Order of the Sith Lords

"Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it."

- Darth Bane

The Sith Order under Darth Bane was created as a result of the devastating Seventh Battle of Ruusan, which saw the annihilation of the previous Sith Order. Bane's Sith Order, known formally as Order of the Sith Lords, was founded upon the principles of the Rule of Two, utilizing stealth and secrecy to achieve their means. It would be this Sith Order, and its principles, that would finally triumph over the Jedi and the Galactic Republic nearly 1,000 years later. This Order would eventually come to an end with the near-extinction of the Sith at the hands of the Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker, with help from his son, Luke Skywalker, in 4 ABY.

Bane's Reformation
After the Seventh Battle of Ruusan, Darth Bane, the only surviving Sith Lord, started to reform ensure the continued survival of the Sith. To guard against the Sith destroying themselves or losing sight of their "ideals" once again, Bane took only one apprentice, restarting the tradition of the one master, one apprentice and that of passing the name "Darth" to each of his successors. Perhaps 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. The new tenets of the sinister order would become cunning, stealth, subterfuge and most of all, a virtue borrowed from their worst enemy, patience.

Eventually, Bane inducted his new apprentice, giving her the name Darth Zannah, and set his new order in motion. Future Sith Lords were taught the virtues of patience, planning, and secrecy, and each was to take on the title of Darth, a tradition that had dated back to before the Jedi Civil War, nearly three millennia ago.

It would not be long, however, that Bane's fledgling order was rediscovered by the Jedi and (once again) thought eliminated. The Jedi discovered both the new Rule of Two and the identity of Darth Bane, but did not foresee that the new Sith he had founded would long survive Bane's death.

Darth Millennial
Sometime in the nearly thousand years separating the Seventh Battle of Ruusan (1,000 BBY) and the Battle of Naboo (32 BBY), Darth Millennial, heir to the lineage of Darth Bane, rejected firm adherence to Lord Bane's restrictive "Rule of Two," which mandated that there could only be two Sith Lords, master and apprentice, at any one time. Instead, Millennial believed in Lord Kaan's more martial philosophy of "Rule by the Strong," and his opposition to Bane's creed indicates he interpreted this to mean the strength of numbers. He abandoned his master and disappeared to focus on Kaan's ideas, possibly hoping to establish a second Sith order based on these concepts.

Millennial settled on Dromund Kaas, the third planet in a system that had once been part of the backwater regions of the ancient Sith Empire. There he founded a new dark side religion, later called the Dark Force, which was the faith practiced by all his successors. These practitioners, a lineage of mages who called themselves the Prophets of the Dark Side would eventually be rediscovered by Darth Sidious and incorporated into the Galactic Empire he established in 19 BBY. They became the Secret Order of the Emperor, and served as consultants for Sidious during his life and became influential power-brokers after his death.

Palpatine Era
"Always two there are&hellip;no more; no less."

- Yoda

In 70 BBY, Darth Sidious, heir to the lineage of Darth Bane, was infiltrating the Republic's government, carefully implementing the steps of a plan set down centuries in the past, preparing to address "wrongs" the Galaxy at large had long since forgotten with the Battle of Naboo in 32 BBY. Though his apprentice, Darth Maul, was slain in that battle at the hands of Jedi Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, the day proved an unparalleled victory for the Sith; Darth Sidious, as Senator Palpatine of Naboo, was elected to the office of Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic.

More than a decade passed, during which Palpatine manipulated the Senate into granting him more and more powers. His new apprentice, Darth Tyranus, formed the Confederacy of Independent Systems, which seceded from the Galactic Republic, thus beginning a long and bloody conflict known as the Clone Wars. During this time as the conflict progressed, the Jedi began to suspect Palpatine's skeptical powers.



When the Clone Wars were over, the Jedi ranks had been thinned considerably. At last, the moment had come for the Sith to reclaim their former glory. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine &mdash; who revealed as Darth Sidious by Anakin Skywalker &mdash; killed four Jedi Masters who had been sent to arrest the Chancellor. He then crowned himself Galactic Emperor, and replaced the ancient Republic with a "New Order" — the Galactic Empire — a galaxy-spanning dark side theocracy disguised as a dictatorship the likes of which had not been seen for millennia, through the Declaration of a New Order.

The Jedi Holocaust began with the issuing of Order 66, in which the clone troopers received their transmission from Palpatine to kill their Jedi commanders, and the attack on the Jedi Temple, led by Palpatine's Dark Jedi underlings (including groups known respectively as the Inquisitorius, the Emperor's Hands, and the Prophets of the Dark Side) and his third and greatest apprentice, Darth Vader. The Holocaust ensured that what few Jedi remained became even fewer, until only a handful of the original ten thousand remained. It was a dark time for the galaxy.

Eventually, however, the Alliance to Restore the Republic arose to overthrow the Empire a year before the Battle of Yavin. The 20-year Galactic Civil War drew many into its fold, perhaps the most notable of whom was Luke Skywalker, the son of Anakin Skywalker (or as he was better known, Darth Vader). Shortly after Skywalker 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 plan for the future. Vader desired to kill the Emperor and rule the galaxy with his son, but Palpatine wished to replace Vader with the boy as his fourth apprentice. Neither goal was successful, and it appeared that the Sith had finally come to an end, as originally prophesied by the Jedi. With the destruction of the second Death Star at the Battle of Endor, Darth Vader returned to the light side as Anakin Skywalker once again, slaying his former master and being slain in return.

The return of Anakin Skywalker, formerly Darth Vader, to the light side, and the death of the Emperor, who was the last true master of Darth Bane's reformed Sith Order, brought to fruition the prophecy of the Chosen One who would bring "balance to the Force."

The Sith legacy
But even death was not the end for Palpatine. Unlike his Sith predecessors, Palpatine had never intended to be replaced by an apprentice, expecting his Empire to rule the Galaxy eternally, with only himself as its true leader. At an unknown point in time prior to his death at the Battle of Endor, Palpatine had found a way to cheat death by preserving his spirit after the death of his body. He arranged for a series of clones of himself to be created for his spirit to possess, in the event that he would perish. His primary supply of clones was kept on Byss, guarded by loyal Dark Jedi and immense genetically-altered guards, and maintained by a trusted private physician. After the destruction of the second Death Star, Palpatine's spirit was forced to journey in the maddening, bodiless existence of the void, eventually taking possession of the body of Emperor's Hand Jeng Droga. Though Droga went mad in the process, he was able to journey to Byss, where Palpatine was able to take possession of a clone of himself. There, on Byss, he would remain for years and would rebuild his strength and Empire.

Palpatine's apparent death at the Battle of Endor fragmented the Galactic Empire. Without an heir, opportunistic Moffs and other officers turned into warlords and set out to carve their own kingdoms wherever they could. This worked to the advantage of the New Republic, which succeeded in reclaiming much of the Galaxy.

After Thrawn's death, the resurrected Emperor struck. Using his dark powers to create a powerful Force Storm, he swept Jedi Master Luke Skywalker to Byss. There, he revealed himself to Luke, and revealed the power of the dark side. Faced with an immortal foe, Skywalker did the unthinkable—in order to defeat the dark side from within, he knelt before Palpatine, and submitted himself as the Emperor's new Sith apprentice.

Resurrected, Palpatine planned to replace the Galactic Empire with a "Dark Empire", a universe-spanning magocracy ruled through the dark side of the Force alone, without the need for regional governors or technological domination.

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 resurrected Palpatine's bodies started dying—for the treacherous Sovereign Protector Carnor Jax tampered with their genetic material. Palpatine died a final death on the planet Onderon, when dying Jedi Knight Empatajayos Brand, a survivor of the Jedi Purge, bound Emperor Palpatine's departing life essence to his own, taking the spirit with him as he became one with the Force. Thus extinction of the Order of the Sith Lords.

Post-Palpatine Sith


Even with Palpatine's final death, many Jedi continued to fall into darkness. Their next threat was an Emperor's Hand named Lumiya. Darth Vader had passed on to Lumiya some Sith teaching secretly from his master, and the woman adopted the title Dark Lady of the Sith upon her masters' 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 known death on Onderon. Afterwards, Lady Lumiya went into hiding and it was thought once more that the Sith had disappeared.

Following the Yuuzhan Vong War, Jedi Knight 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, Katarn sensed an even darker hand behind her training. Apparently, this Yuuzhan Vong had a master, presumably Lumiya.

Around 40 ABY, Lumiya returned to the galactic stage, and convinced Jacen Solo to join the ranks of the Sith.

BY 130 ABY the Sith Order was once more flourishing, with the New Jedi Order in disarray.

Ranks
To ensure the continued survival of the Sith, Bane institutes the Rule of Two. In Bane's order, both Sith held the title Dark Lord of the Sith.

Sith Master

Sith Masters where Sith Lords that had an apprentice serving beneath them. Notable Sith Masters include Darth Sidious, Darth Plagueis, and Darth Bane.

Sith Apprentice

Sith Apprentices were Sith neophytes that were studying under the tutelage of a Sith Master. Notable Sith Apprentices include Darth Maul, Darth Tyranus/Count Dooku, and Darth Vader.

Palpatine Era
When Palpatine declared himself Emperor, the Sith controlled the known galaxy, in a political sense, for the first time. With this new, far-reaching authority came a need for functionaries throughout the Empire who were, to one extent or another, supporters if not adherents of the dark side. Though not Sith in any strict sense, these quasi-Sith minions were known generally as Dark Side Adepts. As Force-sensitive individuals serving the Emperor, they supported his Sith rule by working in the roles of servants, agents, intelligence operatives, military officials, etc. Dark Side Adepts were particularly important when Palpatine was reborn into his clone bodies, five years after his death.

Inquisitors

Inquisitors were the highest ranking Dark Side Adepts, members of the Inquisitorius, a special division of Imperial Intelligence.

Prophets of the Dark Side

The Dark Side Prophets were an ancient Outer Rim renegade Sith order founded by Darth Millennial. Though not Banist Sith, the Prophets were arguably a kind of true Sith. Darth Sidious rediscovered the group and brought them once again under his control, renaming them the Emperor's Mages.

Emperor's Hands

Emperor's Hands were top-secret special operatives trained in the Force by the Emperor himself. They were so secret they usually had no knowledge of each other. Mara Jade was one of the best-known Emperor's Hands.

Together with the Emperor's Mages, the Emperor's Hands were called the Dark Side Elite.

Imperial Royal Guard

These were hand-picked elite Stormtroopers assigned to protect and serve the Emperor directly. They were required to have Force sensitivity, even if undeveloped. Those with advanced talents were assigned as Sovereign Protectors, and those with even more advanced talents underwent Force training under Dark Jedi tutors.

Dark Jedi

Although the name might imply otherwise, Dark Jedi were not synonymous with Sith, although Darth Vader among others used techniques drawn from the traditions of both the Dark Jedi and the Sith. It was much more likely for Dark Jedi to return to the Light (e.g. Kam Solusar). Other notable Dark Jedi included Sora Bulq, Joruus C'baoth, Jerec, and the particularly infamous Asajj Ventress.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi