How many other Sith Lords existed within The Rule of Two?

Besides from the ones we know about,how many other Sith Lords do you guys think existed within that 1,000 year time frame?

 

I can't source it, but i seem to remember reading somewhere that Vader was the 13th Sith Lord.

supposedly the cover to the first Tales of the Jedi comic is an example of this, with Ulic as the original, the ten lightsabers behind him as the next ten, then Palpatine and Vader as 12 and 13:

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/t0/t4890.jpg


Wish i remember where i heard that.

 

Don't Dooku and Maul count too?

 

Ulic is not the first Sith Lord by a longshot, and he isn't a part of the rule of two. Heck, he isn't even a Sith Lord in this, he is Kun's apprentice.

To be honest...we have no idea. Between the long lifespans of some species and the short life spans of most Sith apprentices, it could be anywhere from dozens to thousands.

Known (by me) Sith are: Bane, Zannah, Cognus, Millennial, Vectus?...well, something V, Maul, Tyrannus, Vader, Sidious.

 

Don't forget Plagueis. Vectivus might've, but we have no way of knowing.

 

I don't think we'll ever know, or perhaps shouldn't know. It probably would be good to leave the number open in case there is a need to delve into the past and create a Banite Sith for the occassion. Also, it gets dicey too when you consider Sith initiates/apprentices like Set Harth or Vergere. I mean, where do they fit in the Rule of Two? I'm guessing there were other flame outs as well.

 

It's pretty much impossible to say really, Bane > Zannah > Cognus > Millenial is pretty well established, but even then we have no real idea of the timelines, no idea how long after Bane started his order that Millenial was about, not only that, but Millenial seems to have rejected the Rule of Two at some point anyway. Then we have a massive gap to Vectivus who has no real allocated time frame and may or may not have had anything to do with Bane's Sith, then another jump to Plageius > Maul > Tyrannus > Vader.

It would be easy to say 1000 years, 40 years each, which gives around 25, but given the nature of the Sith some may have lasted closer to 4 years than 40 and then there's Plageius who could "cheat death" so who knows how long he lived (though when that novel finally gets released we may know more). I wouldn't include the half trained and cast off apprentices personally though, whilst clearly instructed in using the dark side, they were never really members of the Banite Sith Order.

 

If Douglas Adams taught me anything it's a resounding 42.

42 Sith Lords.

Might be right.

 

I personally think 20s-30s is when Sith (and Jedi) tend to reach their prime, so figure an average life expectancy of between 40 to 60 years per Sith Lord, assuming that they're all trained from birth (it's been mentioned that sometimes adults actually make better Sith, given that they're had time to experience anger/fear/etc)-so you're looking at maybe two to three Sith per century, and a total of between twenty and thirty members, max.

I quite like that it's been pretty much cast in stone that Sith Apprentices typically murder their Masters-for all their power and self-righteous belief that they're in the right, they're self-destructive right down to the very bone. Forcers are supposed to be able to reach three hundred years or so if they're humans, and considerably older in other species; these Sith Lords aren't even reaching average human life expectancy for people on Earth. Nasty, brutish, and short, indeed.

 

Wouldn't Exar Kun, Naga Sadow and others from that empire come before Ulic?

 

If only Kinh Jeen had named the Sith that he met, we might have two more on the list.

 

No idea. Like I said, I seem to remember reading somewhere that there were 13 Sith. Did Cam Kennedy paint that cover? It may have been in an interview with him. Plus, when this comic came out I'm pretty sure Exar, Naga, Bane, Revan, etc were not even invented. Ok, maybe Bane, but that's only because he could have been in Lucas's notebook somewhere. Which is also where the 13 Sith idea could have come from, a discarded idea from earlier drafts.

Personally thought it was a dark reflection of the 12 on the Jedi Council

Though, 13 Sith Masters between Bane and Palpatine could work. Even baseline humans live past 100, and thats not taking into consideration non-human lifespans and some kinda Dark Side longevity enhancements. If Lucas did have a 13 Sith idea, maybe that got recycled into the Lost Twenty (that we still didnt hear about in the films...grr)

Anyway, all the Masters we know for sure are Bane, Zannah, Cognus, Millenials replacement, Vectivus (maybe), Plagueus, and Sideous. And Caedus if you are feeling generous

 

I think the number has to be only the low side, mainly because it's incredible that Sith managed to keep it together long enough for one of them to finally win. Think about it, the early Banite Sith must have realised that eventual victory was not going come in their lifetime, but carried on laying the groundwork regardless. The later Sith must have sensed that their time was coming, but had the discipline to keep from pulling the trigger early. I think in part a long reign by Plagius, where he gets distracted by things like Sith alchemy could help explain this, but of course anything to do wtih him is pure conjecture.

 

Assuming that there are Sith Lords like Bane, Palpatine, and possibly Vader who were Sith Lords for 20+ years, we could probably say no less than from 25-50 were served. However, there could have been some who served for only 13 years or less like Dooku, so that would bring the number of Sith Lords up higher a little bit..

 

The idea of 13 Dark Lords was developed prior to the prequels. I think that concept changed with the "new rules" established by the PT.

Prior to the PT the Emperor was not believed to be a Sith - it was thought that only Vader was a Sith and had claimed the title Dark Lord somehow. IIRC the early comics implied that the Dark Lord was the ruler over all Sith and there was only one DLOTS at a time, but potentially many "lower" lords.

 

Darth Revan (creator of the Rule of Two)
Darth Bane (officially started the Rule of Two after finding Darth Revan's Sith Holocron on Lehon)
Darth Zannah
Darth Cognus
Darth Millennial
Darth Ramage (possibly and very likely)
Darth Vectivus
Darth Plagueis
Darth Sidious
Darth Maul
Darth Tyranus
Darth Vader
* Lumiya (continued to follow the Rule of Two)
* Flint (continued to follow the Rule of Two)
* Carnor Jax (continued to follow the Rule of Two)
* Darth Caedus (continued to follow the Rule of Two)

 

"He could save others from death, but not himself."

The books Death Star and Dark Lord have both said that Plagueis did not achieve the ability to cheat death.

 

There's really no way to establish a number, given that, like Sidious, many of the Sith Lords could have had multiple apprentices over time when one got killed, failed in some task, or was simply burned out by the Dark Side, or failed in the attempt to kill their master. Some Sith Lords might have been done in quickly by their first apprentice, others might have gone through a half dozen or more before someone worthy to take them out came along.

 

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sith_Lords


Ur Welcome everyone... ;-)

 

No way is Vader only the 13th Sith Lord in the Rule of Two. Even assuming extreme age differences between Sith Master and Apprentice (say, 50 years), then it required at least 20 to fill the thousand-year gap.

Factor in the fact that a 50 year age difference is impractical (a weaker apprentice could wait till his Master was elderly and infirm before killing him, long before reaching his own potential). A more realistic 25-year age difference doubles the number. Factor in multiple apprentices and you're looking at maybe 40-60 Sith Lords between Bane and Vader.

 

The list I posted earlier are just the known ones, but I could easily see around 45 Banite Sith between Bane and Vader.

 

Heard. Though I'd like to add to the record that the number could be decreased if there were a lot of non-Human Sith Lords in that era. Cognus wasn't human, and neither was Plagueis. It's possible that other non-humans, with significantly longer lifespans, were Sith in that era.

So there's know way to know unless they ever put out a definitive line of succession.

 

I think we need to stop inserting Darth Vectivus into these lists. What we know about Vectivus is that he was a kinder, gentler Sith Lord, who was not obsessed with taking over the galaxy, which almost certainly rules out him being a Banite Sith. What we see from the Darth Bane trilogy is that the Rule of Two Sith had a Palpatine-esque plan from the beginning, i.e. staying in the shadows, gradually accumulating resources and undermining the Republic, with an eye toward future generations of Sith being able to finally topple the Republic. All that might link Vectivus with the RoT is his Darth title, which now with TOR, we know Darth is a very common title historically.

I think for the succession, we should consider only Masters, only Sith Lords who have killed their master, taken an apprentice themselves, and are then killed by their apprentice. So the actual lineage leading up to Darth Sidious, with failed apprentices maybe as an appendix. So if we look at the list (excluding Millenial because he split off):
Bane > Zannah > Cognus > Plageaus > Sidious,
five Sith Lords in the succession, two of them alien, so 40%, plus evidence of at least two alien/mutant apprentices being taken (Millenial and Maul) at each end of the timeline, which indicates that these Sith were probably always open to alien apprentices. So if we assume that they perhaps ALL were Muun, and keep in mind that each of these Sith lords probably had SOME obsessive compulsive scheme to live forever (another trend in these Sith), we might see each Sith lord living for something like 200 years, filling out the missing 800 years and giving us something like

Bane > Zannah > Cognus > OLD SITH 1 > OLD SITH 2 > OLD SITH 3 > OLD SITH 4 > Plagueis (this is assuming Plagueis only reigned from 100 BBY, which we could relax) > Sidious,
for a total of 9 Sith lords from Bane to Vader.

 

Wow.
No offense - but I think that logic is totally flimsy.

There is no way to honestly guess at this - no way to guess whether some Sith became so strong that they lived for 200 years and fought off many Apprentices - or if some apprentices killed there masters while they were young or whatever.

It might be fun to theorize about all this -- but the question is moot as no matter what anyone surmises here -- over time, as books and what not are written -- all our theories will be debunked.

 

My point is to establish that 9 exists as a plausible minimum, and without any knowledge there is no way to know whether it's 9 or something higher, I do think that the theories on this thread, and in general, usually involve far too many Sith Lords.