Darth Ruin

Darth Ruin (born as Phanius) was an Umbaran Dark Lord of the Sith who lived over twenty centuries before the Battle of Yavin.

An intelligent and charismatic renegade Jedi Master, Phanius was known for the disturbing tone of his philosophy, which included elements of moral relavitism and solipsism, possibly echoing certain aspects of the much later Potentium.

Phanius abandoned his oath and left the order to pursue prohibited teachings, becoming one of the first to be known as the Lost Twenty and subsequently the founder of the New Sith Empire in an event known as the Fourth Great Schism. Fifty Jedi Knights soon followed him and pledged themselves to his new Sith order.

The newly rechristened Darth Ruin and his followers initiated the New Sith Wars against the Jedi, but Ruin's Sith Order quickly disintegrated. Ruin was single-minded and his ambitions led to hatred and betrayal by his followers, who killed him.

Behind the scenes

 * The character of Darth Ruin was created by George Lucas as part of the backstory for the prequel trilogy. In Lucas' notes, Ruin is an unnamed Jedi Knight who fell to the dark side with fifty followers 2000 years prior to the movies, founding the Sith. Since the Sith have been well established in other c-canon works for thousands of years, this 'foundation' was degraded to be only a schism, after three previous ones. All other information on him was created by Abel G. Peña.
 * According to Peña, due to the Jedi placing Phanius in the Lost Twenty, they probably did not know his identity of Darth Ruin.
 * When naming him, Peña also considered the names Reaper, Fatalis, Necro, Mortalis, Eradicus, and Execute. He also considered giving him a number of "Sithly" professions such as necromancer, sorcerer, warlock, and archmage.
 * The name Phanius is actually a truncated form of the name Epiphanius, suggesting Ruin's explosive insights.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace novelization