BTS When was "Sith" defined?

I was always more or less under the impression that we didn't learn what a "Sith" was and how it was that Darth Vader was a "Dark Lord of the Sith" until Episode I came out... or at least materials from Episode I began to be released. I've been going through a lot of EU stuff due to excitement over TFA and took note of the frequent usage of the term "Dark Jedi" where we would now use the term "Sith."

I was surprised, however, to find the term "Sith" in the expansion for Dark Forces II (Mysteries of the Sith), which I'm playing for the first time. It was released in early 1998 which was earlier than I thought the term was defined and begun to be used. None of the contemporary materials I've read seem to use it at all.

Anyway, to get to the point, it got me thinking when exactly did we, the fandom/people not George Lucas, find out what a "Sith" was? I can't really seem to find much information on it. The closest thing I can find is a trivia bit that the Noghri were originally going to be Sith, but Lucas nixed that idea. It seems clear no one knew then what a Sith was since Zahn was trying to define it himself.

I'm sorry if this is a silly question, but I'm curious and there doesn't seem to be much real world material available that I can find on the topic.

tl;dr - When did we learn what the "Sith" from "Dark Lord of the Sith" was referring to?

 

October 21st, 1997 at 4:13am EST. It was revealed in a dream.

 

"Sith" was first defined in Tales of the Jedi and Jedi Academy Trilogy. Before that, I figured that it was Vader's Stormtrooper legion, his TIE squadron, or his Star Destroyer squadron.

 

Sith was mentioned so early as in the first novel ever written, released before the movie itself, Star Wars: The Adventures of Luke Skywalker. Which was released in 1976. They never made clear what it was though, just that Darth Vader was one.

 

this. i own it.

 

I know this. What I asked was when we found out what it was.

 

The Sith was first bought up in the OT novels and screenplays. It made it's way into the TOTJ comics and probably other EU, but not the films until the PT came along.

I believe the Sith were originally supposed to be called "the Damned", but GL couldn't use the name because a band had the same name.

 

As far as I know, the notion of Sith knights, using the "bad" side of the Force and rivals to the Jedi knights, can be traced as far back as the first drafts of ANH (2nd and 3rd If I do remember well), so around 1974. There were then supposed to be several Sith knights, who joined and served the Emperor.

From the last one (4th), all were basically combined into one character, Darth Vader, who became their sole representative, at least in the film. Then the notion disappeared from the OT movies (Sith is never mentioned). The expression "dark lord of the Sith", or "Sith lord", for Vader used in the novels or elsewhere were then a total mystery for almost everybody.

I really don't know if and where it was actually defined in the EU before TPM came out, as I'm estranged to it, save for the movies' novelizations and a couple of Marvel comics I read in the early 80's.

Did it correspond more or less to what's been revealed in the prequels ?

 

What Tales of the Jedi and Jedi Academy Trilogy say is that a group of Jedi turned to the dark side, but were then defeated by the Jedi and exiled to the Unknown Regions. There they discovered the Sith species, who worshipped them as gods. The fallen Jedi then came to be known as "Sith Lords", with their leader being the "Dark Lord of the Sith." The Sith species ultimately went extinct, but the fallen Jedi and their apprentices kept their titles.

 

In terms of being officially defined by George Lucas (as opposed to just being mentioned and never really explained, as it was in the novelisations, comics and various publications of the OT), the short answer is Episode I in 1999.

The 1990s EU authors were allowed to play around with an ancient backstory for the Sith which was set 4000-5000 years prior to the actual SW Saga, and which was very loosely based on vague ideas GL developed in the 1970s for SW/ANH. This backstory did play a part in EU stories set in the OT era (Dark Empire, the Jedi Academy trilogy), but GL's new ideas in TPM about the Rule of Two, Darth Bane (which he mentioned in interviews), and the fact that 'Darth' was an actual title were completely new, and the EU then had to adopt them, or find ways to work around them.

 

For instance non of the sith prior to the phantom menace had darth in the name other then vader, Palpatine was just Palpatine, exar kun was exar kun,ulic qel droma is ulic qel droma. Other named early eu sith lords are marka ragnos, ludi kresh, and naga sadow. The phantom menace established the rule of two and Darth Bane, the jedi vs sith comic expanded it and tied it into dark forces II. Kotor the video game complicates this because it has with using the darth title several thousand years before Bane. The Bane novels by Drew Kapryshn,tried to fix this by stating some of the ancient with did use the darth title like Revan and Malak but it went into disuse among the sith following the events in the Old repubulic MMO till Bane brought it back.

Their are several different in universe theories on the origin and meaning of the Darth title, my favorite is it is a legacy of the time the Rakata from Kotor where the dominate power in the unvierse and the sith species adopted the title from contact from them, like in the real world were the English title Duke comes from the latin Dux which originally meant war leader.

 

um no.

they were called the legions of lettow then knights of the sith.

 

No, in the Rough Draft, they were the 'Knights of the Sith', then the First Draft changed them to the 'Legions of Lettow' - but what's important to note is that the Rough Draft and the First Draft are almost completely identical in terms of dialogue and scenarios - word for word - except a heap of character and location names were changed. Later drafts tended to revert to the names from the Rough Draft, even though they were often applied to different characters.

Regardless, the term 'Knights of the Sith' was first. The term 'Legions of Lettow' exists solely in the First Draft as an alternate name, and was never used again - along with 'Justin Valor' (Annikin Starkiller), 'Akira Valor' (Kane Starkiller), 'Princess Zara' (Princess Leia), 'Son Hhat' (the Emperor), 'the First Galactic Kingdom' et al.

http://starwarz.com/starkiller/the-star-wars-rough-draft/
http://starwarz.com/starkiller/the-star-wars-revised-first-draft/

 

The EU at least, reused Legions of Lettow - as the Minions of Xendor.

 

Just a quick aside...
Did GL come up with the rule of two? I always kind of assumed it was Drew Karpyshyn.

 

Wasn't Timothy Zahn originally going to call the Noghri the Sith until Lucas nixed that idea?

 

No. Darth Bane and the "rule of two" came from Lucas.

 

Yup - Terry Brooks described it, in the TPM novelization - but Lucas gave him the outline, and the name.


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.

 

Something like that.

 

GL also mentioned it in an interview with TIME Magazine.

Correct - another idea he put the kibosh on was that the insane clone Jedi (eventually Joruus C'Baoth) was a clone of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Zahn has also mentioned that GL & LFL forced him to get rid of his 'favourite character' - I've been unable to find out just who this was (or if he was just talking about the clone of Obi-Wan).
Similarly, Mike Veitch's original idea for the main villain of Dark Empire was someone posing as Darth Vader - GL nixed it, and allegedly suggested they use a cloned Palpatine instead. I say 'allegedly', because the trend of attributing virtually all such ideas to GL was particularly commonplace during the 1990s EU era and while the PT was being made, to give them more authenticity - however, back in 2008, when GL was dismissing the idea of a Sequel Trilogy, he said this in an interview with Total Film:

That obviously changed, and he did once have ideas for the ST, but it's unlikely that he would make a point of so explicitly brushing off an idea he came up with himself. Or maybe not, but I'm still skeptical.

 

This was where Tom Veitch said it:

http://www.jazmaonline.com/interviews/interviews2007.asp?intID=432

RV: What did you find most enjoyable about writing Star Wars comics?
Tom Veitch: I loved that George Lucas gave us "carte blanche" to think up new ideas and stories. The first idea we gave him (this was back in 1989, you understand) was that the Empire had preserved Vader's costume or a duplicate of it, and that they would put somebody else inside it, so that "Darth Vader" could continue to inspire fear and obedience among the far-flung worlds of the Galaxy. George said "no" to that. Our second idea was that the Emperor should continue to live, through the process of cloning. George said "yes" to that.

 

Ah, there you go. Don't remember where I read that GL came up with the idea, but it was obviously wrong (or deliberate spin). According to the Wook, Veitch has made 'conflicting statements' about who came up with the idea, but it only cites the article above.

 

"Said "yes" to" is a bit different from "suggested", it is true.

 

Thanks for this guys!!!

I find Lucas to be quite a contradictory person sometimes. He seems to have such tight control over the books - disallowing this and that with Zahn and yet, at the same time there are clearly whole stories which he doesn't approve of (NJO stuff, Luke getting married etc.) and the continuity is more than a bit shakey through the EU too. It's odd, almost as if he controls everything if he gets involved but he doesn't always bother.

Then he comes out with this stuff about "There will definitely be no Episodes VII–IX. That's because there isn't any story." but later it appears that he gave his drafts for VII VIII and IX to Disney (who decided not to use them) so at some point he must have thought about it enough to write outlines (alhtough I concede he could have done this after the Time interveiw).

I find him so hard to understand. I love the guy for coming up with Star Wars - he literally made the high point of my childhood - but then I see bits and pieces, ideas, scenes and other stuff in his films which seem to me to be borrowed from other people's stories (films and books), e.g. I'm just re-reading Path of Destruction again (Drew Karpyshyn) and there is a scene where a Sith Lord does exactly what Obi-Wan and Anakin do at the beginning of Ep3 to get on board a large enemy starship - the whole getting through the sheilds at the last minute, skidding the ship shattering and killing those in the hanger with the ship as it slides and then bursting out of the cockpit with a somersault to fight those left with lightsabre blazing. Now I know he's allowed to use this particular bit but it does make me think less of him as a creative genius when he doesn't seem to make up his own stuff. On top of that I see Tattooine modelled on Arakis and the Jedi Mind Trick a total rip off of the Bene Gesserit "Voice". I could go on but I'll just totally depress myself, especially seeing as I love and respect the guy too - that's why this stuff irritates me so much. I just can't decide if he's a visionary who let others take his work in directions he didn't want and contradict each other or just too lazy to bring consistency to the universe he created since he did have control over all of that. Is he a creative genius or an idea stealing fraud. Goodness....people are so complicated. I prefer droids.

 

I'm pretty sure Path of Destruction was after Episode III:

Wookeepedia dates it September 2006:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darth_Bane:_Path_of_Destruction

Whereas Episode III is May 2005:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Episode_III_Revenge_of_the_Sith

So Karpyshyn's the one copying, if anything.