Lit Why the Force Wars and Hundred Years Darkness are different eras?

The Force Wars began shortly after Dawn of the Jedi comics after Daegen Lok united the followers of Bogan in a war against the Je'daii Order followers of Ashla resulting in the creation of the Jedi Order but the Hundred Years Darkness takes place much later in 7000 BBY in that story the Dark Jedi in Exile become the first Sith i think it would have been better and less confusing if they had merged both eras in the EU so the Jedi Order and the Sith Order could be born at the same time i think Dawn of the Jedi comics should have taken place in 7000 BBY instead it would have been less confusing since both eras and stories are very similar

 

This is not my area of expertise, but I believe that at one point (pre-2006) the Force Wars and the Hundred Years Darkness were indeed the same event known as the Great Schism, and that they occurred around 24,000BBY or so. I'm not sure why this was changed or in what source, but at this point the storylines have diverged quite a bit.

 

You are correct. Tales of the Jedi: Golden Age of the Sith #0 says that the "First Great Schism" lead to "a century of bloodshed" that ended with the Dark Jedi being exiled and discovering the Sith species. Star Wars Gamer #5 revealed that Xendor and Arden Lyn started the First Great Schism ~25,000 years before the events of the movies. The New Essential Guide to Characters repeated the info from TOTJ and Star Wars Gamer and also stated that a separate event called the "Hundred-Year Darkness" happened ~7000 BBY.

The New Essential Chronology repeated the dates from Star Wars Gamer and The New Essential Guide to characters for the First Great Schism and the Hundred-Year Darkness, but said that the Hundred-Year Darkness is the same event as the "century of bloodshed" mentioned in TOTJ and that it's the "Second Great Schism", with the First Great Schism being a separate rebellion that the Jedi quickly put down. When Dan Wallace was asked about this retcon, he said that "Lucasfilm internal documents" established that the discovery of the Sith species was ~7000 BBY. The New Essential Chronology also revealed that an event called the "Force Wars" happened before the Jedi Order was established.

Anyway, I agree with @Darth Vectivus that it would make more sense for the Force Wars to produce the Dark Jedi Exiles.

 

I'm still confused about the Force Wars, considering the last arc of DOTJ was called "Force War" and involved the Rakata and Force sabers. I prefer the pre-DOTJ version of the Force Wars that was depicted as essentially samurai battles on Tython.

 

They didn't.

 

Maybe the Force War title from Dawn of the Jedi comics is just a name while the real Force Wars event occurred after the comics

 

The comics were setting up the force war. Some the darkside leaders (mentioned in SWTOR) are in the comic.

 

Yes Dawn of the Jedi comics ends with an open ending if i remember correctly with possibilities of a Sequel but that never happened

 

Correct. It wrapped up it's arcs but left an opening for on going story. But it was killed in 2014 when Disney killed the EU.

 

If Dawn of the Jedi was planned to be Hundred Years Darkness then Ajunta Pall should have been the protagonist but that wasn't the case i think they made Dawn of the Jedi because they wanted to make a prequel to KOTOR telling the story of the Rakata the EU Old Republic still had some stories to tell like Ajunta Pall story Marka Ragnos story Adas or Freedon Nadd or a Republic origin story

 

Dawn was WELL Before the 100 years of darkness. About 19,000 years distant.

 

IIRC one of the guidebooks incorrectly had Naga Sadow be the main opponent in the first great schism. But IIRC the hundred year darkness came first in terms of publishing.

I’m not sure what the reason was for the 18,000 year gap, (likely something to do with choices made by Leland Chee and Lucasfilm for ordering reasons).

Dawn of the Jedi is set before the republic was founded, the Hundred Year Darkness is set just 7,000 years before the films.

There is no connection between them.

 

Part of it is because people said the Jedi order (and Republic) are 25,000 years old, all from one line from Obi-Wan.

 

I wish we had an idea what the internal deliberations on the structure of the EU’s background lore were at Lucasfilm. Things like the timing of the schisms, obscure stuff like the unification wars, and so on. Seem to have been chosen rather arbitrarily. Or at least based on whatever Chee felt was most consistent sometime in 2007.

 

That's not the case.

Tales of the Jedi: The Freedon Nadd Uprising #1 and Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith #1 mention Dark Jedi conquering the "Sith people" and becoming "Dark Lords of the Sith". Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith #3 mentions "the Hundred-Year Darkness" in a list of conflicts involving the dark side. The remaining out-of-universe history of the Great Schisms and the Hundred-Year Darkness is covered in the 3rd post of this thread.

It's possible that Leland talked about it on the starwars.com forums. Does anyone have those forum posts archived?

 

Huh? I remember Naga Sadow being mentioned somewhere as the first Sith Lord? Or something like that? I know it was an error because it was corrected later.

Anyways-it’s interesting to see how the EU’s timeline emerged, and how it honestly lacks the sort of symmetry or forethought a lot of other fictional timelines do. Like for example-the first and second great schisms have zero connection(beyond having dark side fallen jedi fight the order and republic) and are 18,000 years apart-18,000 isn’t a particularly symbolic or meaningful number in any context.

It seems the EU’s timeline was implemented based on the “thousand generations” remark in ANH, the timeframe given in Tales of the Jedi, and then harmonized with KOTOR-with the inconsistencies seemingly mostly worked out by the late 2000s or early 2010s.

The final product is unique in…how unplanned and bare bones it is. 18,000 year gap between the republic’s founding and the Sith order-this isn’t something any single author would do for their story. You’d have much neater flows and connections between main events, and time periods with clear thematic markers. Rather than a canvas with a few points drawn on it for clarity and everything in between filled in later.

 

Perhaps you're thinking of the first two paragraphs of the article on Naga Sadow in The New Essential Guide to Characters, which say:

"The First Great Schism between the light and dark sides of the Force occurred in the early years of the Old Republic. Certain Jedi turned to the dark side, and when defeated, they fled the civilized galaxy and conquered a primitive species-the Sith. They made themselves the Lords of the Sith, and named the greatest among them the Dark Lord.

Naga Sadow, heir to this wicked tradition, became the first Sith Lord in nearly twenty millennia to reestablish contact with the forgotten Republic, setting in motion a chain of disastrous events."

There's no error there. It's simply saying what was true at the time.

 

Part of the charm of the EU for me was how patchwork it was.

 

I fixed that for you haha (also I like Sith Empires they are a good exploration of evil).

 

The way i see it the Je'Daii against the Rakata is the first "Force War" but then the Followers of Ashla fights the Followers of Bogan, which would count as the second "Force War", given the two happened very close to each other (given Rajivari's apparent age in both the DOTJ comic and his ghost self from AFTER the war and his own later uprising ended) the whole period is called the "Force Wars", in fact i would say that the fight between the Jedi and Rajivari's Jedi would be the third Force War with the whole thing ending around the same time the Jedi leave Tython for good.

 

Yeah, take something like Tolkien’s legendarium in which significant things happen in every age, or Dune where there is a clear backstory with the houses and Butlerian Jihad, or what not-with Star Wars, you have the big event(the republic is founded-literally the foundation of SW), and then the Sith show up 18,000 years later. What happens in the interim? Oh there are some wars and cool stuff in guidebooks but nothing that isn’t mundane or really relevant for the era of the main story,

Usually in a fictional setting-the background timeline is so set up that important events leading to the main story are listed, with anything else just being a tertiary addition or serving the world building.

The SW EU is remarkably patchwork in that you have a few important events occurring over a vast period of time with the periods in between being both canonical but also narratively inconsequential.

 

Or maybe the real Force Wars happens after Dawn of the Jedi comics and Force War was just comic name i wish the War with the Rakata had another name