[NRW] The King of the Sith

A little thing I made for the National Retcon Week. Maybe it doesn't really qualify as a retcon, it's more of a background story for a minor character, but anyway:

The Tales of the Jedi Companion (TotJC) is a rpg-book covering the TotJ comics and adding some background info and stats. It's written as beeing a holocron recording by Jedi Master Ood Bnar and contains many things in desperate need of retconing...
According to this book, the Sith have been around for more than a hundred thousand years. Obviously Bnar for some reason didn't know the truth, that the Sith were the outcasts from the Great Shism 20.000 years before his time. This belief of course cause other troubles with the placing of other events and characters on the timeline.
Bnar also tells a story about the Onderon minister of state, Novar, showing a Sith holocron to some of his adepts. This holocron was given to him by queen Amanoa and was most likely brought to the planet by Freedon Nadd himself. The gatekeeper of the holocron is the "Sith warrior-king" Adas. He is supposed to have lived two dozen millennia earlier and conquerd and subjugated his homeworld. It is also said that his presence feels much more real than other holocrons and that he is reluctant to give away information, indicating that he has hidden part of his soul in the holocron.
Now, the age given is clearly wrong. There were no Sith 28.000 BBY. But it doesn't say were the date came from. If Adas said so himself, or somebody tried to meassure the age of holocron, there is a serious chance that they simply got it a few thousand years wrong. Bnar wouldn't have seen any reason to doubt the dating since he beleived that the Sith had been around for far longer.
But even a few thousand years off, Adas would still be one of the oldest Sith. And why does he carry the title "King"? What does it meen that he conqured his homeworld?

Now, it's RETCON TIME!

Adas was the son of Xendor and Arden Lyn. He was kept safe from the war and later followed his caretakers into exile. Looking for a new world to settle, the Dark Jedi sent out scouts in different directions, trusting the Force to guide them. One of these scouts found Korriban and the Sith people. He showed them the power of the Dark Side, and they worshipped him like a god.
At the time when the other Dark Jedi arrived, they found the Dark Lord of the Sith, as he called himself, supported by millions of savage Siths. They decided that fighting was not preferable, and accepted him as their ruler.
But some of the new Sith Lords were not happy about having a former scout as their new leader. Adas were furious about it. He, the son of the creator of the Dark Jedi, should be their king. It was his birthright!
After many years, and bloody battles, this became true. King Adas killed the Dark Lord himself and claimed the throne. He would rule the Sith for almost a hundred years, leaving many heirs to take his place when he finally died. It would seem he was poisoned, probably by his second son who killed his older brother the same night.
That is the problem with Sith. They can never stand the fact that somebody else is mightier than themselves. The royal line was all but straight. Sometimes a whole branch of the family would be exterminated at the same time, sometimes there would be several kings suceeding each other during one day. Somehow the reign of the kings lasted for almost a millennia. But then came the day when nobody could be found that could claim the empty throne. The Dark Lord, the king's first advisor and president of the Council of the Lords, proclaimed himself supreme ruler of the Sith in the king's place. And that way it would remain for eighteen thounsand years...

There it is, retconing the timeline from TotJC, adding to the Sith history and explaining "King" Adas. Also fitting the statement that one dark Jedi found the Sith versus the fact that all (or almost all) of the exiled Dark Jedi ended up on Korriban...

Thoughts?



/Charlii

 

The Jedi are over a hundred thousand years old is my general assumption

;-)

 

The Jedi Order was founded around the time the Republic was, c25000 BBY.

 

According to this book, the Sith have been around for more than a hundred thousand years.

Wasn't he reffering to the Sith species as whole, and not the order begun by renegade dark jedi?

 

So you say, I find that arguement specious.

The idea of the Republic being as old as the Jedi leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

it's not too unlikely...
given that force-sensitivity is so rare, it might not be until the advent of space travel that enough force-sensitives get together to form the jedi order... and with that level of space travel, it's not unlikely that there wouldn't be some attempt to make some sort of galactic government.

most likely, the jedi order became an outgrowth of some other religious group that recognized force-sensitivity and tried to train it... eventually that group became more and more focuses on finding force-sensitives and less interested in the non-force-users as members.

 

The creation of the Republic and the Jedi Order are well documented. But after the Dark Jedis left known space there is nothing known before the Great Hyperspace War, except for a few known Dark Lords and the mention of King Adas. That is the idea behind this retcon, to give the Sith Empire a more stable foundation...


/Charlii

 

Not just me; every official timeline I've seen has said that. And like JawaJames said, there are many reasons it could be so: the earlier groups band together once hyperdrive allows them to, they see in the Republic similar goals (preservation of peace across the galaxy), the Republic offers them resources, influence, and a means of galaxy-wide recruitment, etc...

 

I also think Bnar was referring to the Sith species. In that case, I don't see a need for a retcon.

 

Yes, the 100.000 years thing could be about the spieces, even if I find that statment a little odd in the context. But the problem with King Adas and his holocron still remains. I find it very unlikely that a pre-Great Shism Sith would have a holocron, or anything intresting to record in it...



/Charlii

 

For one thing, I always figured that the Sith species may have already discovered use of the Force before the Dark Jedi showed up. So then, it's really a question of how the Sith species had holocron technology. Perhaps they had a different technology for recording, and it was later transferred to a holocron.

 

It is known that the Sith had a naturaly strong Force connection and it is safe to assume that they had found out how to use it for simple tasks. Probably among some kind of shamans in their tribes. But they still viewed the Dark Jedi as Gods with magical powers. And on the topic of the holocron, Adas is it's gatekeeper. If his story was an old legend among the Sith that their new masters recorded, somebody else would have been the 'crons keeper and simply retell the tale to his audience. No, Adas must have existed after the Dark Jedi arrived to Korriban...


/Charlii

 

Very interesting idea! King Adas's timeframe was always something that perplexed me as well, and is yet another reason for me to get my hands on that pesky Tales of the Jedi Companion.

Your proposed connection between Adas and Xendor is an intriguing one, though I don't know how plausible the rest of your theory is. We already have two Dark Lords who we know fought in the First Great Schism before their exile: the guy in the Mandalorian/Royal Guard-esque red armor in the opening pages of The Golden Age of the Sith and Ajunta Pall. Since they both lived at the same time, the red guy's reign would have to be short enough already for Pall to be his immediate successor (though admittedly people did seem to be living a lot longer back then... even if they'd been decapitated... ).

Given what little we know about the three of them, is sandwiching Adas between the red guy and Ajunta Pall feasible?

That said, could Adas, in fact, be the red guy?

 

I guess the Red Guy could be retconed into Adas, Pall or Santa Claus whithout trouble...

Did Pall fight in the Schism? I missed that one, was it mentioned i KotoR? In that case, we could always make him the first Dark Lord that Adas killed according to my theory.


/Charlii

 

In one foul swoop, you've almost persuaded me to buy this TOTJ Handbook. With info like that . . .

The Sith were a race at the edge of the galaxy, conquered by the exiled Jedi renegades after a century of fighting. It's a play on the words, but the Sith living for 100,000yrs could be legit.

And yet, how did young Odan-Urr and his jelly master know about the Sith, if they were exiled and lost to starmaps, eh? That was never explained. The Sith Empire also knew about the Republic, too.

 

That the Sith Empire knew about the Republic is logical since they were banished from it...
But how did the Republic and the Jedi know about the Sith? There must have been some contact prior to the Great Hyperspace War. There is of course the possibility that the Sith were somehow involved in the Hundred-Year Darkness, mentioned in passing in Dark Lords of the Sith. In that case it was probably started by one or a few Lords that got lost and stumbled into the Republic.
I don't know if there's more about this conflict somewhere.



/Charlii