Instant, Knight Errant is towards the end of those four centuries. And you must have seen the Galactic Map that came with that - the Republic is trapped in the Core and Colonies and have lost everything else. Half the population has died of the Candorian Plague... the HoloNet has been abandoned, the Jedi have been forced to disband with democracy for centuries and rule directly in a theocracy; the Jedi may as well be Sith. How is that not dominance? The Sith dominant. Just because there is no one leader means little. You said dominant; not control. And I'd argue Sidious never 'controlled' a great deal, considering that planets were resisting him from day one e.g. the Alderaanian Resistance, the Separatist holdouts, the Kaminoans, etc, etc. The Empire rolled seamlessly into engaging the Separatists into engaging the Rebels. He dominated. His control was not perfect; as evidenced by the need to militarise to unparalleled levels which still didn't achieve much.
Sidious controlled vastly more than the Sith of the New Sith Wars ever did. Sure, "the Sith" as a collective body -- which is largely meaningless, since we're talking about a large number of warring individuals -- controlled much of the Rim, though not Hutt Space, though many areas were probably not yet significantly settled and the population overall was probably very low, especially by the end of the Wars, and control was a back-and-forth affair between the Sith and the Republic over the course of those years, and among the Sith themselves. Such completely unsettled control of an area equally or more decimated by plague and technological regression is a rather poor version of "dominance." Contrast that with Sidious, who as one man ruled with an iron fist the largest galactic government in history, at the time. A handful of localized unrest and a guerrilla rebellion hardly turns the Empire's grasp of the galaxy into some kind of fiction, and it's certainly a far greater degree of control than that exercised by any of the competing Sith factions over a depleted and war-ridden galaxy, or all of them collectively. Sidious controlled every planet in the known galaxy, or damn close, and the presence of Rebel cells on a few of those planets during the final years of his Empire in no way renders his control or absolute dominance less than that of a multitude of warlords with tenuous grasps upon a significant but nowhere near overwhelming chunk of the galaxy. That's just plain silly.
Agreed. But if it's dominance this is about... Then how is the Rule Of Two of any use to Darth Bane, Darth Zannah, Darth Cognus, Darth Vectivus, Darth Tenebrous, Darth Plagueis. and all the Dark Lords inbetween?
Again I point out - is a Sith Lord who controls 100 planets less "successful" than one who controls 101? Territory is a means to an end for them, and the NSW Sith never got anywhere near that end. Watto - none of them were powerful enough. I'm sure every one would have gladly seized control of the galaxy themselves if they'd seen it as within their grasp.
You are all a bunch of novices and pretenders. I, Darth Curlywookie am going to slap some edumacation on all of you. All this talk of the Rule of Two Sith ruling nothing is foolish. Let me speak what has been unspoken. They didn't rule OPENLY. They ruled everything. If you read Darth Plagueis the ROT Sith put Chancellors in office, or ruined them. They controlled galactic shipping. They controlled the underworld. They controlled the Banking Clan. What didn't they rule? Palpatine just became poster boy and that is what ruined them. Had they stayed hidden, they would still rule. Right under everyone, including the Jedi's noses. Their rule was so solid that those of you who even have it spelled out in black and white before you fail to realize the the enormity of the beast that the Bannite Sith had become. Had they stayed hidden the Clone Wars could still have been realized. The Jedi still destroyed. The sole mistake made was revealing themselves at all. You guys are soooo lucky I'm not really a Sith.
Some ways I like Darth Bane because he enforced the Rule of 2 but then personall he had anger problems and for like a decade he couldnt even know how to get a homemade sith holocron to work right. Took him 10 years to figure out that its a component that makes the holocrons work right. Some kind of battery component and he didnt even know about that
Come to think of it, wsan't Sidious' fall because he and Vader tried to bring a third party into their order? Discuss.
Um, no, they didn't. Palpatine's express intention was for Luke to murder Vader, and Vader's was vice versa. There was never any plan to have a third Sith beyond window dressing both Palpatine and Vader tossed at each to put some civility on what was really going on. Palpatine's alternate plan (and this is solely my own observation based on Dark Lord and ROTS) may have been to finally push Vader into his full abilities by forcing him to kill Luke in a duel, but that was never really going to happen either.
The Rule of Two has some pretty big weaknesses. 1) The master dies before he can teach the pupil everything he knows. That would result in a loss of knowledge and therefore a weakening of the whole Sith order. 2) Many heads will come up with more creative ideas than two heads. With many Sith, there will be more innovation than with two. 3) Both Sith die. Um, ROTJ? 4) The pupil dies shortly before he is ready to take the mantle of dark lord. Now the master doesn't have enough time to properly choose a successor and teach him everything before he dies of old age. 5) Two Sith can't be everywhere at once. They are less of a fighting force. While I don't think that Bane is dumb, I think he is a religious fanatic. He descents from a pragmatic, hardworking man to a batpants insane Sith Lord. I consider the bane novels a tragedy, not a heroes story. Bane is no hero, he is an utter failure.
@Pevra, items 2 and 5 can be addressed by the fact that the Sith had massive networks of influence. A person doesn't need to be a Sith to be able to give a Sith a good idea. And 2 Sith don't need to be everywhere; they need only reach everywhere via their intermediaries. Though the issue of an apprentice dying before he is strong enough to challenge their Master is a problem. Imagine spending decades training your pupil, only to have him get hit by a bus on the way home one day. The Master, meanwhile is now 80 years old and cannot train someone new. In cases like this though (and your other examples, except if both die together) may lead to a temporary weakening of the Sith, but the Sith are nothing if not patient. They could simply wait it out. Sith A dies before he can teach Sith B everything, then Sith B must merely work harder to learn what he was not taught, and make sure his apprentice knows what knowledge is lacking. It may add a generation or two to regain that lost knowledge, but that's nothing to them.
While you are partially correct, normal people can't use the force. That is a disadvantage that can't be overcome with simple numbers. Only Sith or other darksiders are able to develop new force techniques and are able to simultanously use the force at many places. Think of how easy it would be to exploit that weakness. One precise strike by a skilled assassin might be enough to end the entire order. I find this line of thought a bit optimistic. The Sith are a secretive bunch. If knowledge is lost then often it is lost forever (or at least for a looong time). In any case it would put them at a disadvantage compared to the Jedi (who have huge numbers). I'm not sure if the risk involved in the rule of two is worth the rewards. Infact I'm far more impressed by Lord Kaans revolutionary ideas. He tried to make more out of the Sith than they were.
I imagine the typical Sith Lord would think that an apprentice that could be hit by a bus isn't worthy of training anyway
1 and 4. You miss the point. ALL Sith Lords keep knowledge to themselves. They all die and take knowledge to thier graves. 2. You don't need many heads when the Force provides knowledge and ideas. Luke was the only Jedi and he restarted the whole Order by himself with only basic training. Same thing. 4. They always had potential apprentices lined up. 5. They are not meant to be a fighting force. They are secretive and rot the foundations of society right out from under it.
Why not? Conscise. Blunt. Just how you like it! Way I see it, any post with an "Um." in it justifies a reply like that. Besides, CurlyWookie still absolutely dominates the threads with his arguments. Why not give up because he's right? I did.
Yeah, I like the shortness of his post and its bluntness, but nothing there makes any sense. But if you want an answer, okay. "1 and 4. You miss the point. ALL Sith Lords keep knowledge to themselves. They all die and take knowledge to thier graves." Not in Lord Kaans order. And again, this weakens the Sith as a whole and puts them behind in the technological arms race between the Sith and the Jedi. "2. You don't need many heads when the Force provides knowledge and ideas. Luke was the only Jedi and he restarted the whole Order by himself with only basic training. Same thing." That wasn't by choice. And Luke didn't discover any new force techniques before the fateful duel on DS II. Which he ... almost lost. "4. They always had potential apprentices lined up." Maybe so. But they don't have infinite time to train them, right? Usually people die when they get old. "5. They are not meant to be a fighting force. They are secretive and rot the foundations of society right out from under it." Who says so? Bane? What a surprise. The Sith philosophy is all about breaking "chains" and striving for personal freedom. Following the rule of a dead man to the letter doesn't sound like "personal freedom" to me. Let the Sith decide how they want to live. The Sith are not meant to follow a rigid code of behavior like the Jedi.
You realize, of course, that all Sith masters keep knowledge to themselves, and all Sith apprentices want to kill their masters. When your main idea is "how to kill my boss and take his place", I really don't want to hire you. Plus, look at the Jedi. 10,000-strong, and yet they were stagnant due to dogma. Given that the Sith are unconcerned with their collective fate as Sith philosophy exalts the individual above all, so? Again, so? The answers to 1 and 3 summarize this. Really, your entire assumption is that the Sith care about the future of the order. They're also less likely to be found out. Think about the Birther theory: You have to assume that Obama's teachers were in on it. As was his mom's obstetrician. And the entire state of Hawaii. And two newspapers. Vast conspiracies are hard to keep under wraps. You wouldn't have to be a lone nutter to know about such a vast conspiracy. But small conspiracies? Much easier to keep under wraps. Organized crime does it all the time.
Oh so wrong you are pretender. It was the cunning and wisdom that Darth Bane possessed that allowed him to create the rule of two which eventually led to Palpatine/Darth Sidious gaining enough power to rule the galaxy. Had he not been taught by the sith lord Darth Plagueis he never would have become chancellor in the first place. Besides the sith werent close to winning against the Jedi back when Lord Kaan "Led" the Sith. His ways made the sith weaker, drawing power from eachother. He realised that throughout history the sith had always battled each other eventually led to their destruction against the jedi. If the Sith should ever rule the galaxy they would have to use cunning, going into hiding amongst the people of the republic in order to slowly gain power from inside. It took over a thousand years but Banes Rule of Two, had made it so that "Once more the Sith will rule the galaxy, and we shall have peace" - Darth Sidious in ROTS. If you read Legacy you will descover that the Sith at that time are in greater numbers, but at greater weakness.
