The History of the Sith, part 2

Stardate 11-19-06

Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate.
Hatred leads to power.
Power leads to victory.
Let your anger flow through you.
Your hate will make you strong.
True power is only achieved through
testing the limits of one's anger,
passing through unscathed.
Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable.
The dark side of the Force
offers unimaginable power.
The dark side is stronger then the light.
The weak deserve their fate.
-tenets of Sith philosophy

At the end of my first, and most excellent post on the Sith, we learned that Darth Bane and the Sith had evolved into a new enemy for the Jedi. Darth Bane took his apprentice, Darth Seer, to Coruscant where they used special Sith powers to hide themselves from the Jedi Council. Darth Bane died of old age and his apprentice, Darth Seer took up the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith. He formalized and established the Code for the Sith Order, which required that every new Sith apprentice had to construct his own red-bladed light saber, every Sith would now take on the title of "Darth," which means, "Shadow Warrior," and the Sith Rule of Two would strictly be enforced. Darth Seer continued to train his apprentice, Darth Mongerer, on Coruscant until he died of old age. Darth Mongerer faithfully continued the Order of the Sith, but was discovered by a Jedi. He was beheaded by the Jedi in a duel, but hid from him the fact that he was a Sith. His apprentice succeded him as Sith Master.

Darth Plagueis the Wise
Some of you may recall a conversation from Episode III that Grand Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious had with the young Jedi, Anakin Skywalker about a Sith Master who could control the midi-chlorians themselves, and through that, create and preserve life itself. Plagueis was a Jedi who discovered the Sith on Coruscant, and tracked them down. He found Darth Imperious and forced him to teach him the ways of the Sith. Plagueis was able to force Imperious to take him on as an apprentice because Plagueis had discovered a kyber crystal. A kyber crystal is a crystal that is forged with, and contains the dark powers of the Force. It is said that a kyber crystal will greatly boost the dark powers of those who wield it. Imperious accepted him as an apprentice, but had planned in his mind that he would slay him while they were training. Plagueis was too powerful and after they finished training, Darth Plagueis sliced of Imperious' arms and then sliced him in half from head to hip.

Soon afterwards, Darth Plagueis apprenticed a young boy from Naboo named Dantius Palpatine. Plagueis payed Palpatine's patents a large sum of money to not allow Palpatine to be taken by the Jedi for training. Palpatine was soon named, Darth Sidious. By means of his kyber crystal, his knowledge of dark Sith magic, and his Jedi training, Darth Plagueis did indeed discover a way to tranfer the spirit of an old body into a clone by manipulating the midichlorians. Before he could do so, Plagueis was murdered in his sleep by young Darth Sidious. Plagueis never even saw it coming.

Palpatine continued to use the dark side of the force to block the Jedi Council of his true identity. He soon became a powerful senator and used his genious to slowy plot the demise of the Jedi. As Darth Sidious, he took on Darth Maul as his next apprentice, and as Palpatine, he took the first step to gain complete dominance of the Galactic Senate. To do this, Darth Sidious approached the Trade Federation and persuaded them to blockade the planet of Naboo. Outraged, the Galactic Sentate sent two Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, to negociate with the Trade Federation. The Jedi were ambushed by droids, but easily escaped. Around the same time, the Trade Federation's droid army attacked and captured Queen Amidala. The two Jedi rescued her, escaped, but soon had to land on the planet Tatooine. While there they stumbled upon the Sith'ari, Anakin Skywalker, a child with an off the chart midichlorian levels, and who was born of a virgin mother. Qui-Gon believed him to be the Jedi Chosen One, and took him with them back to Coruscant. Back at Coruscant, Queen Amidala appeared before the Galactic Senate to plead her case. Palpatine represented Naboo in the Senate and assisted Amidala in the Senate proceedings. Outraged that no army had been sent to protect her people on Naboo, Amidala called for a Senate no-confidence vote for Supreme Chancellor Valorum. Amidala and the Jedi retuned to Naboo and with the Gungans, fought and defeated the Trade Federation's droid army. Their victory, however, came with a crushing blow. Before being sliced in half by young Kenobi, Darth Maul killed Qui-Gon Gin in a brutal light saber duel. Moments before his death, Qui-Gon pleaded with Kenobi to take Anakin on as his padawan. Palpatine's devious plans has worked; with defeat of the Trade Federation, Senator Palpatine was named the new Supreme Chancellor.

Soon after Palpatine became the Supreme Chancellor, he secretly sent Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas to the planet Kamino and commanded him to create a clone army. Sifo-Dyas was a friend of Jedi Master Count Dooku who shared the same discontent with what they believed to be a corrupt Senate. Dooku, who was chosen by Sidious to be his new Sith apprentice was told by Sidious that he had secretly sent Dyas to create this clone army. Sidious commanded Dooku, now Darth Tyranus, to kill Dyas and erase Kamino from the Jedi archives before he left the Jedi Council.

10 years later, Dooku/Tyranus emerged as the leader of the Seperatist Movement. Dooku traveled from system to system in search of those who also felt that they were serving a corrupt Senate. As a the number of systems to suceed from the Republic began to rise, concern grew in the Republic of a possible civil war. Because of their fear of a civil war, the Senate created the Military Creation Act, giving its authority to create a huge army. Up until this moment, it had been the job of the Jedi to police and protect the Republic.

Senator Amidala strongly apposed the Military Creation Act. Because of this, there had been many assaination attempts on her life. The Jedi Council commanded Obi-Wan and Anakin to protect her. After one such attempt, Obi-Wan followed the bounty hunter, Jango Fett to Kamino, where he discovered the secret clone army. At the same time, Anakin was sent on his first solo mission with Amidala back to Naboo. On Naboo, Anakins' forbiden love for Amidala continued to grow.

Although Dooku/Tyranus was his Sith apprentice, Tyranus was simply a pawn in Sidious' plan to destroy the Jedi. Sidious used him to create the clone army and to lead the Seperatist movement. Because of their fear in the movement, the Senate voted and gave Supreme Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers, which gave him total dictorial control over the Senate. Palpatines first act was to activate the clone army and crush the rebellion. This started the Clone Wars, which raged on for months; both sides won and lost battles and sustained heavy casualties.

Towards the end of the war, the Seperatist army, now lead by the cyborg General Grevious attacked the capital of the Republic, Coruscant and kidnapped Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. Palpatine staged his own kidnapping to draw out Anakin Skywalker, who in the process fought a bitter light saber duel with Count Dooku. Torn between his Jedi value of life and eliminating a very dangerous foe, Anakin sliced off the head of the disarmed Dooku.

Upon return to Coruscant with the Chancellor, Anakin meets his now wife, Padme Amidala and finds out that she is pregnant. Anakin's joy is mixed with fear because of recent dreams that he was having about Padme dying during childbirth.

The Jedi Council started to suspect that there was something wrong with Chancellor Palpatine, but only believed that a very powerful Sith had taken control of him. When Palpatine requested that the Anakin become his personal representative on the council, they readily accepted, but only because they believed that they could influence Anakin to spy on the Chancellor. Reluctantly, Anakin agreed to do so and soon found out that Palpatine was actually a Dark Lord of the Sith. Anakin rushed to Mace Windu to inform him of what he had found out. Windu and three others fromt he Jedi Council confronted Darth Sidious and engaged in a costly battle. Windu was about to kill Sidious when Anakin came to his aid and cut off Windu's hand. Unarmed, Darth Sidious attacked with a force bolt that led Windu to his demise. After this, Sidous was able to convice Anakin that the Jedi were power hungary and should be destroyed, and that the dark side of the Force was the only thing that could save his wife from death.

Anakin became Sidous' new apprentice and took on the name of Darth Vader. With the Jedi attempt on his life, the Chancellor transmitted Order 66, in which the clone army was commanded to kill all Jedi. Across the galaxy, Jedi were slaughtered by Clone troopers that turned on them. Vader went strait to the Jedi Temple and killed all younglings and Jedi that were there. Sidous then sent Vader to kill the remaining leaders of the Seperatists. He was met there by Obi-Wan. Vader and Obi-Wan dueled on the molten planet of Mustafar, but Vader was young and unlearned in the ways of the dark side, and Obi-Wan was able to overtake him. Vader was chopped up and then slipped into the lava. He lost most of his limbs and was burnt to a crisp. Not long after Obi-Wan's departure, Vader was found by Sidous and was repaired with numerous mechanical replacement parts and the infamous black Darth Vader suit was created.

Over the years, Vader and Sidious continued to hunt down and slaughter the remaining Jedi, but was the prophesy of the Sith'ari fufilled? Anakin had faught to bring down the dark side, but then turned and became a Dark Lord of the Sith. After that he wiped out almost all the Jedi; all except for Obi-Wan and Yoda who survived in hiding. With Yoda and Obi-Wan on the light side, and Sidious and Vader on the dark side, a balance was brought to the force, and the prophesy of the Sith'ari was indeed fufilled.