Sith Emperor's ritual

"But the ritual was not confined to the doomed Sith Lords. They were but the eye of the storm; the center of a vortex that spread across the entire planet. Every man, woman, and child on Nathema died that day. Every beast, bird, and fish; all the insects and plants; every living being touched by the Force was consumed. When the ritual ended, Nathema was no longer a world. It was a husk sucked dry. Lord Vitiate sacrificed millions, stealing their life force to make himself immortal. Their deaths also made him stronger than any Sith who had come before, and he ceased to be known as Lord Vitiate. On that day, the Emperor was truly born."

- Darth Nyriss

During the Great Hyperspace War, the Sith Lord Vitiate developed a ritual of Sith magic that allowed him to strip the Force itself from the planet Nathema at the expense of every living thing on the world. Using the strength of eight thousand Sith Lords, Vitiate became immortal and gained immense strength in the Force, and as the Sith Emperor of the reconstituted Sith Empire, he later developed an artificial version of the ritual by combining it with Sith alchemy and cybernetics. With the ritual, the Emperor was able to grant immortality to his favored servants, and he intended to use the ritual on a galactic scale in order to consume all life in the galaxy and thereby ensure that he would never be defeated. However, the Jedi Knight known as the Hero of Tython prevented the Emperor's agents from bringing about the sacrifice of thousands of lives that was necessary to start the ritual.

Description
"He dominated their minds, crushed their resistance. He turned them into slaves to his will, forcing them to participate in the most complex ritual of Sith sorcery ever attempted. Calling on the dark side, Lord Vitiate devoured them. He fed on their power, absorbing it into himself, utterly obliterating all traces of his victims."

- Darth Nyriss

The ritual developed by the Sith Lord Vitiate was a complex piece of Sith magic that required an immense amount of strength and power in the dark side of the Force to complete. When he first orchestrated the ritual, Vitiate drew upon the strength of eight thousand other Sith Lords, and it took ten days to complete in its entirety. The ritual literally stripped the Force from the entire planet of Nathema, killing millions of people instantly and transferring their life force and power into Vitiate. The Sith magic also destroyed almost all technology on the planet, overloading the circuits of droids and wiping out their memory cores. The ritual also leeched color, sound, and heat from reality itself, leaving Nathema a brown, barren and lifeless planet upon which the absence of the Force could cause anything alive on its surface&mdash;especially Force-sensitives&mdash;to die if they stayed there long enough. The Sith Emperor, as Vitiate became known, was later able to perform the ritual on his own with his incredible strength in the Force, though he required a sacrifice&mdash;the simultaneous deaths of thousands&mdash;in order to begin the Sith magic.

The Emperor later developed an artificial form of the ritual by merging it with Sith alchemy and biomechanical enhancements. The artificial ritual involved the insertion of dozens of wires and IV tubes into the subject's body, which connected the individual to a series of generators and vats filled with bubbling green liquid. As the subject opened themselves to the dark side, the Emperor and his machines stripped away their mortality over the course of a few minutes, leaving the recipient in constant pain for the rest of their existence. Both the original and artificial versions of the ritual left the subjects unable to appreciate their physical senses to the degree that others did, as they sacrificed their ability to feel emotions in return for immortality.

Applications
"The darkness will consume all it touches. Stars will burn black, ashes raining on lifeless worlds. Everything ends."

- The ghost of Meetra Surik

As a result of the ritual of Sith magic, Vitiate became immortal and gained immense strength in the Force. After centuries of further study into the dark side, the Sith Emperor&mdash;as Vitiate became known&mdash;developed the strength to repeat the ritual on his own, and he intended to magnify its effects on a galactic scale. If successful, the ritual would have consumed the life of every living thing in the galaxy, and the Emperor would have absorbed it to become like a god. The Emperor utilized the artificial ritual to grant immortality to a few select servants, including the twelve Servants, or members, of the secretive organization known as the Emperor's Hand. Another who received immortality through the ritual was the Sith Lord Scourge, who was appointed the Emperor's Wrath&mdash;the Sith ruler's personal enforcer&mdash;for his loyalty.

Users
"A thousand years ago, the Emperor tricked an entire Sith world into aiding a dark ritual. He promised great power. Only for himself, of course. The ritual consumed every living thing on the planet. He absorbed those life essences through the Force."

- Lord Scourge

The only known user of the immortality ritual was the Sith Emperor, a Sith Lord originally known as Vitiate. In 4,999 BBY, a year after the Sith Empire's defeat in the Great Hyperspace War against the Galactic Republic, Vitiate summoned the remaining Sith Lords of the Empire to his homeworld of Nathema. There, he dominated the minds of the eight thousand Sith who answered his call and forced them to participate in the ritual, conferring immense power and immortality upon himself at the expense of every living thing on the world. The newly-empowered Sith Emperor blamed the ritual's effects on the Jedi who had destroyed the Empire in the Great Hyperspace War, and he gathered the survivors of the Empire before leading them on a twenty-year exodus from the Sith Worlds. Not long after he reconstituted the Empire on Dromund Kaas in 4,980 BBY, the Emperor gathered twelve Sith purebloods and performed the artificial version of the ritual upon them, granting them immortality and appointing them as the Servants of the Emperor's Hand, though during the ritual he bound their life forces to his own so that he could draw on their strength to sustain him.

In 3,950 BBY, almost a thousand years later, the Emperor decided to reward the Sith Lord Scourge with immortality after he betrayed the Jedi Masters Revan and Meetra Surik by killing Surik during the Jedi's attempt to kill the Emperor. The Emperor performed the ritual in the depths of the Imperial Citadel on Dromund Kaas, and made it clear to his new Wrath that the pain caused by the ritual would never pass. As a result of Revan and Surik's attack, the Emperor became determined to ensure his survival at the expense of the entire galaxy, and he made the necessary preparations for repeating the ritual on a galactic scale. Three centuries later, during the renewed war between the Republic and his Empire, the Emperor ordered his agents to cause the necessary sacrifice of thousands of deaths, though their efforts were foiled by the Jedi Knight known as the Hero of Tython.

Behind the scenes
The Sith Emperor's ritual was first introduced in Drew Karpyshyn's 2011 novel Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan, and it is a major plot point in Act III of the Jedi Knight class storyline in the video game Star Wars: The Old Republic. It received further mentions in the reference guides The Journal of Master Gnost-Dural, The Essential Reader's Companion, and Star Wars: The Old Republic Encyclopedia.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan
 * Star Wars: The Old Republic