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Discussions Top 10 Favorite Sith (Movies + EU)

Discussion in 'EU Community' started by Darth Dreadwar, Feb 8, 2015.

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  1. Darth Dreadwar

    Darth Dreadwar Jedi Grand Master star 6

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    Jan 26, 2010
    So there's threads for Jedi and non-Force users, but a quick search reveals no equivalent for the Sith, at least not any time recently. So! Here goes...

    1. Darth Plagueis
    2. Darth Traya
    3. Darth Nihilus
    4. Exar Kun
    5. Freedon Nadd
    6. Darth Revan
    7. Palpatine
    8. Marka Ragnos
    9. Darth Vader
    10. Arkadia Calimondra
     
  2. Shadow Trooper

    Shadow Trooper Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 18, 2013
    1. Kriea/Darth Traya
    2. Darth Nihilus
    3. Darth Revan
    4. Darth Vader
    5. Count Dooku
    6. Darth Sion
    7. Emperor Palpatine
    8. Darth Malak
    9. Desann
    10. Naga Sadow
     
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  3. Darth Master Titus

    Darth Master Titus Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 10, 2014
    1. Darth Revan
    2. Darth Bane
    3. Darth Vader
    4. Darth Malgus
    5. Darth Maul
    6. Darth Sidious
    7. Count Dooku
    8. Exar Kun
    9. Naga Sadow
    10. Freedon Nadd
     
  4. JarJarAbrams

    JarJarAbrams Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 24, 2015
    10. Darth Revan
    9. Darth Maul's upper body
    8. Kreia
    7. Darth Bane
    6. Darth Maul's lower body
    5. Darth Plagueis
    4. Darth Supershadow
    3. Darth Vader
    2. Sheev
    1. Darth Darth Binks
     
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  5. Jordan1Kenobi

    Jordan1Kenobi SWC Jedi Draft Champion star 6 VIP - Game Winner

    Registered:
    Sep 30, 2012
    1. Darth Maul
    2. Darth Malgus
    3. Darth Revan
    4. Count Dooku
    5. The Inquisitor
    6. Darth Nihilus
    7. Darth Krayt
    8. Darth Vader
    9. Darth Plagueis
    10. Darth Bane
     
  6. Darth Master Titus

    Darth Master Titus Jedi Knight star 4

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    Dec 10, 2014
    Who exactly is the Inquisitor? I only know him from the Rebels animated show but I do not know anything about the guy or heard of him until Disney.
     
  7. Erkan12

    Erkan12 Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 27, 2013
    I am pretty sure the Inquisitor isn't a Sith.
     
  8. Darth Master Titus

    Darth Master Titus Jedi Knight star 4

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    Dec 10, 2014
    Poor Darth Maul
     
  9. Darth Master Titus

    Darth Master Titus Jedi Knight star 4

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    Dec 10, 2014
    I never understood how characters that weild a red lightsaber isn't necessarily considered a Sith. Especially after the Rule of Two where there can only be one master and one apprentice, but many Sith Lords down the line had other apprentices. For example, when Plaguiese was master Sidious had Maul as apprentice, or when Sidious was Dark Lord Dooku had Asajj Ventress as an apprentice. Isn't that defying the Rule of Two?
     
  10. Erkan12

    Erkan12 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 27, 2013
    Sith can use the Dark Jedi as a tool, but when the time comes, Master can also order to destroy that Dark Jedi, just like with Sidious and Dooku, Sidious ordered to death of Dark Jedi Ventress.



    Or there can be a rival Sith, just like with Darth Maul and his apprentice Savage.



    Producers of Rebels already said that Inquisitor isn't a Sith, so in this case this is more like Dooku and Ventress relationship. If Sidious decides, Vader would destroy Inquisitor.
     
  11. Darth Master Titus

    Darth Master Titus Jedi Knight star 4

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    Dec 10, 2014
    I see. But in that case, Dooku was merely a tool for Sidious' plan to make Anakin his apprentice, which I think was mention in the RoTS novel. So if that is the case, Dooku was only a dark Jedi and not a true Sith?
     
  12. Darth Dreadwar

    Darth Dreadwar Jedi Grand Master star 6

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    Jan 26, 2010
    Sith is a specific cult. They have their own well developed philosophy, and arcane knowledge for how to draw upon the dark side that is wholly unique to them, an inheritance from the original Sith - the Sith people of Korriban.

    You can wear black robes and wield a red lightsaber, but that does not equal adherence to Sith ideology. As Lord Tyranus said to Ventress, "A bold claim, but you are not Sith. You wear the trappings of the Sith, you fight like the Sith… but this can be imitated, however."

    For one, I believe there is a fundamental difference in their approach to the dark side. A Dark Jedi embraces rage and hatred to the degree that they become slaves to their passion; they are like burning fires in the Force, uncontrolled, destructive. A Sith is cold. They control their fear, as Dooku and Vader learned, and they unleash their anger and hatred only as weapons; they do not suppress emotion as the Jedi do, obviously, but they do control their emotions to an extent. They utilise their emotion as fuel, fuel for the exertion of imposing their will upon the Force, whereas a Dark Jedi is controlled by their emotions entirely. They are servants of the dark side, not masters of the dark side as the Sith are.

    On top of this fundamental difference, you then have the aforementioned wealth of knowledge and ideology the Sith have developed. A Dark Jedi may not know of nor give a crap about Sith philosophy; look at Set Harth, he was content to just drink fine wine and dine on exquisite meals and generally pursue a life of hedonism. And of course, no Dark Jedi will be able to use Sith sorcery, or alchemy; they're mostly limited to the standard repertoire of "Jedi tricks," only occasionally picking up crumbs of Sith techniques (e.g. Joruus C'Baoth's Force lightning, or Set Harth learning essence transfer).

    As for the Rule of Two... It's important to know that Sidious ignored it entirely, instead adhering to his own Rule of One. He still intended to restrict the number of Sith Lords to two, of course, hence Maul and Savage being rivals he needed to eliminate, but he had no problem teaching a multitude of dark side adepts some aspects of Sith knowledge (e.g. the Inquisitorius).
     
  13. Erkan12

    Erkan12 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 27, 2013
    There is also this ;
    [​IMG]


     
  14. Darth Master Titus

    Darth Master Titus Jedi Knight star 4

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    Dec 10, 2014
    I see now. You're knowledge on Sith is pretty crazy [face_laugh]

    As for Set Harth, what exactly was his purpose in Dynasty of Evil. Was it just for Zannah to make a move on Bane?
     
  15. Aeternum

    Aeternum Jedi Padawan star 1

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    Jan 12, 2015
    Meh. For whatever reason, I personally prefer the old George Lucas explanation that the Sith were a cult founded by renegade Jedi in ancient times, rather than the Expanded Universe Legends backstory that the "original" Sith were a red-skinned semihuman race of Egyptian rip-offs who were joined by Jedi groupies at some point.

    If you're gonna go with the idea that the ancient Sith were an alien species rather than a cult, then you might as well go full Lovecraft.

    I believe Matt Stover - who I've quoted umpteen times and will quote again - talked a bit about the distinctions among the dark-siders in an interview.

    His idea was that ordinary dark-siders (including most Sith) tend to be selfish people who are motivated by emotion and try to control the Force for what are ultimately selfish reasons, while the truly extreme cases like Sidious are incredibly selfless people who are just as self-sacrificing in their devotion as the most ascetic Jedi hermit.

    It's a really interesting point, and it kinda ties in to the ROTS passage about Sidious being a "black hole" and "absolute darkness beyond darkness" - almost as if he's so selflessly devoted to the Force's dark side that he has come to embody it.
     
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  16. Darth Dreadwar

    Darth Dreadwar Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Jan 26, 2010
    Well, most of it just comes down to connecting loose threads in continuity (Set Harth was created for an RPG rulebook long before the Darth Bane trilogy was a twinkle in Karpshyn's eye, and his backstory had been fleshed out some in The Dark Side Sourcebook and Ultimate Adversaries). Some authors do it well (Luceno), with others it just seems unnecessarily tacked on.

    I vehemently disagree. Firstly, the Legends backstory is actually drawn from Lucas' original explanation of the history of the Sith; check out the second and third drafts of 'The Star Wars.' In this history, a Jedi first falls prey to the dark side of the Force, as the Exiles did, and fled from the Jedi and subjugated a violent people known as the Sith, to whom he taught the use of the dark side of the force. And thus formed the 'Sith Knights,' rival sect to the Jedi, which had evolved into the 'Dark Lords of the Sith' by the third draft. Elements of this backstory are still evident in the A New Hope novelisation, where Vader is identified as one of several Sith Lords.

    In these drafts, this first schism had occurred none too far in the past, and over time Lucas clearly shunted the date back to thousands of years in the past. But Tom Veitch coordinated with Lucas more closely than nearly any EU author since; resurrecting the Emperor, exploring the ancient histories of the Jedi and Sith (which had been off-the-table for Zahn just a few short years prior) were all met with Lucas' approval, and Lucas gave Veitch his thoughts on the Sith's history, which we see in the original TOTJ comics. Veitch didn't necessarily define the Sith people as being an alien species - there was room to interpret them as a human culture - but KJA portraying the Sith people as such in GAotS is still the most reasonable and faithful interpretation, and the Egyptian cultural elements are much more refreshing than the prequel rip-offs we got in later explorations of the old Sith, e.g. the highly derivative, unoriginal and just downright absurdly static aesthetic and appearance in KOTOR (down to the same old red lightsabers, black robes and inexplicable use of the Darth title).

    There's no evidence Lucas really deviated from this backstory much. He fleshes it out with Darth Bane and the Rule of Two, but other than the date Brooks uses of 2,000 BBY, there's not really any contradiction with Veitch and no reason to believe Lucas changed his mind on Sith history too much (beyond seeking an explanation for why we only see two dark side practitioners in the OT).

    As for Lovecraftian... I think KOTOR II's hints at what the True Sith were like were more than terrifying enough. A pity Bioware messed it all up with TOR.

    I don't think Stover, in the end, saw Sidious as self-sacrificing in that sense; he transfers that selfless service to entropy and embodiment of 'the jungle' to the Rhandites, even using Cronal to criticise Sidious pursuing vainglory and order in creating the Galactic Empire rather than perpetuating destruction. Of course, that's as much down to Cronal's ignorance (and Stover may have intended it as such, rather than Cronal's musings being representative of Stover's own), as what we see in Dark Empire reveals Palpatine's goal in building the Empire is merely as part of a transition to the creation of a Dark Empire, in which he would bathe the galaxy in misery and destruction and reign over the ashes as an immortal god of the dark side forever...

    But I do think there is a subtle distinction to be made between the likes of Sidious (and Vitiate, who seems very similar in goal and method of attaining it), and the likes of the Rhandites. The former is an embodiment of the dark side, to be sure - he even proclaims himself such - but there is still very much present the element of seeking domination, godhood and mastery over the Force, whereas the Rhandites are willing servants of the Dark. Of course, that isn't to say that the former doesn't evolve into an unwitting form of the latter - Darth Nihilus was supremely selfish in his hunger for power, but in the end his hunger turned him into a mindless beast that truly was little more than a servile vessel for senseless destruction, just as the Rhandites were.

    I would suggest the following 'hierarchy' or progress: selfish people controlled by their emotions to achieve petty ends of hedonism or revenge (Dark Jedi) --> sociopaths, in control of their emotions, pursuing grand goals of godhood and mastery of the Force (most Sith, including Palpatine at the beginning) --> embodiments of the dark side, perpetuating destruction, entropy and death (Nihilus, Palpatine by the time of Dark Empire, Vitiate, Cronal).
     
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  17. Aeternum

    Aeternum Jedi Padawan star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 12, 2015
    Gah, this is a whole lot of stuff to reply to, but I'll give it a shot:

    Interesting. Looks like I totally missed the "violent people known as the Sith" part, since my impression of Sith history (the old Lucas version) comes from Lucas's original backstory on Darth Bane - that story in which the Sith were founded by a Jedi exile, were made of fallen Jedi who followed in his footsteps, but ended up fighting each other and left Bane as the only survivor. And all this happened about 2000 or 3000 years in the past. No idea where that backstory appeared, I probably read it from a Darklordoftech post on this forum.

    Haven't read the second or third drafts of Star Wars, just the first one and the finished ANH movie.

    No idea about the behind-the-scenes workings of Lucas and the creators of those comics, can't comment on that. The Dark Empire looks pretty damn awful - the artwork looks childishly bad, the idea of resurrecting Sheev sounds moronic, and I'm not about to start reading it.

    - "Kevin J. Anderson"
    - "Reasonable and faithful"

    Pick one of them.

    It doesn't have to be an either/or choice between those two. Asking for more creativity than either "copying real-world ancient societies" or "Star Wars galaxy is stuck in stasis" ain't asking too much, I hope.

    This is just my own personal likes and dislikes - but I'd have preferred it if they did something more creative and genuinely disturbing if they had to go with the "ancient Sith species" option.

    I wasn't a fan of Ridley Scott's Prometheus, but the alien engineers were fairly well-done in terms of historical inspirations. There were a few Egyptian influences, a few Sumerian ones, a few Indo-European ones - those marble-skinned aliens were eerily reminiscent of our ancients, but weren't a stale copy of one human culture. They could've done something similar with the Sith species if they really wanted them humanized, but there's no reason why they should be.

    http://www.dailydot.com/geek/star-wars-expanded-universe-not-canon/

    [face_tee_hee]

    Don't have time to answer the rest of your post, but I'll get to it when I can.
     
  18. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 30, 2012
    Dreadwar's referring to this line from the second draft:
    Here's what Dreadwar is referring to:

    "During one of his lessons, a young PADAWAN-JEDI, a boy named Darklighter, came to know the evil half of the force, and fell victim to the spell of the dreaded Bogan. He ran away from his instructor and taught the evil ways of the Bogan Force to a clan of Sith pirates (mercenaries), who then spread untold misery throughout the systems. They became the personal bodyguards of the Emperor."

    What you're remembering is from the TPM novelization, although I have indeed talked about it many times. Here it is:

    "The Sith had come into being almost two thousand years ago. They were a cult given over to the dark side of the Force, embracing fully the concept that power denied was power wasted. A rogue Jedi Knight had founded the Sith, a singular dissident in an order of harmonious followers, a rebel who understood from the beginning that the real power of the Force lay not in the light, but in the dark. Failing to gain approval for his beliefs from the Council, he had broken with the order, departing with his knowledge and his skills, swearing in secret that he would bring down those who had dismissed him.
    He was alone at first, but others from the Jedi order who believed as he did and who had followed him in his study of the dark side soon came over. Others were recruited, and soon the ranks of the Sith swelled to more than fifty in number. Disdaining the concepts of cooperation and consensus, relying on the belief that acquisition of power in any form lends control, the Sith began to build their cult in opposition to the Jedi. Theirs was not an order created to serve; theirs was an order created to dominate.
    Their war with the Jedi was vengeful and furious and ultimately doomed. The rogue Jedi who had founded the Sith order was its nominal leader, but his ambition excluded any sharing of power. His disciples began to conspire against him and each other almost from the beginning, so that the war they instigated was as much with each other as with the Jedi.
    In the end, the Sith destroyed themselves. They destroyed their leader first, then each other. What few survived the initial bloodbath were quickly dispatched by watchful Jedi. In a matter of only weeks, all of them died.
    All but one.
    Darth Maul shifted impatiently. The younger Sith had not yet learned his Master's patience; that would come with time and training. It was patience that had saved the Sith order in the end. It was patience that would give them their victory now over the Jedi.
    The Sith who had survived when all of his fellows had died had understood that. He had adopted patience as a virtue when the others had forsaken it. He had adopted cunning, stealth, and subterfuge as the foundation of his way- old Jedi virtues the others had disdained. He stood aside while the Sith tore at each other like kriks and were destroyed. When the carnage was complete, he went into hiding, biding his time, waiting for his chance.
    When it was believed all of the Sith were destroyed, he emerged from his concealment. At first he worked alone, but he was growing old and he was the last of his kind. Eventually, he went out in search of an apprentice. Finding one, he trained him to be a Master in his turn, then to find his own apprentice, and so to carry on their work. But there would only be two at any one time. There would be no repetition of the mistakes of the old order, no struggle between Siths warring for power within the cult. Their common enemy was the Jedi, not each other. It was for their war with the Jedi they must save themselves.
    The Sith who reinvented the order called himself Darth Bane.
    A thousand years had passed since the Sith were believed destroyed, and the time they had waited for had come at last."
     
  19. JarJarAbrams

    JarJarAbrams Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 24, 2015
    Death to those who insult KJA.
     
  20. Meyerm

    Meyerm Jedi Padawan star 2

    Registered:
    Aug 17, 2014
    *in no particular order*
    1. Darth Sidious
    2. Darth Vader
    3. Darth Revan
    4. Darth Marr
    5. Naga Sadow
    6. Darth Bane
    7. Darth Malgus
    8. Marka Ragnos
    9. Sith Emperor/Lord Vitiate
    10. Darth Baras (say what you want, he got further than anyone in the Dromund Kaas empire aside from the emperor)
     
  21. Aeternum

    Aeternum Jedi Padawan star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 12, 2015
    Thanks for clearing that up, DLOT. I had no idea that piece of backstory was from The Phantom Menace, of all possible places.

    Anyways, here's my much-belated reply to the second half of Dreadwar's post:

    Matt Stover definitely suggested that Palpatine had a selfless, ascetic personality - or that he was so far gone into the dark side that he didn't have much of a "personality" at all, only a simulacrum that let others see in him what they wanted to see.

    But yeah, Cronal takes this selfless devotion to the Dark a lot further. LSTSOM was written around half a decade after ROTS; chances are that Stover wanted to make his new antagonist an even more extreme character than the Sith, so what was previously implied with Sidious now became explicit with Cronal. But the themes were already there in his ROTS novel, from Anakin's obsession with entropy to the poetic epigraphs about the dark.

    I obviously have no clue what's going on in Stover's brain. But, as I see it, he didn't transfer this particular trait to the Rhandites, he just cranked it up to eleven and made it their sole defining character trait.

    Cronal was definitely more extreme than Sheev in his views. That said, his criticism of the Sith is a wee bit hypocritical - after all, Cronal spends most of the book manipulating people and scheming to take control of the galaxy. He talked the nihilist talk, but never walked the walk. It's not until his last chapter, after Luke badly kicked his ass and sent him fleeing, that Cronal regrets ever creating anything and promises to only destroy from now on.

    Arguably, he wasn't nihilistic enough, but that's best left for another thread.

    This is definitely the main distinction between the Sith and the Rhandites. The former seek power and have an ideal of "positive nihilism", while the latter are "negative nihilism" all the way. The Rhandites are more extreme because they're anti-life in a way that Force-users can never be.

    Of course, you could say that those are two different ways of looking at the same thing.

    In the ROTS novelization, Palpatine has this great line where he says that comprehending a single grain of sand, on a deep enough level, would let you comprehed the whole universe. The "light" and the "dark" sides, in his mind, are just two different ways of looking at that granule of sand. He never disproves the Jedi view, just argues that all viewpoints are equally subjective.

    (In other words, Sheev is a moral nihilist. He never says that the Sith are "right" or the Jedi "wrong", because those value judgements don't exist to him. He just points out that the Sith path will lead to greater power.)

    I don't think it's a "hierarchy of evil", just a question of different personalities.

    Anakin's fall to the dark side, his need to use the Force for selfish ends, was motivated by love and fear rather any hedonism. Dooku was a selfish sociopath, what the DSM used to call a malignant narcissist, from the start. Palpatine is a total mystery - Stover definitely suggests that he's not a sociopath.

    In the end, it all comes down to the nature of the "dark side". I never saw it as an evil sentient entity bent on corrupting people or spreading misery across the universe, or anything Manichean like that. I always saw it as the darkest side of yourself, the destructive aspects of your own nature. As we're told, the Force is all and all is the Force. Before the dream sequence in ESB, when Luke goes into that cavern on Dagobah, he asks Yoda what he'll find in there:

    "Only what you bring with you."

    So, if you subscribe to this view, the Sith weren't corrupted or even changed by the dark, but inflicted all of that on themselves.
     
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  22. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    Where did he suggest that?
     
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  23. JarJarAbrams

    JarJarAbrams Jedi Youngling star 1

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    Jan 24, 2015
    Darth Nietzsche vs. Schopencronal
     
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  24. Aeternum

    Aeternum Jedi Padawan star 1

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    Jan 12, 2015
    The interview he did for Shatterpoint. It was tacked onto my Shatterpoint e-book copy, but it's definitely floating around the internet.

    Stover's characterization of Palpatine (as a selfless ascetic type who "basically sees himself as a good and honest man") is obviously at odds with other EU characterizations of him - especially Luceno's depiction of him as a young sociopath in Darth Plagueis. There's endless interpretations of Palpatine and what motivates him. The movies depict the Emperor as an ascetic black-robed hermit, hinting at a monkish personality, but otherwise leave his feelings and motivations a total mystery. And in the context of the OT movies, we don't need to know his character; he's a mythical archetype of evil, the final antagonist on the Hero's Journey, more a symbol than an actual character.

    It's all up to interpretation, really. I personally prefer Stover's version over Luceno's, given that Stover is a vastly better author, but it's up to your personal taste. (And to the fact that Stover's ROTS novel is movie-canon, while Plagueis ain't.)

    Lol, Cronal is more of a Thomas Ligotti to the Sith's Nietzsche.
     
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  25. Chancellor Yoda

    Chancellor Yoda Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 25, 2014
    Here's my favorite.

    1. Darth Vader
    2. Darth Sidious
    3. Darth Plagueis
    4. Count Dooku
    5. Darth Maul
    6. Darth Bane
    7. Exar Kun
    8. Darth Nihilus
    9. Darth Malak
    10. Darth Krayt
     
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