," was still practiced by the Sith under Dark Lady Lumiya after the deaths of Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine at Endor.

Behind the scenes
In many ways, the dark side is the principle villain of Star Wars. Arguably, the Sith line ended with Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine (although the dark side and its weaker practioners persist, of course,) but some writers have seen fit to continue the tradition.

Bogan was the name given to the dark side of the Force in early drafts of Star Wars and was established as canon in the Expanded Universe by the The New Essential Chronology.