Palpatine & the Lost Tribe

Apparently there was a sizable population of Sith on Kesh. So the Darkside mojo must have been going on. If so, then shouldn't Palpatine have picked up on it? Didn't he find out about another Darkside organization?

If he did, Find out about the Lost Tribe, I wonder what he would have done?

 

Palpatine wasn't omniscient, and he had a vast, galaxy-sized empire to rule over. It's not like he's some sort of Force-user sensor that points to every gathering of them in the galaxy, or else we'd have probably never gotten A New Hope and there would be a lot less Purge survivors. Even assuming they emitted a sufficiently significant amount of dark side energy, and that the planet came to his attention, would it really matter? Unless somebody actually went down to check it out, it'd just seem like another dark side nexus. Plenty of those around already.

 

I'm happy simply to assume that Exar Kun, Revan, the Sith Emperor, Ruin, the Dark Underlord, Kaan, Bane and every other Sith before Palpatine had all left the Lost Tribe alone simply because they all realised it wasn't worth their time.

 

The lot tribe represented, pre-Ship, a bunch of lightsaber-wielding primitives with access to the Dark Side. That sort of thing had been Ossus for millenia and no one had really cared either. So it was probably never a major concern. it's not as if dark side wielding minions have commonly been in short supply, the Star Wars galaxy is apparently filled with thugs who want to use the power of the Force for their personal gain (and does this surprise anyone, no), why bother with the Lost Tribe when there's so much more closer to home.

More technically, there's an issue of navigation. Palpatine may have sensed the Lost Tribe, Darth Ruin and Bane probably did too, but they might not have had any idea how to get to Kesh. It's in the Unknown Regions after all, the planet is uncharted, and finding uncharted planets is supposed to be both hard and tedious in Star Wars. The Force can help with navigation (Ilum, the Doragon route, etc.) but it seems to have limits on just how much (and, if we wish to indulge in hand-waving, we can also say that the Force itself desired the Lost Tribe stay hidden and therefore finding Kesh became impossible). Ship breaks those navigational rules, which enabled it to take the critical first step of finding the Lost Tribe.

 

Why does Ship have navigational abilities that are unavailable to Palpatine?

 

Lol Dark Side.

 

Why shouldn't it?

Palpatine knew a whole lot, we can even say more than anyone else ever, but he didn't know everything. Besides, meditation spheres utilize a form of Force-based hyperdrive that no one bothered to duplicate later (probably because it is technically inferior to the modern designs), so why would Palpatine bother? He wasn't interested in duplicating the technology, probably wasn't even interested in researching it, being more concerned with discovering various ways to cheat death (a set of priorities that seems pretty darn logical).

Some long death Sith Lord, probably a whole line of them actually, with dozens if not hundreds of apprentices, over hundreds of years, labored to perfect the meditation spheres. If Palpatine couldn't duplicate their unique and rather idiosyncratic array of abilities in a few dozen when he had a very full plate already, does that make him somehow less impressive? Good grief no.

By the way, Ulicus, I do not find it at all improper to capitalize Dark Side, even if it is no longer common usage. The term can certainly be considered to be serving proper noun duty within the context even of Star Wars, since there are any number of 'dark sides' available, as opposed to a singular Dark Side of the Force.

 

As said, Palpatine is not a magical dark side detector; he's powerful, but he can't detect every Force-sensitive in the galaxy. Even if the magnitude of the Lost Tribe's collective dark side aura was sufficient to reach him, it's perfectly understandable that he wouldn't have done anything about it. Utilizing the Lost Tribe is not to his benefit; they're a large, powerful body of Sith with no loyalty to him. He's much better off relying on the perfectly serviceable group of Dark Jedi he already has who are acclimated to and loyal to him. Yet they are potentially useful should something about the situation change, and they're hopelessly isolated, so he's got no reason to wipe them out; keep them around in their bottle, keep an eye on them, and have them there if you need them.

 

Seconding everything Havac says; Palps locked away Tund and the Centrality to keep the Sorcerors under wraps, and he knew about Zigoola. There's little likelihood that His Wrinkledness didn't know about the Tribe, at least in some fashion, and decided to just not bother with them until he'd locked down the rest of the galaxy.

 

The dark side of the Force is identified as the dark side of the Force as opposed to say, the dark side of the moon or the dark side of celebrity culture, by being referred to as "the dark side of the Force". It is, ultimately, an attribute of the Force and should no more serve "proper noun duty" than, I don't know, "the Left Side of Luke Skywalker".

And, really, it's not up to us to decide that LFL is mistaken in insisting on a lower case dark side as correct usage, however proper or improper we might find it. *shrug*

I'm not so sure about that. Though, granted, I don't think it matters much either way for the reasons Havac put forth.

 

I think I would also agree with Havac in the sense that Palpatine was the sort that he did not trust anything that he could not control or had no loyalty to him. I mean he did after all interdict Dathomir to keep Gethzerion and her Nightsisters trapped there. Plus, I would imagine as a Banite Sith, the Lost Tribe, if he ever discovered them, would have been a threat and represented the old ways of Kaan that nearly destroyed the Sith Order so if anything he would have worked to either contain them or destroy them. That is of course if he knew they even existed which I don't think he did.

 

Given that the Tribe had no way of getting off of Kesh until Ship arrived, if Palpatine had sensed them, then he would soon realise they were no threat to him.

The Essential Atlas shows Kesh as being located just beyond the limit of the galaxy's southernmost spiral arm, which is a long way from the Core. I would say that Palpatine did not sense them at all.

 

I'm much more interested in what Palpatine thought of Abeloth. Putting Daala and the superweapons in the Maw to contain her would make perfect sense.

 

Having Abeloth in the Maw to contain Daala, now that would make sense.

 

pelpatine isn't a dark god, he was a powerful sith. but he was just a man. He for saw alot that didn't count the guy next to him chucking him down a shaft in to the core of the death star...why was that even in a throne room?

Even if he did some how detect them, why would he care?

 

Sith have tended to show a healthy respect for dark corners.

 

Disobedient children also have a healthy respect for dark corners. or any corner they are made to stand in.

 

Not sure I follow.

What I meant was that the smartest Sith usually have a tendency to be wary of unknown quantities. The galaxy is probably riddled with spots of darkness that most Sith just leave alone until they can't ignore them anymore.

 

The Lost Sith are so weak in the dark side that they don't even show up as a blip on Palpatine's Force radar........I think that explains it nicely

 

While Palpatine is undoubtedly one of the most important Sith Lords in SW history, its not like he has to be omniscient. His death at Endor is proof that even with visions and foresight you can still never be quite sure what will happen.

Kesh is far out and isolated. While I'm sure Palpatine is very knowledgeable, considering how cut-off Kesh is, there would be no reason for him to find out about them, and even if he did find out about them, he might've just decided to bomb them out of existence just in case (I think this happened to the Korunnai, Mace Windu's people sometime after the Clone Wars). Either that or just ignore them as long as they were stuck on one planet like the Nightsisters.

Aside from my annoyance that a Sith planet didn't kill themselves off in 5,000 years (although JJM's e-books are doing a better job of using the Tribe than the main FotJ novels), you'd think that if any Sith got really powerful then they could reach out and try to get someone's attention, with all that Force power gathered in one place. The fact that no one ever noticed them I take to mean that they were too stupid to try and get off by themselves. Sure they also lacked the necessary natural resources on Kesh to achieve space flight, but I think in Omen they were still waiting for the Sith Empire (Naga Sadow's, I think) to come find them, so... yeah, for Sith they sure were complacent just waiting there.

As for how Ship found the Tribe... well, partially I chalk it up due to it being old lost technology from the old Sith Empire, and perhaps more charitably, by the time it wakes up, Luke and his NJO have killed off most of the other darksiders around the galaxy, from Palpatine to the Nightsisters to many of the other sects groups.

And though Kesh's capital city probably had plenty of dark energy swirling around it after five thousand years of wannabe Sith lords living there, its not like there's any shortage of darkside planets in the galaxy, most much closer to the Core or at least with many more legends about them (and possibly buried secrets too), from Korriban to Dromund Kaas to Ziost to Vjun, so why bother with some other planet far out there that might feel dark?

 

Also, i think its said that Palpatine did not know of the Maw Installation since that was Tarkin's pet project which he kept secret from the Emperor. So, if thats the case, I doubt he would have left Daala behind to watch for Abeloth. And abyway, it makes Palpatine too... omniscient if he did that deliberately.

 

Meh, should. Dark Side works for me, so does dark side. I don't see why this should be scrutinized at all considering that "the dark side" is used pretty much interchangably with "Satan" or "the Devil." Ha-Satan originally(well, theologically speaking that isn't proper from an Islamic perspective, so let's say from the Hebraic tradition) was an agent of God, essentially tasked with making a case against humanity in God's Heavenly Court. I have no problem with using Dark Side as a proper noun. It's a different thing entirely than the left side of Luke Skywalker.

 

Hm. I'm not convinced that's all too relevant. One can use it interchangeably with "the Bogan" (far more comparable with "ha-Satan" and its derivations, I'd think), as well, but "the dark side" is nevertheless shorthand for "the dark side of the Force", in which context it is descriptor rather than name or title. Which is perhaps why, if you'll permit me to hazard a guess, LFL completely stopped using the upper case however many years ago.

Of course, none of this is all too relevant to the thread and, frankly, I regret that my first comment caused the tangent it did... I'm somewhat used to folk ignoring that particular idiosyncrasy of mine. If you wish to continue playing the Dark Side's advocate, however, you know where to PM me.

And, if not, even better.

 

Naga Sadow raises you his Dark Side to your Vergere's dark side.

 

Inner darkside or the nebulious devil force darkside?