Lit Sith Council circa 5000 BBY

is this for just legends or a one canon cause I would think the names of the sith statues with sadow on exegol may be members of the council if the statues weren't later additions

 

I once made a very theory popular that the Exegol statues could be the Sages of Dwartii. I would have retracted this theory had the film's Junior novel not made their real names (Locphet, Mindran, Sissiri, Felkor, and Naga Sadow) more widely available, but like many bits of Episode IX's oddball lore, it was scattered across too many books at the time for anyone to easily find (and boy I did try).

Having said all that, they still haven't clarified which statue is which figure, so who knows? It would still not surprise me to see tribute to the sages somewhere in the Citadel anyway, especially given the inscriptions on Snoke's ring.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sith_Citadel

At least one Legends Sith was among them (Sadow), so I'll take that.

 

Well Dryden Vos had a desk made from Exar Kun's obsidian. So Sadow being in Exegol really fits. Just who put him there and when? Or do you suppose the real Naga Sadow went there once?

When everyone complained that the "true sith" hideout of Dromund Kaas was in Sith space instead of the UR, I do wonder, now with Exegol, if they didn't after all hide on Exegol before returning to Dromund Kaas, only keeping a rump state and force there hidden right where the Jedi were looking and purging post Hyperspace War.

 

You sure do know how to bait me!

Remember that there were several Sith Councils in and around 5000 BBY, starting with the Council as of the arrival of the Daragons in Sith Space:




...with the first Sith Council at the start of the Sith Empire consisting of the original Exiles, and there only being 12 Exiles, it isn't a coincidence that there's the same number of Seats on the Sith Council of 5,000 BBY, all of whom are descended from various Exiles. What does make sense is that 1 or 2 Seats would have been removed due to rebellions (those of Dreypa and Syn) or possibly due to extinction of the line of descent of the original Exile who first held the Seat.

As for the unidentified Councilors, Garu was probably one of them. He had his own battle fleet (at least one), was entrusted with something as sacred as Adas' Holocron, operated across multiple Planets (he was Lord of Korriz but also was on Ashas Ree), and since he died in the Hyperspace War was definitely aligned with Sadow.


Shar Dakhan was surely another Councilor prior to the Hyperspace War, given his prominence and how he was entrusted with the attack on Coruscant itself as Sadow's "chief lieutenant":


I don't know who the other Unidentifieds were, but the continuity makes it clear that they were absolutely NOT Tritos Nal and Komok-Da. Tritos Nal was an elderly subordinate of Garu, rather than a person of significance himself and surely not one of the 12 (out of thousands) most powerful Sith Lords within the Sith Empire.


Komok-Da, meanwhile, is a Holocron personality that in life was descended from the Sith species, but given his familiarity with the double-bladed lightsaber he cannot have existed during the time of the old Sith Empire. The only time he actually fits into is from sometime during Vitiate's Empire, during the Great Galactic War.


What is clear is that of the Unidentified Councilors shown in the comic, two of them are Garu and Shar Dakhan. There being more than two unidentified ones prevents us from using simple process of elimination to narrow down exactly who, but if the Sith commander seen on creatureback in the Fall of the Sith Empire comic is (per the description from the Warfare Guide) the same as Shar Dakhan, then whichever of the Unidentified above most closely matches the "Dakhan" from the Fall comic must be him, and that in turn would further narrow down which of the other ones is Garu.

So, whoever the Unidentified were, we never did get their names. Who is this "Janton Balos"? Nothing came up in any online searches...

Following the War, most of the Council seats were vacant. We also know that there weren't any vacancies on the Council at the time of the death of Ragnos (all the Seats at the table are full and evenly distributed, Simus temporarily sitting at the head of the Council conference table), and Simus' death only left one vacancy besides the post of Dark Lord itself. Sadow then became Dark Lord, which presumably would have created another opening on the Council. Kressh and his two followers Dor Gal-Ram and Horak Mul were still on the Council for at least a short while until Kressh "discovered" Sadow's ploy, but with their two deaths and Kressh' flight it left 5 open Seats on the Council going into the Hyperspace War.

While Sadow and Dakhan were warring against the Republic, Kressh took control of Sith Space and created a new Council. While Kressh was killed shortly after the return of Sadow, it's been the official continuity for nearly 25 years that some of his forces survived, and presumably were the same ones that retrieved his body for burial on Korriban as seen in Kotor 2:

...after all, just how did he get buried in his Tomb? And as an aside, it would seem that Kressh was the very last burial on Korriban, given the following:


Now, once Sadow fled and Kressh was dead, Shar Dakhan acted as the Dark Lord and seems to have even managed to temporarily repel the Republic from Sith Space, or at least from parts of it, thus giving the Sith crucial time to flee or stand and fight.


The question is, who was left for him to be working with, and to command? There's also the possible continuity snarl of one source having him leading the attack on Coruscant while aligned with Sadow, but also somehow surviving to make it back to the Sith Empire no longer aligned with Sadow, and eventually taking over from Ludo Kressh. What must have happened is that he got back to Sith Space from the Republic separately from Sadow, or immediately broke away from Sadow once Kressh revealed himself and exiled Sadow.

Dakhan must also, per the continuity, have left Korriban before the Tetan forces arrived and destroyed the remains of BOTH Sadow's and Kressh' fleets, but returned with the remaining Kressh forces to force the Republic to retreat and at the very least retrieve Ludo's remains for burial from the wreck of his flagship. There's literally no other way for the continuity to work once all of these established details are factored in.

Dakhan presumably took over the newer Sith Council established by Kressh, since we know there was still a Sith Council which, and this is an amazing detail from the tOR Encyclopedia, was executed by Vitiate apart from his ritual that killed most of the other remaining lesser Sith Lords:


...with that obscure detail, we have to assume that Vitiate killed Dakhan, in addition to ending the Sith Council.

 

Also, it's worth noting that we don't know the full names of all the original 12 Exiles, and we don't know the full names of all of the Council members of the 5,000 BBY Council. Given that they are descendants of the Exiles, that the Exiles lived for hundreds of years, that the Lords contemporary to Sadow also lived for hundreds of years, and that the Sith Empire "only" existed for 1,900 years, it leaves only a few generations in between. Thus, some of the Councilors can be reasoned to have had some of the same names as their ancestor Exiles!

We don't know XoXaan's full name, we don't know the original name of Darth Andeddu, we don't know the names of the humanoid Exiles seen in Empire's End, we don't know the name of the "Red-Armored Sith Lord", and we don't know the name of the humanoid Dark Jedi Exile seen in the hierarchy chart in Book of Sith.

On the other end, we don't know the full names of Garu or Simus, nor of all the unidentified Councilors in Golden Age of the Sith.

It's entirely possible that Mul, Gal, Ram, Kressh, Ragnos, Sadow, Dakhan, etc are part of the full names of the Exiles, and that Pall, Hord, Muur, Syn, Dreypa, etc are parts of the full names of the Hyperspace War era Sith Lords.

 

A further thought on the Sith Council comes to mind, as I've been reading through some of the compiled tOR lore:

https://swtorista.com/articles/old-republic-lore-entries/

... and the number 12 keeps repeating itself. 12 Exiles, 12 (including the Dark Lord) Sith Council seats; and it just happened that Vititate, a surviving Sith Lord of the Empire, set up his successor Empire with 12 (Dark) Council seats. Same exact number.

Is there anything that precludes the Sith Council of the ancient Sith Empire from also being known as the Dark Council? Or, the Dark Sith Council, with "Sith Council" just being an informal designation? Taking that thought a step further, did Vititate just duplicate the governing structure of the Sith Empire into his own Empire? If he did, could we figure that the rest of the governing structure of the ancient Sith Empire was more or less the same as what would run Vitiate's Empire? One thing about ancient Sith history that the EU never really got around to was providing a more detailed look at the actual structure of the government of the Sith Empire between the Dark Lord and the individual Planets. We got the social structure, but not the governing system.

 

Even Palpatine was getting in on the significance of 12. Twice 6. Order 66. Or is that too tinfoil-hat-ish?