Force drain/Legends



"The greatest of the Sith teachings."

- Kreia

Force Drain refers to a spectrum of offensive Force powers, tied to the same concept, which used the dark side of the Force to tap into the strengths of an organic target. Mastery of each technique could scale the area of effect, sometimes dramatically, or exhaust the victims almost instantaneously.

Known applications
Force abilities such as Drain life and Death field siphoned vitality to offer an equivalent effect of Force Healing, the difference being that the regenerative processes in the user was fueled draining the targets. Other techniques like Drain Force rekindled Force energy in the user draining those whom the power was turned upon. Some wielders of the Force were known to be able to obtain both results at the same time, like the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Malak did in the last battle of the Jedi Civil War as he dueled his former Sith Master Revan. He used Force Drain to draw upon the power of captive Jedi who had fallen in the attack on Dantooine.



As detrimental as the teachings of the dark side were said to be to the very flesh of their practitioners, Force Drain could be more dangerous still, if one relied on the technique or did not contain its full measure of power. During the First Jedi Purge, in his hunger for power, the Sith Lord Darth Nihilus honed a pernicious means of feeding upon the Force, which eventually enslaved him. The arcane practice, known to the ancient Sith, came into use at some point after the Hundred-Year Darkness and was lost over time, as the Lords of the Sith abandoned Republic space and their strongholds were deserted. The technique itself could not be taught, it could only be gained through instinct, through experiencing its effects first-hand, which was possibly an irreversible process as the absence left in the victim turned into hunger, eventually compelling them to feed themselves.

Kreia described this ability as a means of destroying connections between life around oneself, drawing upon them until they were drained completely and the exhausted life died. Nihilus supposedly took this practice to unmatched levels; wiping out entire planets, he became something of a hole in the Force, his mere presence killing all around him, slowly, feeding him. Wounds in the Force located in places such as the dark side world of Malachor V were said to bear a similar behavior. Near the end of the Mandalorian Wars, Revan learned within the Trayus Academy how to take advantage of such places, and how to make them, in order to break the will of Jedi and turn them to the dark side.

A sizable part of the Sith triumvirate, under Darth Traya, Darth Sion and Nihilus himself, was made to have some measure of proficiency in Force Drain. Specifically, a sect of Sith Assassins, once of Revan's elite Jedi hunter squads, were subject to what Kreia referred to as "special teachings." They came to use the technique to track Jedi more efficiently, and to grow stronger the closer they came to Force-sensitives, so that the stronger one was in the Force the more assassins would feel their presence, and the deadlier they would be in combat. On Dxun, during the Second Battle of Onderon, the Sith tried to bolster their forces on Onderon by feeding on a Force nexus located in Freedon Nadd's tomb. On Dantooine, Kreia consumed the Jedi High Council in the persons of Jedi Masters Vrook Lamar, Kavar, and Zez-Kai Ell, who were assembled in the ruins of the Jedi Enclave by the Jedi Exile to answer the Sith threat.

The most grandiose display of Force Drain was given by Nihilus when he consumed Katarr, a Miraluka world in the Mid Rim. However, unchecked use of his talent took the form of addiction, and would have ultimately cost his life had he not been slain by the Exile. The hunger that possessed him would have kept growing, along with his power and his reach in the Force, posing a threat to all life. Other examples are Exar Kun, the Dark Lord in the time of the Great Sith War, who harnessed Dark side artifacts on Yavin 4 to enhance his power and drain the entire Massassi species, so that his spirit could endure for more than four thousands of years in the Great Temple; and Galactic Emperor Palpatine, who fed off the inhabitants of his retreat world of Byss collectively with his Dark Side Adepts, although those unfortunates were drained slowly, over a long period of time, rather than consuming the whole world at once.

Behind the scenes
If the Jedi Exile followed the path of the dark side she would have instinctively learned to consume the Force feeding on the Jedi Masters she went in search of, but since canonically she followed the light, the Exile would not know such a technique&mdash;yet she bore the same sort of hunger due to her innate Force bonding ability and severed connection to the Force, and she grew stronger the more connections she formed during her journeys, causing the Masters to believe her the true threat behind what had befallen the Jedi.

Appearances

 * Tales of the Jedi: The Sith War
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
 * Star Wars: Epic Duels
 * Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided
 * Dark Empire
 * Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
 * Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

Notes and references
Macht-Entzug