Lit Why do Sith Masters encourage their apprentices to kill them?

I think that is more just the users own imagination. Sharing power with anyone would be deemed by a Sith as dilution, even though nothing is actually happening. Part of the point of RoT I think is that it is the maximum sharing a Sith is really comfortable with.

 

It is also an assumption to say it not happened when we've seen it happen with most Banites featured in the novels. One assumption is backed by evidence, the other isn't. Do you really think it is likely that only the Sith we see are the ones who violate the RoT or do away with it?

Plagueis was not a Banite, he said so himself.
Maul later trained Savage Opress as his apprentice with Sidious and Dooku still around. He also called himself and his brother "the true lords of the Sith".
Tyrannus had Ventress, a Sith in all but name
Tenebrous had a secret apprentice
Sidious and Vader had secret apprentices
Lumiya ... don't know much about her

 

Any Sith who wants to rule the galaxy would have to delegate power.

 

Having apprentices is delegating power, having underlings doing your bidding is commanding power. Like Joruus said, you get strength from in totally in charge of someone. Ultimately a Sith would prefer to not have an apprentice, but even they can see the benefits of having a worst case scenario heir and someone to push you stronger.

 

It's not an assumption. It's simply stating facts.

Plagueis was a Banite Sith, he simply deemed the Rule as reaching it's end. Just like Sidious was a Banite and thought the same thing. Already been over this.
Maul stating that doesn't violate the Rule of Two, as that only means he no viewed the others as members of the Order. HIS Order consisted of him and his brother, 2 Sith.
Tyrannus never took Ventress on as a full apprentice, and outright denied that to her when she asked for it and cited the Rule of Two as the reason why.
Tenebrous is 1.
Sidious could technically be a violation, but seeing as he planned to kill his master anyways I don't know that i'd count it.
Vader is definitely 2.
Lumiya had 3 apprentices, at 3 different times.
Cognus, had two apprentices at different times.

That's 2 people who definitely broke it, 1 who did it with the intention of killing his master still in mind, which i'd say would make it similar to Zannah's search for an apprentice, and 5 who didn't break it.

Quite simply, there are more examples of it not happening than there are of it actually having been the case. So while there's absolutely no way to say it didn't happen at any other point in the Order's history (And i'm sure it did) to say that it was the Rule of thumb would be an assumption, and a false one as it isn't backed by statistics.

 

Indeed. I never really saw it as anything more than Bane's imagination, because there are examples of their being numerous Sith in the galaxy using the Dark Side, but none of the more powerful ones had any problems with the Dark Side being "finite" or any such nonsense.

 

How so? Tyranus had Ventress and Savage for a time as Dark Jedi, then Maul indeed had Savage as his apprentice, but stated that they were separate from what Sidious had going on.

 

Good catch. Though I think the problem was meant to be that there were too many powerful practitioners. The weak ones could be safely ignored, because they weren't ever going to have much of an impact on the "focus" of the dark side. Or whatever.

Oh there are a bunch, yeah.

It's true that the RoT involves massive risks. It's true that it could go belly up the moment any Sith decides it's nonsense and wants to break free. It's true a bazillion things could go wrong.

So why didn't they?

Because a thousand years worth of Sith, each with their own motivations and personalities, decided for themselves that it was better than what had come before. Those who did want to break out of its parameters entirely, like Millennial and Gravid, were invariably defeated. Any Sith Lord in the chain, at any time, could have brought about a revolution in Sith thinking if they were strong enough. None of them were. None. The scions of Bane always edged them out.

It was a shatterpoint moment essentially engineered by the will of the Force to bring down the most dangerous threat in its entire existence. I think we can cut the Banites some slack.

It does. If a Sith could figure out how to persist without the need to breathe, you think they wouldn't leap at the chance?

Breathing is up there with "ageing" and "sleeping" as far as limitations go. Hardly meta.

Sure, but they're nobodies in the Banite framework, and it's understandable why.

If the Jedi are out there, there's an upper limit to what any Sith can accomplish. Only once they're gone entirely is a Sith free to do whatever they want.

Ah, no, no! Bane (and his successors) thought absolute control of the galaxy was a necessary step the Sith had to take. It's not the ultimate goal, it's simply where the fun begins.

You are absolutely right.

But no Sith can ever truly let go of fear and remain a Sith. Even if they shed it in all other aspects of life, they will always have a fear for themselves.

Selfishness -- that which underpins every Sith's existence -- is a manifestation of fear.

The great irony of the Sith Code -- I think -- is that, in its emphasis on breaking chains and being freed by the Force, it ultimately points to the light side. And that's one of the reasons I'm somewhat disappointed that the Sith'ari prophecy didn't end up referring to the Chosen One.

The notion that the Sith are made "perfect" and "stronger than ever" in that moment when Vader embraces the light and casts down the dark -- when they become Jedi, again --is something I find quite mythic and beautiful.

Ah, well.

 

Getting rid of tradition isn't easy, even for Sith. We can see in real life how people hold on to outdated traditions simply because they are there. I think there is some psychological need for guidelines. It doesn't mean the tradition itself is good.

Hm, I like to think that the force only gives a certain direction that one could chose to follow or not. Vader still chose to throw his master down the shaft out of his own volition. The belief in the Sith was not strong enough in him to remain dark. That itself can be seen as failure.

Might as well kill themselves then because the chemicals in their body and brain cage them in and control pretty much every single decision they make. In real life it is very much questioned if something like a free will even exists.

That's assuming the Jedi are the only enemy capable of stopping Sith, a notion I don't agree with. I think the importance of force users and the force is much exaggerated.

To really stop anyone from becoming a threat ever they'd have to kill all sentient life in the galaxy. Funny, I never thought Lord Odion was that right. Even more reasons to love the guy.

I'm not sure if the Sith'ari is the same as a prototypical Jedi, the Jedi seemed very much boxed in with all their rules and regulations. But yes, the ideal Sith could theoretically love freely, hate freely, do anything freely really. He wouldn't suffer from any mental complexes and he would have absolute power. He would also probably be absolutely bored. Vader may have reached that ultimate goal for a very short period of time. Had he survived, his paranoia would probably have been back very soon as you can't easily get rid of your own personality.

 

I feel like Vader fits a form of Yuthura Ban's rendering of the Sith'ari prophecy, but only if the implied timeline is reversed. Bane destroyed the Sith of his time but subsequently made the order stronger than ever; Vader enabled the Sith takeover but subsequently destroyed the Sith.

 

Jedi don't rule. The order of the sith lord beat the Jedi for 20 years.

And if that's the best you can do in thousands of years of conflict, best time for a revamp of strategy. The "Sith" as antagonists have lost their weight, They need a retool. We accept them because "You want to play D&D or not?"

As antagonist they are damn pathetic, as an order.

 

Unfortunately, yes. They were incredibly threatening in the OT but it went downhill from there...

 

yeah it make some sense to me. You want every sith increasing in power. you want every apprentice to desire to be a master. Bane saw the wisdom in a limited amount of Sith Lords, and so did Reven. The one danger is that with only two sith, if they get killed thats it for possibly hundreds of years, until the next dark jedi finds sith tomes and starts it again. The problem with great numers is that it seems to breed chaos. The sith simply exterminate each other like the ancient sith on Korribon. The Lost Tribe and the current sith on Korribon seem to be the rare difference, and even then there is too much betrayal. In FOTJ we see quite a bit of treachery with the lost tribe, yet unlike the marka Ragnos era sith, they stay organized and effiencient. Little chaos

 

The prophecy of the Sith'ari is fascinatingly elaborated upon in the Book of Sith as an ancient superstition of the Sith people themselves, one which started in the time of Adas and which some of their priests believed applied to Adas alone. More, however, "await the Sith'ari's return." The prophecy is not recorded in writing (the Sith believe it is too sacred for that) but Sorzus Syn records its essence as follows: "The Sith'ari will be free of limits. The Sith'ari will lead the Sith and destroy them. The Sith'ari will raise the Sith from death and make them stronger than before."

With the fact that the exact sequence of leading and destroying is looking less important, and the wording in general, and the fact that the Sith look forward to a return of the Sith'ari, I'm increasingly inclined to regard the Sith'ari prophecy not as a foretelling of a single being's rise, but as a set of conditions which multiple Sith may be able to fulfill. Thus perhaps Adas was in fact the Sith'ari, and so was Revan, so was Vitiate, so was Ruin, so was Bane, so was Sidious, so was Vader.

Though the margin notes from Sidious also point in an intriguing direction: he relays the fact that Plagueis suggested that Bane may have been the Sith'ari, but then contests the truth of it by pointing out that Bane was not truly free of limits. By that reading, and putting that consideration first, one then comes to the consideration that there may be many near-Sith'aris, but the prophecy can only be truly fulfilled by a being who is genuinely without limits. Either, as Sidious suggests, himself, because he ruled the galaxy and was the first truly limitless Sith, or, more philosophically, Anakin Skywalker, the only Sith who could truly be the Sith'ari because the only genuine way to free oneself of limits is to embrace the light side and become one with the Force.

 

I should really get around to reading Book of Sith....

 

I should really get around to reading many things, many many things, including Book of Sith.

 

Indeed it does sound like a good read.

Again, I don't understand how that's relative to the conversation lol

Jedi Merkurian Still doesn't change the fact that that's exactly why it isn't a violation of the Rule. Maul no longer saw himself as part of that Order with Sidious being declared a pretender, but still followed the Rule of Two itself and sought to start his own true Order of the Sith Lords.

A person who's actually acknowledged as one for starters, along with being taught more than small bits of Sith knowledge.

 

The best part was that moments after Sidious ordered Dooku to kill Ventress, he was in the market for a replacement. Dooku was disobeying his master's direct orders and there was no ambiguity to the orders, but he still thought it was worth it to train an apprentice. That's knowingly breaking the rule of two if I ever saw it.

 

We still love them though, don't we? Also they lose so much because of character shields and because the good guys always win in the end, no matter how dumb they act inbetween. Even the Sith are powerless against the might of the pen.