Darth Ruin Discussion

Inspired in part by some of the great posts made in Darth-Ghost's thread of a few months back: "What do we know about Darth Ruin's Sith, and the thousand-year New Sith Wars?" I thought it might be worthwhile to create a thread purely for the discussion of the fascinating (thank-you, Abel) - yet largely unexplored - character that is DARTH RUIN, once Phanius the Lost.

[image=http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/6/6c/DarthRuin-EGF.jpg]
There is no passion. There is solely obsession.
There is no knowledge. There is solely conviction.
There is no purpose. There is solely will.
There is nothing . . . only me.
The Creed of Ruin

Emperor?s Black Bones, how philosophically loaded is that? Look and marvel! We've got the recurring theme of philosophical skepticism, references to the 'Problem of Induction' (I think so, anyway) and, of course, the metaphysical solipsism Darth Ruin is, around these parts, famous for.

Which brings me to the to the first thing I'd like to discuss:

Anyone else think that Ruin?s philosophical outlook (that HE was the whole of reality) may have developed from his having a very strongly developed version of this ability? That, on seeing how others seemed to dance to his tune, he came to believe ? absolutely ? that everything in the external world was a representation of himself?

If this was deliberate - as opposed to a happy accident - then, Abel, you are a magnificent barve!

Discuss away!

 

I want him up against a Hapan army with Guns of Command... and he MAKES THEM SHOOT THEMSELVES and a whole Hapan army defects

 

This is disappointing. Zorrixor, where are you?

 

A Sith who thinks he's the best, just like Palpatine.

And he is.

The ability to see into the ultraviolet gives this character so much more.

He can see more than you and me, and he knows it.

I think being able to control(even a little) an enemy makes him an even more interesting character. Bad guys are all about minions, and he can basically have all he wants.

One question, though. How in the world did he die?

Maybe he became so obsessed with himself that he committed suicide. Thought, no one can kill me, I don't even want to see them try, if no one else will do it, I'll just do it myself.

 

Didn't his followers basically turn on him?

 

Bit busy today, and I know this thread is likely to sap me (), so I'll probably reply properly tomorrow.

For now: Ruin.

'nuff said.

I do like the "I can see what you cannot" implications of this theory though. Subtle a thing as it is, it does add more depth to his overall "I am the Force!" characterisation.

 

I hadn't even given consideration to the ultraviolet as a contributing factor to the development of his metaphysical outlook.

But, even if you're kidding around, I like that.

When the entirety of reality is an extention and representation of yourself, how else could you die?

Like Zorrixor mentioned in the linked thread, above, I think the best way to have Ruin *killed* (assuming he didn't want to go) would have to involve the complete collapse of his worldview. Something that destroys what he has by now come to base his entire existance upon, reducing it - fittingly - to ruin.

Actually, I'd be up for his minions only even considering turning on him when they *discover* his private 'Creed of Ruin'.

Zor: The MotU film rocks. Dolph Lungren as he appears in that film will always be the way *I* imagine Anakin Skywalker.

 

maybe he thrived off of their life energy later in life and after they realised fighting him was no way to end this, thex all commited suicide in order to cut short his life energy.. but traitorous as Sith are some only pretended and thus when he was weakened but still alive through the sacrifice of the others, these Sith killed him the usual way and continued the Sith Order... OR... that is how he actually survived and the traitors got slain by him himself and oops... with that he killed himself by accident when logic had gone far far away.

 

Ohh... they committed suicide... I LOVE that!!!

That is honestly awesome. The idea that his followers "rebelled" not by just ganging up on him like with every other two bit Sith Lord... but by realising they knew they couldn't defeat the undefeatable (similar to how Darth Sion could not be "killed", he had to be made to give up).

Ruin's followers realised they couldn't win... so they did the next best thing: stopped him winning too. Typical, self-centred Sith really: "If we can't be all powerful... THEY YOU WON'T EITHER! *slashes own neck*"

It reminds me a bit of that scene in JvS where the Sith Lords get scared of Bane eating their souls so run away. Only this'd be worse. They'd know Ruin was going to eat their souls, period. There would be no running off on your speeder bike like with the Brotherhood. So they decided to go and deny Ruin mastery of the universe if they weren't going to rule it too.

What I also like about this is it'd make this Great Schism totally different. It wouldn't need to be some giant galactic Jedi vs. Sith war. It could actually be a lot more low key than that, yet at the same time devastatingly worse had Ruin succeeded in becoming a god. This way, someone like Abel could actually tell this story rather easily in expository material, without us needing to wait for some big book or video game to tell the whole war.

 

Almost makes me wish it had been Ruin's holocron Bane studied, rather than Revan's.

 

R-Sith RULE...

Revan, Ruin, Rivan...

 

Maybe Bane studied Revan's but Zannah studies Ruins... and wins that way

after all, there was an academy of Umbaran Shadow Assassins for the Brotherhood of Kaan. if Ruin is good, imagine what an army of them can do

 

That wouldn't really tie into the Brotherhood's fear of Bane, nor their reluctance to let him have his "hand at [their] throat".

 

I suppose Ruin may have dug up Revan's knowledge.

Darth Rivan studied the Creed of Ruin, but also came across the name "Revan" and what seemed to be an early Rule of Two: maybe he got all that from the Creed of Ruin documents too?

Plus, Revan got his knowledge from Malachor, which is also where Nihilus got his, and Nihilus's shares some similarities with Ruin in the "godmode" sense (only where Ruin was probably "I am the Living Force!", Nihilus was more "I am the death of the Living Force!").

Anyway, returning to your original speculation of whether the Umbaran "mind influence" stuff could tie in with Ruin: I'm going to say "Kriff yes!". Though it's been done a bunch of times before (Revan, TOR, Palpatine, etc.) I've always disliked the way the New Sith Empire popped up overnight by just Ruin and his ~50 apprentices.

Sure, 50 is more than 2, but I also like to believe that 2000 BBY is the end of the Golden Age of the Republic and that the Sith are extinct until Ruin resurrects the "Old Order" with the "New Order" (i.e. the "New Sith" as they've been called in some sources). Added to that, I don't want him to have relied on a Sith spirit like Exar Kun or the fallout of a recent war like Revan. Ruin was the first of the New Order and the "first Sith" if you go strictly by Lucas's TPM comments of the Sith being two thousand years old; that's why I think Ruin deserves to be something extra special.

This is especially apparent now with the True Sith Empire in TOR having basically retconned everything pre-Ruin into "just remnants of the Sith Empire", which gives the potential for Ruin to have genuinely been the first truly "New Sith" who became a Sith all on his own, not through some convoluted mega plan being schemed by the big bad Sith Emperor behind the scenes. Only Ruin'd still have relied on Revan's teachings...which were in fact Malachor's... but that's a technicality.

It'd also account for why Ruin got the honour of having the New Sith Empire. Not "Exar Kun's version of the Old Sith Empire", or "Revan's version of the Old Sith Empire", and so on. But by creating the first truly new Sith Empire, completely independent of the original. (Aside from the actual dark side teachings... which arguably could actually pre-date the Sith back to Xendor anyway.)

And because this is the truly "New" Sith Empire it adds to why I feel it's creation is "sudden", as even if you consider Revan's "sudden", Revan still had the Kunites to rely on, Exar Kun still had the Massassi to rely on, etc. Ruin genuinely had nothing but the teachings themselves. Heck, even the original Exiles had the Sith species to start things off. Ruin had zip. So 50 years seems extremely fast considering the Exiles took 2000 years to be ready to return to fight the Republic... then another 1300 to try it again. This all raises the "How could he do it then?" question mark, which is why I feel he should be incredibly powerful. More on that below.

Even if you think the 50 years he may have reigned fairly long for a Dark Lord, I prefer to think that (i) he spent most of that time off in a hovel somewhere learning everything there was to know about the Force; (ii) by this point in time the Galaxy genuinely hates the Sith: after the Great War, the Atton Rand "Jedi? Sith? What's the difference?" mentality is probably ancient history and the Sith recognised by the public for the monsters they are; and (iii) a public Sith Empire that knowingly exists for 50 years but actually achieves jack would in fact be one of the worst Sith Empires ever, so I think there needs to be much more to it than that. But let's not forget the New Sith Empire also continued to exist for basically the next 1000 years: how on earth could Ruin have created a massive empire that the Republic didn't just completely obliterate overnight? That points toward a hidden factor: he created something strong enough to challenge the Golden Age of the Republi

 

I think that's a great idea.

I was more interested about whether or not his apparant influence over beings external to him was the main contributing factor to why he developed a belief in solopsism. Plenty of Sith developed the ability to control and manipulate others -- Ruin was, quite possibly, born with the ability and never knew a life without it.

Off-topic
Though, speaking of mind control and 'indoctrination' and stuff... on my most recent playthrough of Mass Effect I did wonder if, perhaps, the Star Forge acted in a similar fashion to Sovereign. KotOR II focuses more heavily on Malachor and 'wounds' in the Force, of course, as the means by which Revan indoctrinated folk. (Which makes me wonder if perhaps Drew took a page out of Obsidian's book when it came to Mass Effect?)

I think you're on to something here. Following TOR, I assume that the Sith Empire will have been *truly* defeated. Not "defeated and forced into exile" but actually destroyed. As such, the "Old Sith" no longer have any influence. Though Kun and Revan were both "New Sith", in a sense, the old Sith Empire was still out there and had an impact on both of them.

When Ruin shows up, however, perhaps the Sith are truly dead without a single Dark Lord out there in the galaxy.

To tie this in with the "New Sith" stuff... maybe, before Ruin showed up, "Sith" had come to refer to the perfectly happy, normal population who just happen to live in the regions that once birthed the Sith Empire. People would refer to the "Old Sith Lords" in hushed and whispered tones... but everyone knew that the Sith people were okay.

Maybe Ruin subjugated them first.

It'd be quite a nice homage t

 

You know, the cooler you guys make Ruin here on the boards, the more disappointed we'll all be when he eventually appears in a story and is lame as hell.

 

Pfffft.

When has anything like that ever happened?

 

The cessation of reality.

 

I'm actually surprised it's never occurred to me before. While I like the idea Ruin studied basically everything, we know that Bane did the same thing, but in typical (anti)heroic storytelling fashion, there's always a philosophical focal point.

So tying the Creed of Ruin into Revan just seems to make sense... and, in a way, they are the same thing. Palpatine may have named his apprentices Dark Lords, Bane did not if we go by the books. Unless DoE changes it, Zannah isn't Dark Lord until she does Bane in. So, Revan/Bane's "one to embody the power" is very reminiscent of Ruin's philosophy.

Ruin just took it to the next Palpatine/Dark Empire/"I am God; why do I need an apprentice?" level.

Interesting.

I like that. It also provides a level of possibility for the whole Umbaran-mind-influence stuff, just in Ruin's case on a personal level, without some giant superweapon. And, as I mentioned in my previous post (I made a few [read:ton ] edits while you were writing yours), it would only grow more powerful as Ruin enslaved more and more people; think UnuThul and the Killik Colony: lots of people = lots of Force-potential = uber turbolaser stopping awesomeness.

Yeah. While I remain highly sceptical that they'll ever restrain themselves from despoiling 3000-2000 BBY with yet another Even Greater Great Sith War, I really do like the idea that the Sith have been truly extinct for a long, long time.

Sure, there is something about Ruin uniting the surviving tribes or cults, I think? But I don't really think that counts as the Sith still existing, per se. Palpatine "united the tribes" when you consider the Sun Guard or the Prophets of the Dark Side or all those guys... but they didn't exactly count as "OMG. Awesome Dark Lords!" If they did, the Jedi wouldn't have been saying the Sith were extinct for the last 1000 years, as surely all those former Sith cults must have done something.

The difference? None of them were masters of the Sith (which if we go by Lumiya, means a lot of fancy new powers). Hence Ruin was the first truly genuine new Dark Lord for centuries, if not millennia.

Hmm... not quite what I had in mind in my edited post, but I actually don't mind that.

In my previous edits I'd said:

 

Don't ask me. I just waffle enough until I eventually strike gold.

I was surprised myself at the Underlord/Underverse connection though... sure, we already have been told the Underlord "may have been pulled back from Chaos", but there is a nice parallel in the Lord Marshal's powers and the idea of the Underlord as this almighty conqueror of death (coughdarrtarcough).

Seriously though, the Dark Underlord thing suddenly strikes me as a really good way of making Ruin into somebody truly legendary. I know there have been theories of the Underlord being Xendor or Ragnos, but--holding a hand over the Sith fanboi in me's mouth--I have to admit that it being Ragnos (i) has been done, and (ii) is kinda lame.

Well, not lame, but just: we've seen it before with Tavion. Furthermore: New Sith! I'd much rather instead of the New Sith Empire needing to wait for one of the Old Sith to be resurrected, the Underlord was one of the New Sith themselves. The lameness of Ragnos or Xendor comes from the fact it means everyone in the New Empire were pansies, and now that we've had TOR do that to Revan and Kun, I'm getting sick of "Ancient Sith are the bestest!"

And the most logical New Sith to make him? The very first. Ruin.

Whose original demise had, rather ironically, been due to his own excessive awesomeness. But after his resurrection he understood where he had gone wrong and finally got his chance to openly go to war with the Jedi. Complete with all the new knowledge of the dead he had now amassed from his time in the Underworld...

Maybe death (i.e. becoming vegetable + killed by followers) was part of Ruin's supreme plan all along?

"Darr tah Ruin!"

 

Chaos is just the Sith interpretation of the Netherworld as far as I'm concerned. Jedi embrace breaking down and transforming into part of the greater whole (even if they will sometimes delay it for a time), whereas Sith - with their heavy focus on the individual - see it as the worst thing imaginable. 'Chaos' is only a place of torment for them because they fight - rather than welcome - being subsumed which is very painful.

Heh. That might be a half decent way for me to explain away how those pockets of 'dark side energy' are created. It's what happens when a darksider doesn't know how to become a spirit and actually stay "whole" yet is fighting the breaking down of his consciousness into the Force.

I'm not a fan of the idea that the Force and the dark side are literally seperate. Not at all. There isn't a big fat dividing line between a Light Side and a Dark Side with corresponding afterlives. There's the Force and the dark side to it (it responding most swiftly to negative emotions and messing people up in the head) that all Jedi must guard against.

For me, Ruin getting turned into a vegetable wasn't about him touching the Force and it rejecting and scarring him, or whatever, it was about his entire worldview being proven 100% wrong after he reached into the highest mental plane possible (whilst still remaining 'alive') and the power of that revelation breaking him. It's not because he didn't understand... it's because he did. The sheer horror of what he truly was in light of that understanding was too much for him.

I'll do a large "Quotepost" later.

 

Well, sure... Chaos, Netherworld, Enlightenment, Oneness... to me the terms are all more semantic distinctions than anything. Either way: Ruin couldn't accept what he saw. He may have been darkness, but what he touched was dark and horrific to him; the realisation that "Oh crap. I'm nothing but a cog in the giant machine after all. I'm not God. Noooooo!"

For Ruin, the part of the Force he touched was the part he perceived as "wrong" or "the dark side" or "the light that I don't want to accept" or however one wishes to perceive it. If he was a raging "I am the Dark Side!" character, then he touched the light. If he was a Jacen Solo "I have not fallen!" character, then he simply touched what represented, to him, total anathema... which he may have thought of as light or dark, just depends on POV.

Either way, whatever happened to him--which, if that did happen in a story, like everything to do with the Force itself would never be explicitly qualified anyway--I still feel it slots together with the possibility for him to return from the Force as the Dark Underlord.

I should stress that when I talk about "Chaos", the "Dark Side" (with a capital D.), or the "Underworld", I'm still just talking about the Force... just whatever part of it they pulled the Underlord out of. Whether one considers that the "Dark Side", the same old "Netherworld" as everyone else, or simply the "Chao[tic]" existence of those who refuse to join with it, then either way it's still dragging the Underlord's spirit back from the place after death, whatever that place may be or form it may take.

I just really hate the Underlord being an "Old Sith". It totally ruins (no pun intended) the whole purpose of the New Sith. It's the same as how I really don't like the lost tribe. As much as I'm willing to appreciate their story as an isolated thing, in the greater scheme of things I still think a lost tribe does to all the Sith before it the same thing TOR has done to all the Sith before it too. And at least TOR they're actively trying to tie into what happened in KOTOR and TotJ; the lost tribe have no chance at all as being retconned into having anything to do with Palpatine or Bane or anybody else before them. Hence why for once I'd like the New Sith Empire to not have to rely on dredging up some ancient Dark Lord, but resurrect their one, true leader: Darth Ruin.

Also, I'd rather there not be another significantly successful Dark Lord between Ruin and the Underlord. That then basically just leaves Ruin as the only New Sith worth being resurrected.

And if Ruin was forced to face up to the fact that he was not God, like he had believed in his solipsistic delusion, it horrified him: hence the vegetable end. But then, faced with that understanding, an understanding that utterly crippled everything he was, he was left with but one desire: destruction. If he couldn't be the God of the Force, then he would obliterate the Force instead.. it was Ruin with his entire belief system crushed.

Thus the Dark Underlord didn't want to be the Master of the Universe... but the Destroyer.

It's almost the Rhandite philosophy... if you can't create a better existence, then all that's left is to obliterate the one that already's there. And what is destruction... but to bring to ruin...?

 

now I want your take on Nihilus backstory because he sounds like your version of the Dark Underlord

some more thoughts:

the re-call of the Dark Underlord might be because they want their only true successfull leader back... realising much too late when the Republic is close to victory with their Jedi that they should not have killed Ruin.
BUT what if one of the many infighting Sith factions claims to be the true one by claiming the Ghost of Ruin is guiding them and thus they grow and take over other Sith factions... yet all this is a lie to get power. though, fate is like an evil boomerang and a lie could turn true... when they are close to being exposed as fake heirs of Ruin and the Republic and J

 

How can you separate something from a component of itself?

Going by the Jedi belief, the dead seem to transform into the Force. Other than in that sense - which is not divided into sides - there don't seem to be clear indications of afterlives.