Darth Bane/Legends

"I am the Dark Lord who will restore the Sith to glory. They call me Bane."

- Darth Bane

Darth Bane, born under the name of Dessel on Apatros, was one of the most pivotal Dark Lords of the Sith.

By the time of the Seventh Battle of Ruusan, a thousand years before the Battle of Yavin, Bane was one of the last of the legitimate Sith Lords and, as the only survivor of the battle, reinvented the order after its destruction.

Bane's revolution included the founding of the Rule of Two, a stricture that, in limiting the number of Sith and eliminating the infighting plaguing the order, would allow Bane's eventual successor, Darth Sidious, to finally triumph over the Jedi and the Galactic Republic.

Early life
Born on Apatros to the miner Hurst, Dessel was often bullied by his father and the other miners. Blaming his son for his wife's death, Hurst took to calling him "Bane" out of spite. The young man learned to fend for himself, growing stronger and gaining a penchant for violence. Even at this young age, he felt the calls of the Force and the dark side, though he did not recognize their source.

Bane would go on to train in the ways of the Force under the Sith Lord Qordis, but never completed his formal training. Bane believed he had the right to rule, and had little patience for traditional titles and hierarchies. He had a religious, even messianic view of the Force, a view which stood in stark contrast to the power-oriented creed of the time. In Bane's mind, only he could guide the Sith to their true destiny.

New Sith Wars
As such Bane often clashed with his colleagues in the Brotherhood of Darkness, particularly the weak-willed Lord Kaan, whom Bane despised, and considered a cruel coward. In retaliation, Kaan had Bane poisoned by Githany, and left him to die on the field of battle.

But Bane was stronger than Kaan thought, and fought off the effects of the poison long enough to find a cure. Bane had to use coercion to get the antidote from the maker, as he knew of and disliked Bane's history and Sith affiliation. Personal torture on the man was useless, so Bane used the Force to levitate the druid's daughter over the boiling pot. The druid yielded. Finally cured, he returned to Ruusan to confront Kaan and his army. Although Kaan denied poisoning him, Bane commended his rival on "the one brave decision of his life". As he observed the preparations for battle, he mocked his colleagues for thinking like "dirt generals" rather than Sith Lords and urged them to use the full power of the dark side.

Shocked by Darth Bane's return, Kaan agreed to follow Bane's instructions to defeat the Jedi through the power of the dark side. Before the Sixth Battle of Ruusan, the Sith joined together in meditation&mdash;and Darth Bane unleashed a wave of destruction upon the unsuspecting Jedi. Sensing the smothering darkness in Bane's heart, however, the other Sith Lords broke the circle, intending to finish off the Jedi with more conventional tactics.

It was not long after that event that Bane came across a young girl called Zannah; she had been brought to Ruusan by the Jedi and had formed a friendship with a bouncer. When Zannah's friend was killed mistakenly, anger drew her to kill using the Force. Bane thought he had found his first apprentice in this girl and took her under his wing. Meanwhile, Kaan, driven mad by the glimpse he had received of the "true" power of the Force, unleashed a thought bomb, destroying almost every single Jedi and Sith on Ruusan.

Bane survived along with Zannah and they stumbled across her cousin Darovit, who tried to stop Bane. Zannah caused Darovit's hand to explode, and Bane questioned her on why she allowed him to live; she replied that she was still young. As a final test, Bane told Zannah to find her own way off Ruusan. They would meet on Onderon, and then, and only then, would she be worthy of joining the Sith.

After Ruusan
After leaving Ruusan, Bane headed for Onderon in his ship, Valcyn. He hoped to learn secrets from deep inside the tomb of the ancient Sith Lord Freedon Nadd, but his past returned to haunt him. The ghostly spirit of his fomer mentor, Lord Qordis, chided him for abandoning the Brotherhood. Bane insisted that he was only furthering the Sith cause, but Qordis's spirit created a malfunction in the starship controls and Bane plummeted down into the forest of the beast-infested moon of Dxun.

Bane survived the crash, but his ship was destroyed beyond hope of repair. The jungle itself seemed intent on stopping Bane, but he pushed on nonetheless. He was attacked by beasts and monsters, and cried out in frustration.



In reply, surprisingly, the spirit of Lord Kaan appeared to him, offering help. Though in life they had loathed one another, Bane followed Kaan's ghostly silhouette and eventually found himself at the ruined crypt of Freedon Nadd's tomb. He could feel the dark side in the tomb, and knew he would find what he was looking for here. Kaan lead him to a Sith holocron, where he was attacked by barnacle-like creatures called orbalisks. They attached themselves to Bane's body, causing tremendous pain as they became a part of him.

After spending days studying from the holocron, Bane exited the tomb with a new vision: not only would there be just two Lords at a time, but the armies and minions the Sith had once relied on would be done away with too; slowly and in secrecy the Sith would erode the Republic until the time was right for them to reveal themselves to the Jedi once more.

Taming a flying beast using the powers of the dark side, he mounted it like the fabled Beast Riders and rode towards the edge of the atmosphere, where he planned to "nudge" the entire moon closer to its planet, Onderon, so he could cross to the inhabited world to find his apprentice.

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.

Behind the scenes
The character of Darth Bane, and his creation of the Rule of Two, were created by George Lucas as part of his backstory of the Sith he developed for the prequel trilogy. Bane's history and other details were elaborated upon by further expanded universe writers, especially Kevin J. Anderson, Darko Macan, and Drew Karpyshyn.

Appearances

 * Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, A Novel of the Old Republic
 * Jedi vs. Sith
 * Bane of the Sith
 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace novelization
 * Labyrinth of Evil
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith novelization
 * Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader