Fanclub <=*=> The New Sith Order =*= Return of the Sith <=*=>... v.5

*Strolls in quietly, sipping a cup of something dark.*

Yep. Still here.

*nods with a smirk on his face*

 

The Sith are eternal? Or the idea of the Sith is eternal?

 

One in the same, as I would have said myself.

 

Not Sadow; he was apprentice to Simus. Ragnos' conservative and cautious nature seem to be more in line with Kressh, but I think the implication is that Vitiate was indeed Ragnos' Shadow Hand.

Is there any link between longevity and charcoal skin, though? Empire's End has the spirits of the ancient Dark Lords claim they ruled for centuries, and preserved their spirits and their bodies through their powers. I interpreted this as meaning more than just 'collectively, they ruled for centuries,' and more than just mummification (indeed, they seem untouched by time entirely in TOTJ).

It seemed to me that the ancient Dark Lords all knew various tricks to attain immortality, with biological longevity such as Adas and Ragnos (perhaps even Vitiate-esque longevity - the Sith did think Adas would live forever, after all), body-hopping (Tulak Hord), 'Horcruxes' (Muur, Graush, Andeddu), lichdom (Andeddu), haunting tombs (Pall, Ragnos, the 12+ Dark Lords of the Great Temple, probably all of the ancient Dark Lords really)... In fact, given the marriage of Sith alchemy and the Dark Jedi's arts and obsession with twisting life and conquering death, I'm willing to bet the Dark Lords weren't beholden to aging or disease at all, returning as haunting spirits even after being killed as a sort of back-up plan, with a select few knowing further tricks (Heart of Graush, Hord's ritual of essence transfer).

 

****listens from the third crenellation of the tower****
I always thought Andeddu was the most interesting but i'm going to look at Tulak for some 'information'

 

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Subterra_Period Here it says that lawlessness in the outer rim "was thought to have contributed to the second great schism". Is there any source for this, and if there is, what does outer rim lawlessness have to do with Jedi schisms?

 

The rapid expansion however led to lawlessness in the Rim and Coruscant lost its control on its new territories.

Perhaps some of the jedi didn't agree with the way the republic/jedi order handled the lawlessness in the outer rim, which in turn created conflict within the order resulting in a schism. Much like Dooku who didn't believe in the senate and questioned the jedi order and eventually became a darksider.

 

The Sith Empire, hidden from the Republic for over a millennia, emerged in a blitzkrieg-style campaign of conquest, and managed to wrestle away from the republic enough systems for the Empire to virtually equal the republic in size, thus incorporating many new cultures and civilizations into the Empire. However, in the years that followed in the Cold War and the reignited galactic war, all imperials (with a few explained exceptions) have the same "Dromund Kaas" accent signifying their origins from some planet already controlled by the Empire before their re-emergence from exile (in other words, the human populace was settled by the empire and wasn't conquered). With so many new planets with so many new human civilizations under the fold, wouldn't there be more diversity?

This leads to my query about class division in the empire. Setting aside the sith themselves, there is a known "military class" of citizens destined for military service. It could be that only inhabitants of the pre-war imperial worlds are permitted to enter the military, and those on conquered worlds are bound to labor duties. Does this mean then there's an official, law-defined class division between "true" imperials and conquered subjects? The "true" imperials serve the military and administrative duties while conquered subjects labor on their worlds or are shipped to original imperial worlds to fill the labor gap left by those in military service. I mean, The towering skyscrapers of Kaas city can't all be inhabited by war veterans and sith. I would imagine that with the Kaas city natives serving in military or administrative capacities, the empire would ship non-slave laborers from across their domain to live in Kaas city and maintain the city (slaves can't do everything. There's sanitation, recreation, utility, etc.) What do you think?

Edit: Moving to the Sith Fanclub.

 

When Ragnos died, why didn't Vitiate make a move for the throne?

 

Meyerm The accent is likely Tapani in origin, given the influx of Tapani humans in the Old Sith Empire. This would have provided the only accent for Basic the true Sith would have been exposed to in great deal, and as they expanded around the Rim to the Unknown Regions, those they conquered would have been thoroughly culturally 'deprogrammed,' I'd imagine. Quite possibly, conquered peoples were scattered throughout Sith Space to decrease the possibility of resistance, and this would explain to some extent why the accent became uniform throughout the Sith Empire, as there would be insufficient concentrations of other peoples to maintain regional accents.

darklordoftech My headcanon is that the 'Heresiarchs' were motivated by an originally pure, altruistic vision of creating utopia, using alchemy to improve life and conquer death much as modern-day transhumanists desire. Lawlessness in the Outer Rim would have been an obvious flaw in galactic society that would have strengthened the Dark Jedi's desire to reshape the galaxy into one without a disenfranchised Rim, without discrimination, disease and death.

And then, just as in the beginning they utilised passions from love to anger, so did they become corrupted, using only negative emotions, and coming to desire utopia only for, as Plagueis termed, an 'enlightened elite' - themselves.

As for Vitiate... Perhaps, even if we don't see much in TOTJ, Ludo Kressh and Naga Sadow were just that much superior to him. I'd be quite pleased if Vitiate, capable of draining 8,000 Sith Lords of life, annihilating the Dark Council in a flash of light, and essence transfer, had merely the fraction of the knowledge his forebears possessed. It'd explain why Vitiate's Sith are so 'mainstream' in comparison to the predecessor state; so much of the old Sith magic was lost as the Jedi destroyed and suppressed knowledge after the GHW.

I'm fairly confident that Tulak Hord was among the ancient Sith Kreia was referring to, those who surpassed even Nihilus' Force drain, given what Khem Val described him doing on Yn and Chabosh.

He created an artifact allowing for a dark sider to perform a ritual of essence transfer. It's a rather curious thing to do; why would a Dark Lord capable of essence transfer instill his ability into an artifact for others to use?

 

I don't know. A couple decades isn't enough time for people conquered by the empire to be fully absorbed into their culture and develop "imperial" accents themselves. Since almost every imperial in any political, military, or diplomatic role just about everywhere has this accent, and the confirmed existence of a class in the hierarchy known as the military class, I tend to lean towards thinking that the empire dedicated all of their original subjects (those whose families have been imperial for generations) to these duties and dispersed conquered subjects across the empire for the menial jobs left vacant, dispersing any organized resistance with the relocations and making sure those in the military and those with power are absolutely loyal and not conquered subjects that may have animosity towards the empire.

 

I speak less of absorption and more of systematic, deliberate scattering. Deprived of interaction with beings who share the regional accent of their origin, those subjugated by the Empire would more swiftly pick up the presumably Tapani accent than would otherwise be expected.

And agreed re. your thoughts of pre-Galactic War Imperial families occupying military and political roles almost exclusively. As an evolution of the Old Sith Empire, it's likely, even if the names weren't used, that a class system was developed very much on the old Sith castes, with pre-War Imperials (primarily humans and Sith hybrids) occupying classes roughly equivalent to the Kissai, Zuguruk and Massassi castes (the aforementioned military class being an evolution of the latter), with a much expanded Grotthu-inspired lower class (or perhaps classes) comprising post-War Imperials in primarily menial positions, as well as slaves, both pre-War and post-.

 

Black Fleet Crisis talks about a Yavin god. When did the Massassi start beieving that?

 

1. Ragnos could have possessed someone with his sceptor and then "recorded" the "message" that branded Kun and Ulic.

2. What we saw in the branding scene is a foggy image drawn by an artist who had little involvement in TOTJ. The artist could have gotten the Dark Lord's appearance wrong and Kun and Ulic might not have seen the Dark Lord clearly.

 

In my interpretation, Yavin is up there with Krath and Typhojem as 'immortal gods of the Sith' (pre-Republic Darths of the True Sith/Infinite Empire? ) that the Sith people, in some way, always worshipped. They worshipped Sadow in hibernation, so I figure they focused their primitive devotion on Yavin (personified as the most obvious awe-inspiring thing, the gas giant above) after Nadd killed Sadow.

So if one were to keep track of the Massassi's religion, I'd imagine its central focus changed quite a lot (causing no doubt many an interdenominational conflict) in a thousand years, from Sadow, to Yavin, to Kun. Poor guys.

However, there remains the problem that in the TOTJ audio drama, Kun actually recognises the figure as the mummy he saw on Korriban. That figure, presumably the same who said "He is ready, Nadd," has a very human and distinctly non-Sith hybrid appearance in the comics, and is implied further to be one of the Dark Jedi (as per Empire's End), oh and he's buried in the Great Temple rather than a tomb in the Valley.

I've tried to fix this by supposing that Ragnos was possessing an Arkanian Jedi-turned-Sith (because who says the Dark Jedi referenced are specifically the Exiles, right?) sometime between 5,000 and 4,990 BBY, and that it was this body that was mummified and buried in the Great Temple. Come to think of it, ancient Sith Lords having multiple bodies buried in different places could explain some of the discrepancies in the different renditions (and locations) of their tombs. It'd explain Kressh's mummy in KOTOR II as well, given that he was blown up.

 

Multiple bodies as in they possessed these bodies in their life time, or just exclusively for ceremonial burial? Like, their true body buried elsewhere and a placeholder used in the ceremony because of threats of desecration? I dunno. There was an unidentified skeleton resting in the sarcophagus in the tomb of Naga Sadow on Korriban as well, despite having died in seclusion on Yavin IV.

 

I was thinking of essence transfer (or variants, e.g. possession through Ragnos' Scepter). It's the only explanation that makes much sense for a very different looking post-Hyperspace War Ragnos making the amulet record, and yes, it could account for Sadow's tomb and the skeleton interred within as well.

Body-hopping was known to Hord and Andeddu, so it's not a stretch to think that most Sith Lords knew the technique to varying degrees. Korriban is absolutely crawling with Sith spirits, and they had to come from somewhere. It's implied the majority if not all of the ancient Lords knew how to chain their essences to objects (holocrons, talismans) or their tombs in various works throughout the EU, so to think possession, or the 'body-hopping' variant of essence transfer, was particularly rare somewhat strains credulity.

 

I wonder how "Ragnos" created a time-travelling "message" and how he marked people with his bare hands.

Also, it seems that Ziost will be added to TOR in April!

 

Isn't Ragnos' different appearances just a real life mistake or misunderstanding?
Like Naga Sadow was portayed as a human first and later as a pure sith.

 

I was thinking this too, although I do think Ragnos possessing someone during the Sith Holocaust would be an awesome retcon for explaining why he called the Sith Holocaust "my time".

 

What's interesting about that line is that it reveals that Sadow wasn't Nadd's only master. Nadd was clearly being guided by the spirit that said, "He is ready, Nadd." The implication of the comic is that Nadd joined this spirit's plot to recruit Kun in hopes of getting his body ressurrected, but in light of TOR, I wonder if in addition to that, Nadd and the "he is ready" spirit knew about Vitiate and were involved in the spirits' plan to stop him (Vitiate).

 

So, if body-hopping was known by a number of powerful sith lords in the time of the old empire, what make Lord Vitiate so special? Just that he's the last person to know how and won't share the secrets?

 

I think the implication is that one sufficiently powerful in the Force can do far, far more than the traditional repetoire of video game-esque "lightning, push, pull, mind trick" etc. An almost godlike degree of altering reality should be within the realms of an ancient Sith Lord.

In terms of linking it to pre-existing lore, I'd suggest the amulet is merely flow-walking in artifact form (rather like Hord's artifact of essence transfer or Ragnos' scepter of Force drain), similar to how Jacen was able to leave imprints in the Force for Leia. The artifact works as a sort of anchor for the message, allowing it to retain coherence and physicality beyond a mere imprint in the Force.

The marking would be a simple application of Convection, I would think.

Oh, of course. It's just it's not in our nature to accept OOU explanations for anything.
And Sadow's portrayal is even more complicated than that. He was originally a pureblooded Sith, but because the Sith hadn't been established as a red-skinned species at the time (just another human or near-human people), he looks human. Then KJA gave him pink skin, making him look more like a Sith pureblood in our current understanding, but actually made him a hybrid rather than pureblooded, of Exile lineage.
Of course, given that TOR has introduced the term 'Sith pureblood' to apply to hybrids, then it works. Sadow was a Sith pureblood, and he probably just possessed some human body that then ended up in his sarcophagus on Korriban.

Pretty much. Vitiate's reformed Empire, to apply Dreypa's quote to another context, displays "a partial knowledge - a mere puddle of the ocean known in [the ancient Sith Empire's] time." I would imagine that such secrets of immortality were mostly confined to the Dark Lord and Sith Lords, but as per TOTJ Companion pretty much all of the Sith Lords were wiped out by the Jedi, their secrets destroyed or hidden away, and Vitiate killing off 8,000 Lords didn't help. A mere sorceress, not a Lord, killed off the entirety of Ambria after the Hyperspace War in what seems to be very reminiscent of the Ritual of Nathema, and Kreia says that some of the ancient Sith surpassed Nihilus in terms of Force drain, so I think it's safe to say that planet-killing and body-hopping were pretty much the norm in the ASE. Contrast 8,000 Lords being killed off to the 1,000+ that comprised the entirety of the One Sith - not Lords - to gain an impression of just how many powerful Sith were running around back in the Golden Age. And let's not forget that Korriban, which was nothing more than a tomb world, had a population of 9.6 billion. One can't argue these were mere slaves, either, as the bulk of the grotthu population were of different species, yet as per Wizards of the Coast only 6% of Korriban's population was comprised of other races.

It's also important to note that there's many Sith immortality techniques, indeed many variants in 'essence transfer.' Vitiate and Andeddu stand out as two who seemed to master many, e.g. agelessness, body-hopping and remaining in the physical world in spectral form in the case of the former, contrasting with Palpatine, who only knew body-hopping and thus whose spirit would be dragged to Chaos if he didn't immediately transfer his intellect to a new body (whether that be Droga or a clone). I'm suggesting that body-hopping and haunting the physical world as spirits chained to their tombs were the norm for the Old Sith, but things like agelessness, or remaining as a spirit in the physical realm without being confined to one's tomb (like Nadd or Vitiate), were not.