Darth Sion's origins retcon?

Okay, I'm kinda confused here. As anyone here who has played Knights of the Old Republic knows, Darth Sion, Lord of Pain, was created at Malachor V by giving into his pain. The Mass Shadow Generator almost crushed Sion under the weight of the huge gravitational anomalies, so to save his shattered body, he embraced the pain and became Darth Sion.

That was the original story.

Today, I was reading on Wookieepedia, and I came to Darth Sion's article. As I read it, well.......... this doesn't add up with what I was led to believe.
The article says that Sion fought alongside Exar Kun in the Great Sith War. This was where he developed his pain ability. Okay....
Then, it goes to say that he was shaped in the Mandalorian Wars. So, now the article is contradicting itself.
Then, it says he fought with Darth Revan's Sith Empire. I can maybe see that.

This article doesn't make sense. Wasn't his master Kreia? And wasn't she supposed to be the one who founded the Sith Triumvirate between herself, Sion and Nihilus?

The whole point of Sion being the lord of pain was to show what could have happened to the Exile if she had gone down his path in order to survive Malachor's destruction. He is a window into what the exile might have become. So why the retcon? It kind of takes away the impact that his original origins story had.

Which is considered the true version? The game's evidence, or the revised article? I'm sticking with the game, because the article just waters Sion down into just another Sith Lord, instead of a personal threat to the Exile.

 

Yeah, a fan-edited source always overrules what's stated in source material.

And if my sarcasm wasn't quite up to snuff:

Soo, anybody feeling like changing the Battle Of Endor article to reflect that the Empire actually won?

 

The article says what's in the source material.

That's what all those [1]s and [2]s are. Links to the source.

Zandalor: I think you're mixed up on Sion's backstory. There was never anything about him being formed because of the battle at Malachor or the Mass Shadow Generator. I believe you're confusing it with Nihilus' story, who was at Malachor and went the way he did because of the death there. Similarly, the "what the Exile could be" was also always Nihilus' thing, not Sion's.

There is something of a retcon, though?KOTOR II indicates that Sion learned what he did all at the Trayus Academy, while the new backstory from the KOTOR CG has him coming up with it beforehand. However, I don't think the contradictions you're claiming are really there; Kreia continues to be his Master at Malachor, and she still founded the Triumvirate, regardless of when he first learned the technique.

 

I'm pretty sure somewhere stated that Sion was a participant at Malachor V. But if he was a known sith at the time, who's side did he fight on?

 

Well, there doesn't seem to be a source for him being present at the battle of Malachor.

 

If you read the KOTOR CG article itself, there actually isn't that much in it that "conflicts" with anything in KOTOR2 (if at all). Abel himself has indicated as much (he wrote the Sion entry) and emphasised the point back when the CG came out that he deliberately played up the ambiguities in the entry about how Sion is believed to have been such and such, that he may have been this and that.

Now, obviously, 9 times out of 10 anything in Star Wars that is a "maybe" generally later still turns out to be a "fact", and a lot of the uncertainty was probably simply there to tease with the comic series' readers at the time by not categorically ruling out Lucien or Haazen. That said, the CG still doesn't actually state that Sion became the walking undead during the Great Sith War; it basically just says that he was a Sith warrior back under Exar Kun and that it was when he started down the road to becoming the Lord of Pain.

My reading of that is that he probably didn't actually die for the first time until probably sometime during the Sith Civil War, but that prior to that he may have already been delving into self-mutilation and power-through-pain a la the Yuuzhan Vong and daily Sith Embraces of Pain, so to speak, i.e. the Great Sith War probably was what turned the-man-who-may-or-may-not-have-been-called-Sion into a masochist. It was then only later that said self harming led him to survive Malachor or whichever major battle it may have been and subsequently for Kreia to use the teachings of Trayus Academy to then finally complete his transformation him into the Sith Lord of Pain.

However, thanks to Abel being very crafty, all this remains very much hypothetical and up in the air, so I've always felt the Wookiee article(s) make things sound a little too concrete without conveying the actual ambiguity of the original source material's (i.e. the CG's) account. There was never anything in the CG that ruled out Kreia's role in shaping him into the living corpse that we see in KOTOR2; the CG just said that he may have started down that road much earlier. Started down =/= finished.

The way the article reads, it implies he was already Darth Sion, Lord of Pain, under Exar Kun... which just conveys the wrong idea. He might have already been, yes, but the CG leaves whether he became a Sith Lord at that stage or not open. It just establishes that he was a guy called Sion who had an affinity for escaping death. It's true the article need not be interpreted that way, as there is still a degree of ambiguity if one wishes to read it, but I can understand why it left you confused, as if someone isn't aware that the original CG entry is meant to be ambiguous then I'm not surprised that the Wookiee article comes across as saying he was categorically a Darth back then.

 

Sion fighting in the Great Sith War comes from the KotOR Campaign Guide, which is the source given in the article. Like Hydronium said, click the little numbers in the article to view the source for that particular information.

As far as we know, Sion was never actually at the Battle of Malachor V. I think you're getting Sion and Nihilus' backstories mixed up. Nihilus was the one who lost everything at Malachor and turned to the dark side over his grief. KotOR II doesn't actually give much information on Sion's life before the Mando Wars, most of what we do know is from the KotOR CG.

 

Sion didn't lose everything at Malachor, no: that was Nihilus. However, nor do we know that he was Darth Sion, Lord of Pain, back under Exar Kun. All we know from the CG is that he had already discovered he had an affinity for surviving death by drawing on his own pain. What KOTOR2 suggests, though, is that Kreia probably had a role in finally shaping him into Darth Sion as her apprentice.

I think the part of the Wookiee article that is creating the confusion (and Zandalor isn't the first person I've seen bring this up), is the following paragraph:

In theory, that paragraph still does have the ambiguity that the CG itself leaves, as the Wookiee article is not necessarily saying that the Sion in the second half of the paragraph was already the Darth Sion, Lord of Pain, mentioned in the first half. At the end of the day, the part I've bolded is just the introduction of the Biography section... it isn't necessarily saying he was Darth Sion in 3996 BBY. The key part is: "the Human who would become..."

But unless you pause to think about it, someone who only reads the Wookiee article is probably going to assume the CG mentioned he was called Darth Sion, which it doesn't, as all the CG mentions is that it was a man called Sion, which may or may not have been his given name. It's quite possible that all the CG means is he was a man called Sion who fought under Exar Kun and who simply survived near death experiences that could have killed other people. Nothing to necessarily say he was a Sith Lord yet at that point.

Certainly, it is also possible that he very may well have already been Darth Sion, Lord of Pain... we just don't know either way. All we know is that man who was probably born Sion was a warrior under Exar Kun, and then later that KOTOR2 talks about a Darth Sion who is a student of a Darth Traya, whose other student is a Darth Nihilus. Whereas Exar Kun wasn't called Darth. When he took the Darth title and adopted the Lord of Pain mantle remains unclear, though logic probably suggests that it was when Kreia got her claws into him and started throwing around the Malachor-derived "Lord of ____" titles. The trouble is it still might have been sooner; we just can't say.

Unfortunately, as much as I've often moaned about the way the Sion article is worded, I've never really been able to think of a better way to phrase that introduction, since when we just don't know, it is admittedly hard to put it in a way that isn't either too slimmed down so as to not say anything, or else excessively verbose as to spend a paragraph just to describe something that we can't know either way. It may just be better were a line break simply inserted after the bolded sentence before it goes back in time to talking about the Great Sith War.

 

To me it's pretty clear Sion was just a lowly sith adept a la Toki Tolivar during the Great Sith War. One of the numerous Exar Kun's followers but not a Sith Lord.
It's impossible he has the Darth title during Kun's reign it doesn't make sense. Kun is the Dark Lord of the Sith and this Sith Empire didn't use the Darth title so it seems very unlikely.
Since I read the CG, I pictured Sion as a Sith warrior who went into hidding with the rest of the Kunites remnants after the Great Sith War and who came out of hidding when Revan created his Sith Empire. He fought for Revan and at some time went to Malachor where he met Traya who sensed much potential in this Sith adept and trained him to become a full fledged Sith Lord, Darth Sion the Lord of Pain.

I see him as a minion and not a true member of the Brotherood during the GSW. I really don't think it could be otherwise since a Sith Lord like Sion won't have let Revan take the power and would have made his move against the Jedi much sooner...

 

Doesnt matter to me so long as we know who he was before he was Sion. Gonna be happy to see a familiar face somehow connected to it soon enough

 

Pretty much my personal view too, yeah.

I also prefer to recognise the ambiguity Abel left in about whether his original name was Sion or not. Personally, I'd prefer it not have been his birth name and his Darthification be akin to Dessel, aka Bane, aka Darth Bane, i.e. a man was born, he joined Exar Kun and decided to take a new name becoming Sion, then much later became Darth Sion under Traya. I say that because I dislike it when people just stick Darth before their names without it meaning anything, especially now Haazen has made it an in-universe thing for changing your name to be meaningful.

I know there's Zannah as the exception, but I don't even see that as an exception myself. I see her name as Rain, and Zannah as that buried part of her soul that she offered up to the dark side, so I still see it as very much embodying the sense of "transformation" usually involved. Not that I care all that much if he was born Sion, but on the whole I'd prefer it be part of his Sithification like Revan, Malak, Traya and Nihilus.

Oh, and Voren can just go to hell, like really, he can burn in the pits of Chaos as a wannabe who never made the cut.

 

I guess I just put the pieces together from in-game material that he was created at Malachor.
Having giant gravity wells crushing against him would explain the shattered bones. It added up, and I rather liked the idea of Sion being spawned from the wreckage of Malachor V.

 

Well, as the one who wrote the article, that's the rub. That bolded sentence (and the bit before it, and its placement) is practically a direct paraphrase from the CG line. If there's an ambiguity, it's good practice on the Wook to stick as closely as possible to the source's wording and implications rather than try to cast one's own interpretations in there and risk getting it wrong.

But that paragraph break is a good idea, since KOTOR CG does that too. I've added it.