Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/Week 42, 2012/1

The Darkstaff was a powerful, sentient Sith artifact that was one of the most dangerous objects in the galaxy. The staff was created by a member of the Sith Order thousands of years before the Clone Wars, and it was later transported to the planet Oblis, in the Cularin system, where it fell into the hands of the Oblee species. The staff began to manipulate the Oblee; it summoned a shadow creature, a type of energy-based being that fed on emotions, to the atmosphere of Oblis, and influenced the Oblee into viewing the creature as a threat. The Oblee were determined to use the Darkstaff to power a weapon that would force the shadow creature away from their world, but when they activated the machine, the Darkstaff used the power that it absorbed to destroy Oblis. The remnants of the planet eventually settled to form the Cularin system asteroid belt, and the Darkstaff came to be located within the asteroid I-9. Years afterward, the Sith Lord Darth Rivan was drawn to the Cularin system by the Darkstaff's power, and he sought to gain control of the artifact. During a pivotal battle against the forces of the Jedi Order, Rivan gained possession of the staff and it generated a hyperspace wormhole that transported him hundreds of years into the future, to one of the battles of the Ruusan campaign.

In about 31 BBY, the Force-sensitive criminal Len Markus traveled to I-9 and seized the Darkstaff for himself. However, as Markus departed from the asteroid belt with the artifact, a kilometers-long bolt of Force lightning was fired from Darth Rivan's fortress on the planet Almas, which struck the Darkstaff and created a time vortex that transported the Cularin system ten years into the future. The lightning bolt damaged the staff, so Markus made a deal with the slaver Phylus Mon whereby Mon would repair the artifact. Mon took the staff back to the Cularin system, where the artifact regained some of its strength by feeding on several Force essences that Mon had trapped inside a crystal pyramid. However, the Heroes of Cularin, a group of freelance agents that operated in the Cularin system, boarded Mon's starship and shattered the pyramid before the Darkstaff could fully repair itself.

The Darkstaff returned to Len Markus, who aided the artifact in pursuing its new goal: the destruction of the Cularin system. The staff planned to consume the Force essence of the Eye of the Sun, a Jedi-created artifact that was concealed on the planet Cularin, then use the power that it gained from the Eye to lay waste to the system. After learning the location of the Eye, Markus took the Darkstaff to the ch'hala Heart Tree, where the Jedi artifact was hidden. However, he was confronted by the Heroes of Cularin, and in the ensuing battle, one of the agents channeled the light side of the Force into the Darkstaff and obliterated the Sith artifact, ending the threat that the staff posed to Cularin.