Sith battlelord

"These warriors, the Sith Battlelords, were fearsome and hardy, having demonstrated a willingness to die for the Sith in an attempt to curry favor and enhance their own power."

- The Jedi publication Speculations on Tactics of the Sith

The Sith battlelords, also known as Battlelords, were a class of warrior who served the Sith Lord Darth Rivan during the New Sith Wars. Sith battlelords were leaders within Rivan's armies and through a series of complex rituals involving the application of Sith magic, they were bonded to the troops they commanded via the Force. The use of Sith battlelords reduced desertion rates within the Sith armies and for a time seemed likely to turn the tide of the New Sith Wars in the favor of the Sith. However, Rivan's battlelord forces were annihilated by a Force storm generated by an artifact known as the Darkstaff, and the Sith ultimately abandoned the practice of creating battlelords.

Over time, the precise details of how to create Sith battlelords was lost, and during the Clone Wars, the slaver Phylus Mon and the Dark Jedi Karae Nalvas sought to rediscover the knowledge of battlelord creation. The pair traveled to Rivan's fortress on the planet Almas and discovered a secret chamber within the facility, where they found a tome that detailed the stages of the battlelord rituals. However, their attempts at carrying out the rituals were unsuccessful.

Organization and creation
"There's a long, drawn-out ritual. All sorts of Sith "magic" is involved, and I don't want to know exactly what happens. But at the end, the person who's supposed to become a battlelord is laid down and cut open. Then he bleeds, and while he's bleeding, his troops pass by and track through his blood."

- A slicer, on the rituals to create Sith battlelords

Sith battlelords were a class of warriors who served within the armies of the Sith Lord Darth Rivan during the time of the New Sith Wars. Chosen from the ranks of Rivan's forces, battlelords served as the leaders of Sith regiments that were deployed against members of the Jedi Order. Individuals chosen to become Sith battlelords would undergo a series of complex rituals that bonded them to their troops, via the Force. The rituals took place at sites strong in the dark side of the Force, and according to most reports, would take place inside a structure, in an altar room. The rituals drew upon the dark side and used Sith magic, inflicting pain upon the prospective battlelord and bringing them to the verge of death. Some did not survive the ceremony. According to the Jedi publication Speculations on Tactics of the Sith, some people claimed that aspiring battlelords were drained of all their blood, although the publication also noted that there was no exact consensus on how individuals were brought to a near death condition.

Following performance of the rituals, some form of interaction between the unconscious leader and their followers was required to complete the leader's transformation into a Sith battlelord. Followers normally paraded past the lifeless body of their leader for about an hour, passing through the leader's blood. The leader's condition had to then stabilize without an application of the Force or medical intervention, and if the leader survived, they were returned to full health. With the process complete, a Force bond was forged between the leader and their subordinates which signified the leader's successful transformation into a Sith battlelord.

History
"The advent of the battlelords threatened for a time to further the tide of the Sith wars in the favor of the dark side."

- The Jedi publication Speculations on Tactics of the Sith

The creation of Sith battlelords was pioneered by the Sith Lord Darth Rivan during the New Sith Wars in response to the high desertion rates among the Sith armies, which reduced the coordination of military forces and posed a threat to the success of the Sith war effort. Rivan eventually perfected the process for creating battlelords, and recorded the details of the ritual inside a secret chamber in his Sith fortress on the planet Almas. Information on the nature of the bond between Sith battlelords and their subordinates was also recorded in inscriptions on the walls of various Sith temples.

The Sith were initially startled by the effects of Sith battlelords on the battlefield, because the bonded leaders brought a much greater degree of cohesion to the Sith armies than had been expected. A Sith warrior bonded to the Sith battlelord Farh j'Hien deserted the Sith forces and was captured by the Jedi Master Kei Loo Bross. The Jedi observed how the warrior was in pain due to his separation from j'Hien, as a result of the Force bond between j'Hien and the warrior. In a transcript, Bross noted how the battlelords proved to be an effective tool for the Sith. For a time, the usage of them threatened to turn the tide of the New Sith Wars in the favor of the Sith. However, Rivan was betrayed by his apprentice before he could build a full army of battlelords, and when Rivan gained possession of a dark side artifact known as the Darkstaff, it created a Force storm that wiped out his entire battlelord force and transported him into the future.

The Jedi soon realized that killing a battlelord released the warriors bonded to the leader, who would often then flee, so the Jedi began specifically targeting Sith battlelords. As a result, Sith battlelords no longer met their required purpose, and the Sith discontinued their usage. Over time, the precise details on how to create Sith battlelords were lost and only vague references to the battlelords came to remain in historical records. At some point, a section devoted to the subject of Sith battlelords was included in the Jedi publication Speculations on Tactics of the Sith.

During the time of the Clone Wars, the Human Len Markus gave the Darkstaff to the Chevin slaver Phylus Mon so that Mon could repair the artifact, which had became damaged when Markus seized it from the Cularin system asteroid belt. To carry out his task, Mon traveled to the Cularin system, where Almas was located, and planned to recover knowledge on the creation Sith battlelords from Rivan's fortress. The Darkstaff desired the Force essences of sentient beings. Mon believed that the performance of the battlelord rituals could repair the artifact, because the Force essences of the involved individuals were manipulated by the creation rituals. In addition, Mon hoped to be able to use the techniques to bond armies of slaves to himself or others.

Mon allied himself with the Dark Jedi Karae Nalvas, who also wanted to learn the secrets of Sith battlelord creation. However, the Chevin secretly planned to murder Nalvas once the Dark Jedi had became a battlelord, to find out what would happen when such a being was killed. Mon and Nalvas entered the Almas Sith fortress and accessed the facility's battlelord chamber, where they discovered a tome that described how to carry out the battlelord rituals. Using their newly discovered knowledge, the pair attempted to carry out the battlelord rituals, planning to bind the slaves Gorak, Kaarror, Nalz and Yerj, and the captured Jedi Constanten and Valiri, to Mon. However, the ceremony was unsuccessful due to the presence of the Darkstaff, and instead resulted in the Force essences of Nalvas, the slaves and the two Jedi being ripped from their bodies.

A some point after that incident, a slicer posted a log on one of the planet Cularin's HoloNet nodes, on the subject of Sith battlelords. In the log, the slicer detailed how battlelords were created, and speculated that Rivan might have specifically constructed the Almas Sith fortress to use as a facility for testing and refining the creation of battlelords. Len Markus regained possession of the Darkstaff following Mon's repair attempt and by c. 19 BBY, the Darkstaff had imbued Markus with some of the powers of a Sith battlelord, creating a Force bond between Markus and his Gamorrean bodyguard Kluuus.

Characteristics
"I guess Rivan designed these battlelords. The basic idea was to eliminate insubordination as an option for soldiers and make it difficult for someone who's in charge of soldiers to mistreat them."

- A slicer, on the subject of Sith battlelords

Sith battlelords were tough, imposing individuals, who sought to increase their own personal power by attempting to gain favor with their Sith leaders, and were willing to die in the process. They also possessed a maniacal bloodrage that drove them to push their troops to their limits. Battlelords gained thickened skin as a result of their bonding rituals, increasing their defensive capabilities. The majority of battlelords were males.

The battlelord rituals created a near-physical bond between them and their troops, and bonded warriors were compelled to do anything that a battlelord commanded, or else be left behind. Depending upon the strength of the ritual used to connect them together, bonded soldiers could go between 5 and 15 kilometers from their battlelord. Any troops who strayed beyond that distance would experience intense abdominal pain and a throbbing headache for 12 hours, and eventually death, unless they returned to close proximity of their battlelord. Unless certain magics were undone, separation of any member of regiment from the rest also led to intense physical pain being felt by all other members of the regiment, and caused the Sith battlelord to have visions of their own destruction. As a result, bonded Sith armies dealt with deserters harshly, and captured deserters were presented to the battlords for punishment.

If bonded soldiers tried to assault the Sith battlelord to which they were linked, the attackers would become beset with pain, and would eventually die. Furthermore, if warriors succeeded in causing their battlelord master to draw blood, the battlelord would be unaffected by the damage and one of the bonded troopers would be hurt instead. In addition, if a Sith battlelord fell under attack from an opponent to which it was not bonded, the battlelord could sometimes transfer any physical wounds it received to any bonded soldiers that were located within 30 meters of the battlelord. A battlelord could also enhace its own attacks by summoning power from bonded soldiers within a 30 meter proximity, which had the effect of causing the bonded soldiers to become dazed. The death of a Sith battlelord released the warriors that were bonded to the lord. The bond between a battlelord and its followers could also be severed by an application of the light side power Force Light.

Behind the scenes
The Sith battlelords were created by Morrie Mullins and were first mentioned in A Mon Alone, a role-playing adventure that formed part of the Living Force campaign. They later featured in the Wizards.com article Sith Battlelords, and were mentioned in the role-playing scenarios The Eye and Echoes of the Jedi.

A Mon Alone, Sith Battlelords and Echoes of the Jedi all give differing reasons for why the Sith discontinued the use of Sith battlelords. A Mon Alone claims that it was because the Jedi began specifically targeting battlelords when in battle against the Sith, while Sith Battlelords claims that Rivan was betrayed by his apprentice before he could create an army of battlelords, and Echoes of the Jedi claims that Rivan's battlelord army was destroyed by a Force storm. This article tries to integrate the three above explanations. There is also disagreement among the sources regarding the appropriate capitalization of the Sith battlelords' name. A Mon Alone refers to them as "Sith Battlelords", while the Sith Battlelords article and The Eye refer them as "Sith battlelords" and Echoes of the Jedi merely calls them "Battlelords". This article uses the capitalization from Sith Battlelords and The Eye, because they were published after A Mon Alone was.