The Ancient Sith Empire on Arkania and pre Great Hyperspace War conflicts of Expansion

We are kind of referring to the original Sith Empire and the Sith species, both of which you see in Tales of the Jedi: Golden Age of the Sith and Tales of the Jedi: The Fall of the Sith Empire. The mention about the Exiles and stuff comes from various lines in those comics and scattered throughout the EU, being mentioned in articles, rpgs, comics etc etc.

 

not an easy answer, all we collected for our pet project here is from various sources:

Great Hyperspace War is in "Golden Age of the Sith" and "Fall of the Sith" Comic Arcs

The Hundred Year Darkness and most other stuff we talk about is only mentioned in SOME sources or mostly from guidebooks, the essential chron/new essential chronology, the essential atlas, essential guide to the Force, several West End Games RPG Guidebooks and starwars.com Hyperspace articles from Abel G. Pena and countless more. And in every book there is less than a page about this or even just one sentence at times. even some stuff from the Era of Luke Skywalker hints back at things we are talking about, like Xoxaan from Legacy comics, Karness Murr from several comics, Crosscurrent novel, FOTJ tie in books about the Lost Tribe etc.

it's a big puzzle we are trying to solve without having all the pieces yet.

Best you read the above mentioned comics and then the guidebooks I named.

 

quick question: Is enough about Rhen Var's backstory known? Like when it turned icy, when it was inhabited and when not or why? It is between Ossus and Corbos so maybe important.

the wook tells me: Millions of years ago it turned icy, before that it was lush paradise. Yet many Jedi artifacts can be found below the Ice (!!!). So when were the Jedi there? did it have some warmer times in between the ice ages? sounds like early Jedi stuff, might tie into our era of discussion.


*scratches head* checking Ambria lore... it is said after the Great HYPERSPACE War Sith went to Ambria as refuge... not the Hundred Year Darkness. might I have misread that earlier. oops. hmm and the Sith Sorceress might be the sole thing there before the Great Hyperspace War.

 

Thanks dude will look into the Tales of The Jedi stuff and can KotOR be played offline till I get my Internet back up and running in a couple.Is KotOR as good as I hear it is,Other Sw games you guy recommend?
Thanks for the help.

 

back to Veesgas Tuwan... the Atlas Sith space Map mentions Arkania as EARLY Sith colony AND includes the library in (...) there. So contrary to textual evidence, does this mean Adas Sith pre-Exiles for sure had Arkania AND a library of sorts but the thing the Jedi destroyed was the one the Exiles had expanded later, to work the date it "had been built" into it all?

 

They may have indeed but from what I have seen in my opinion I think they might have NOT been stripped of their weapons entirely. Its mostly based on these pictures:
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/2/25/Corbosbattle.jpg
This shows Karness Muur fighting in at the battle of Corbos with his yelllow bladed protosaber
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/1/1b/Xoxaan_Muur.jpg
This shows Karness Muur and XoXaan who had just arrived with the rest of the Dark Jedi on Korriban, with the Sith bowing down to them. He has an identical lightsaber to the one he had in the battle of Corbos. Though because there would have been a period of time before the primitive Sith actually accepted the Dark Jedi as Gods because it would have taken time to build a relationship with the Shadow Hand, and Kill the current Sith King who ruled over whatever nation of Korriban. So there would have been time maybe to create a new one, Jedi create identical looking lighsabers all the time, but I find it unlikely that in that brief period of time he would be able to acquire the materials, along with all the other Dark Jedi. It is possible though, but considering he makes a new modern lightsaber at some point (as shown below), I think it is unlikely he will build a new lightsaber twice as a Sith Lord.
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/4/45/Red_Armored_Dark_Lord.jpg
This shows a Sith bowing down to a red armored Dark Jedi who has a modern lightsaber. It looks like the Sith has been defeated in an arena.
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/f/f2/Sithwarrior.jpg
Here's another picture of him, but more detailed.
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/1/1e/Muur_saber.jpg
As shown, Karness Muur would build a new lightsaber as a Sith Lord, a modern lightsaber.

My opinion from all that is that at least some of the Dark Jedi brought their weapons with them, Tionne Solusar says in JvS:TEGttF that they were stripped of their weapons, but that is her word, she could not possibly know for sure, especially when records of the Hundred-Year Darkness are not easy to come by, especially during her lifetime. But I wont disagree outright with you because it could go either way, I've been wrong before.

Interesting.... Sounds good! I wish everything would be made to make sense with EU....

I very much like this idea! Heres what I think would be a good scenario:
After Adas's death and driving off the Rakata, the Sith Empire expands from Korriban to throughout the Stygian Caldera (nearby planets) making their capital Ziost because of all the war on Korriban, and because of the reasons listed (like confidence after just defeating the Infinite Empire, or just exploration, or simply because they CAN now with the hyperdrive provided by Rakatan technologies etc) in previous posts they expand beyond the Stygian Caldera a

 

Lightsabers:

Hmm... wook says starfighters escorted the drone ship out of republic space but not what happened to them. Might the Sith have tricked them with mind powers and taken them with them? If a Jedi flew one of them they'd have lightsabers and weapons. AND ships. though most likely the fighters turned back at the edge of rep space


your scenario:

I love it. Though at first I got reminded of Stargate and the Goa'uld after Ra / Adas is dead all vying for Sith'ari power! But it works here. Arkania then is Earth sidenoteidea: Didn't the Arkanians also help in creating/altering the Troiken double-heads (like the Podracercommentator of TPM)? I thought I read that somewhere.
your scenario needs to add how the Exiles mixed with the red sith species, romance, sex and genetics ok genetics you mentioned, but I believe the story needs romance AND sex or how some true blooded red sith could keep their power, too.
Also a nice end to your scenario... let me tweak it a bit:

the worlds outside the caldera are listening posts and watchposts for possible jedi invasions. not full invasions or sith settlements. Ajunta Pall knew the Republic and hyperlanes. Yet kept them secret from others. Sadly we do not know how they died, but we do know they kept their secrets... and their outlying listening posts were forgotten, together with the paths beyond the caldera. the Sith were trapped within once again.
outside these sith colonies over time died out or tried their own little rise to power and failed. they turned into slaving organisations, black sun and others or merged with them abandoning their posts. maybe even Pal and company died outside the Caldera on a later mission and those left within were trapped because nobody returned. thus the crossbreeds shall rule, the best of both species united.
also those colony worlds might have been used to get more species or humans to breed with into Sith Space... maybe through the Crucible?

 

the wook says the library on Arkania grew over "thousands of years" until nobody could find what he was looking for...

while I remember that as a quote from some source, I wonder if this is a recent wook addition? didn't see it a few days ago.

this would seal the library as ADAS SITH FOUNDED growing until Adas Sith left Arkania... forgotten and never found by the republic or Jedi that were on Arkania for centuries. then Arkania was left by them again and the Arkanians, too did not find it or hide it until Exiles and Sith later found it again, made use of it and until the Jedi destroyed it post-Sadow.

nice

 

Am I stupid? this is from the wook Arkania Entry:

When the Jedi on Ossus heard of a possibly re-emerging Sith force, they sent Jedi Masters across the known galaxy to places strong in the dark side, and Master Arca Jeth was sent to Arkania. Jeth cleansed the world of the dark side as much as possible set up a Jedi Praxeum on the planet, where he would later train such Jedi as Ulic Qel-Droma, Cay Qel-Droma, and Tott Doneeta. Many of the near-Human people to which Jeth belonged came with him and settled on the world: they came to be known as Arkanians. A number of diamond mines were established on the world.


Arkanians are not Arkanians? Arca was first Arkanian? where is that from? sounds like a grave wook error to me.


comments section there even says new chron confirms arkanians on arkania as of 17000 BBY


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

there, too, Arkanians are said to be not native.

yet what is interesting is that they have so many different subspecies and offshoots that the baseline Arkanian can't even be determined anymore. they are not only different in their species traits, but also number of fingers, and other stuff. this is very extreme and shows their science love and genetic messing. and that must've started a long time ago, thus I think they did it already during Adas times. Maybe the Crucible was founded on Arkania to get more test subjects and dna, slaves, etc. for scientific purposes?


some Arkania ideas:

is there a name for a government ruled by scientists only? might be a likely thing on Arkania AND might be nice to have evil/mad/crazy scientists who do all and stop at nothing to make scientific progress (I am not talking Kaminoans here ) in power on Arkania.

Could Arkanians have made the Adas Sith Species several subspecies like Kissai and Massassi? sounds likely. Maybe Arkanians proved to be too much for the Sith... being good enough to make the Sith fear them and their science, because they couldn't trust them not even as slaves or aides and thus abandonned them leaving a library behind. and civil wars between the offshoot species ended the Arkanian scientists terror regime and let Arkania return to mining and a primitive life until their science reemerged with their republic membership.

 

Yeah that scenario I made was just a brief overview, therefore I didn't go much into the Sith interbreeding, just the facts and the romance etc can be messed around with however anyone likes as long as they don't conflict with the facts. Like the sex etc would be possible through alchemy and the mutating of the Massassi through that, but individual stories of characters that had intercourse with the Massassi ( ) to produce Half breeds can be developed in between these facts.

That thing about Arca Jeth being the first Arkanian I think is pretty wrong.... I mean how can there be Arkanians in 16,950 BBY if they weren't on the planet until after 5,000 BBY?!
Yeah, I think that's as big Wookieepedia inaccuracy.

And what you said about the Sith species being split off into subspecies by the Arkanians doesn't really fit. Because there are Kissai that are banished after Adas's death. It is also assumed that the castes are formed as soon as Sith civilization forms in 100,000 BBY. If the castes were created after this period like in 27,700 BBY like you suggest, there wouldn't be enough time for the Sith castes to evolve into separate subspecies by the time the exiles arrive on Korriban. I would suggest that the Arkanians were influenced by the Sith species' Sith alchemy to alter and create new species using science and that Kissai, Massassi, Engineer and Slave subspecies/castes already existed.

 

Darth Batrus?
!!!!!!!!

No need to apologise.

 

Aye aye

Anyway, I agree with Obi-wanJacobi in that I can't see the Arkanians forming the caste structure. That seemed to had been in place well before the Exiles arrived in Sith Space. I remember the line by Ajunta Pall who talks about the Sith and he says that the Massassi are remarkably malleable or something like that. That seems to suggest that the Massassi were already in existence. And as Obi-wanJacobi said, the Kissai were already present since a number of them got exiled to Tund at that point. So the caste structure was already in place.

So in regards to the Arkanians they were either a) natives that got enslaved by the Sith but were freed and inherited a love of genetics from the Sith b) were an immigrated species that came after the Great Hyperspace War c) were another species but mutated into the Arkanians by the Sith. Of the three, I think perhaps the first might be a more likely theory.

Lets go through a timeline of events, shall we? What we know is this:
-100,000 BBY the dawn of the Sith civilization on Korriban (Jedi vs Sith Essential Guide)
-28,000 BBY Adas forges the divided nations on Korriban into the Sith Empire (KotOR Campaign Guide)
-27,700 BBY the Rakata arrive during King Adas's three century reign and he fights them off his world but at the cost of his life (Jedi vs Sith Essential Guide)
--following the death of the Sith'ari, the Sith fall back to their infighting and a group of Kissai are exiled to Tund whilst the greater Sith race migrate to Ziost (KotOR CG)
-7,003 BBY start of the Hundred-Year Darkness
-7,000 BBY Veeshas Tuwan is established on Arkania (Essential Guide to Alien Species)
-6,900 BBY the Exiles arrive
-5,000 BYY Jori and Gav Daragon enter Sith Space

 

None of those are real time events, they're all flashbacks and visions that could easily represent nothing more than the characters ideas of the events.

If you actually read The Golden Age of the Sith/Fall of the Sith Empire (a horrible experiance I know) then it's clearly stated that archaic lightsabers are only attatched to their power cords while in use or when it's likely that they'll be needed. Therfore a picture of what appears to be a deactivated modern lightsaber could very easily be a deactivated archaic lightsaber.

 

The Sith actually invented the modern lightsaber, and the pictures are canon (woops I missed out this one of Ajunta Pall: http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/e/e1/Ziost_egtf.jpg ). The Jedi did not have the Sith technology of the modern lightsabers during the time of the Great Hyperspace War because they had no contact with the Sith till the Great Hyperspace War, and so you see Odan Urr and all the Jedi with protosabers - there technology had not progressed. Therefore, as you see in Lost Tribe of the Sith (set during the Great Hyperspace War), the Sith on Omen are using cordless lightsabers while the Jedi are using protosabers. And yes I have read Golden Age of the Sith and Fall of the Sith Empire, in fact, they are my favourite comics ever -- not just of Star Wars. Also, according to Kreia, Tulak Hord was a lightsaber duelest, and he lived before the Great Hyperspace War.

EDIT: Personally I don't reference from Wookieepedia because I know that there is a lot of false information, but what I will quote here is actually accurate and backs up what I said:
"It seems the Dark Lords of the Sith Empire were ultimately responsible for the advancement of lightsabers, replacing the belt-mounted power pack with a power cell within the hilt. An internal superconductor was introduced, which transferred the returning looped energy from the negative-charged flux aperture back into an internal power cell. With this modification, the power cell would only expend power when the energy loop was broken, such as when the lightsaber cut something, solving the power supply problem. According to the Tedryn Holocron, the Sith also created the schematics for the first Double-bladed lightsabers.[3][4] Wielders of these original modern lightsabers include Karness Muur, a Dark Jedi who had wielded an archaic lightsaber, but later switched to a curve-hilted modern lightsaber.[5]. The Sith crew of the Omen were also equipped with modern lightsabers.[6]
Muur also appears to have been one of the Sith Lords to establish the tradition of wielding lightsabers with synthetic lightsaber crystals, which was maintained until its resurgence in 3,653 BBY. However, this tradition was disregarded by Exar Kun during his reign, as he and his followers opted instead to continue using their Jedi lightsabers in combat, though at least one follower used a ligh

 

According to the Essential Atlas, the Rakata once controlled Rhen Var. Since they are known to have dramatically altered the biospheres of planets in the past (Tatooine going from a lush world to a desert...though that was because the Rakata bombarded it; Kashyyyk, where the wroshyrs and possibly even the Wookiees are the result of Rakatan tampering; and in KOTOR, Manaan is speculated to have once been something other than a world ocean). So perhaps the Rakata did this to Rhen Var. OR they had the tech to do so, but didn't use it. The Jedi, coming thousands of years later, activate it, and accidentally freeze the planet.

That's my take on it.

 

I didn't say they weren't canon. I merely pointed out that they're not "primary" sources.

Obi Wan saying that Dark Vader killed Anakin Skywalker is canon after all.

Anyway, aren't some of those from the same double page spread that shows Naga Sadow as a human?

No reason he couldn't have been using an archaic lightsaber.

It looks like speculation to me. The only sources they give are Vector 1, which I have read and know to contain a highly anachronistic vision that can't be taken seriously as a source for anything, and Precipice, which I have also read and doesn't explain lightsaber history at all. I'll have to go read Skyborn and Paragon and see if they say anything on the subject.

There's no evidence that Muur has a modern lightsaber in that vision, only that his lightsaber doesn't have a power cord going into it (and that it's differant to the one he uses in the legacy flashback), which archaic lightsabers didn't have when not in use as stated in the comics. Same with the pic of Ajunta Pall in the Essential Guide.

The only source that shows modern lightsabers among the sith in Lost Tribe of the Sith, which I don't actually remember ever saying that lightsabers don't need power cords. The cover of crosscurrent shows modern lightsabers being used by ancients, but novel covers and accurate lightsaber hilt representation don't exactly have a very strong history.

 

When I say they are canon, I mean it in the way that the pictures are C-canon and should be treated as if they were in text. Like for example, that picture of Ajunta Pall with his lightsaber basically "says" Here is Ajunta Pall on Ziost with his Protosaber etc.

In a way, Obi-Wan was not lying, but he wasn't being entirely truthful, besides that Isn't a good example as that was retconned to Darth Vader was Anakin when he turned to the dark-side. Also, that's a case of "according to..."

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/4/45/Red_Armored_Dark_Lord.jpg
There is a picture from some point after the Hundred-Year Darkness and before the Great Hyperspace War, as you can see, he wields a cordless lighsaber, and this picture is from GAotS, neither is it a speculative flashback. And no, none of the ones I linked were from one with a human Naga Sadow. From the shape of the lightsaber, we can also determine it is not a protosaber, protosabers tend to be longer, bigger and besides, in this picture here of the same person, we can see it is a fully cordless lightsaber. http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/f/f2/Sithwarrior.jpg

True. Although we see through that image from GAotS that the Sith did have modern lighsabers so it could go either way if Kreia's information was correct.

Sorry to cause some confusion, but when I refer to "modern" lightsaber, I mean cordless. And I don't see why its speculative, they are just as good as if it were in text -- it is C-canon, not ambiguous canon.

"Korsin saw the lightsaber first, rolling toward his feet
when he breached the crowd. His father?s old helmsman
lay ahead, gutted. Next to Seelah and Jariad stood
Devore, his lightsaber glowing crimson in the lengthening
shadows.
?The navigator attacked first,? Seelah said.
The commander gawked.
?What difference does it make?? Korsin charged
into the center, lifting the loose lightsaber into his
hand with the Force." (page 17)
....
"Korsin stared at her and breathed deeply. He threw
Marcom?s lightsaber to the ground." (page 18)
....
"Devore?s hand shook?and his lightsaber flew into it.
The weapon that had killed Boyle Marcom ignited in
his hand." (page 25)
"?Yaru?? Devore said. It was a whimper now. ?Yaru?I
can?t see.? His face was tear-stained, but intact. Then his
lightsaber rolled free, plummeting out of sight over the
cliff?s edge and revealing the oily pink stain on his hand." (page 27)

These parts especially imply a cordless lightsaber was used. And thats just in Precipice, I'm pretty sure there's more in Skyborn and Paragon too.

As for Karness Muur, I don't have access to the comic so you will have to explain to me what is speculative about it. Eg. Unbiased, just listing out all the facts. Please.

 

I've read Paragon now and it does say that the Tapani descended Sith have developed improvements in lightsaber energy cells.

It's incredibly unlikely that Tulak Horde, Karness Muur or Ajunta Pall had cordless lightsabers. Tulak Horde is most likely to have had one because we don't know when his reign was but there's no picture of him.

That picture of Muur appears in a vision of him standing next to someone born two millenia after he died.

The Fall of the Sith Empire. Odan Urr says it at the end. I can't give a quote since most of my comics are across a border.

I'm just trying to work out what's an inconsistancy and what isn't.

 

Hmmmm.... I don't know about Odan Urr saying that the cord is detachable, but in the End of an Empire from Fall of the Sith Empire Memit Nadill certainly says it;
"I will disconnect my lightsaber from its power pack...
... and, hope I never need it in battle again."
Thank you for pointing that out, if you hadn't said I never would have realised. Cheers!

Just so I could see the Karness Muur thing for myself I managed to get hold of the entire Vector series from Knights of the Old Republc, Dark Times, Rebellion and Legacy. I don't see why Karness having the cordless lightsaber in the vision is speculative. In the KotOR it is a vision of him, and then after it there is Zayne Carrick, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. None of the later three show anything wrong about them so why should the vision of Karness Muur be wrong? Then later in Rebellion there is another vision of Karness Muur with Luke Skywalker at his side and Muur has the same cordless red bladed lightsaber in hand that we see in KotOR. Personally, I believe him creating a red bladed cordless lightsaber after his yellow bladed protosaber to be accurate because of this, not an inconsistency. And we see that red armoured Sith Lord with a cordless lightsaber at around the time when Karness Muur lived so I don't see it much of a stretch at all that Muur could have created a cordless lightsaber. Well thats my opinion anyway. And still, after that there is still room for improvement of the lightsaber design to happen after the Tapani exiles are integrated into the Empire, so it doesn't conflict with LTotS.

Anyway, thanks a gain for pointing out that Protosabers can be disconnected!

 

In TotJ: Redemption, it's mentioned that Rhen Var is a world "just emerging from its most recent ice age" (or words to that effect)...and then, just 4,000 years later, it's still apparently "emerging" from that same glaciation. Yeah, this bugged the crap out of me, too.

There's also some panels early on in GAotS, where two patrolling Jedi "connect" their protosabers' cords to their power-packs during a street-incident -- clearly, not everyone kept them plugged in at all times.

Muur devising a later cordless model is actually consistent with what the Essential Guide to the Force says about lightsaber design history -- it was the Sith themselves who largely overcame the technological design bottlenecks that made the early protosabers reliant upon corded power-packs. They were among the earliest to introduce extremely energy-efficient cordless versions to the galaxy. And perhaps the red-armored TotJ flashback lord somehow managed to finesse this on his own, independently of the others at that time...or else his design later simply wasn't replicable by the other Sith.

 

The details are a little off, but the main gist of it is from Tales of the Jedi Companion. Arkania was uninhabited for millennia after the fall of the Sith Empire (which I guess now would be just a millennium), until diamond miners resettled it in small numbers (only 100 as of TOTJ); Arca was later sent by the Jedi to establish his school there. That doesn't mean Arkanians couldn't have originally been native to the world, but the TOTJ-era population is immigrated and didn't come from Arkania.

 

Yeah, I saw that, when they are saving Gav and Jori right? I saw that and thought "what the hell are they doing????" And I thought that they could be connecting the cords etc but it didn't look definite, at least not as much as that quote of Nadill's.

Yeah, thats what I'm saying . And Paragon does say that the Tapani exiles were very important in improving the lightsaber design, but thats just it, they could have improved on the lightsaber design that Muur and that red-armoured Sith Lord used, so it all falls into place.

 

lightsaber problem solved... back to Arkania and the Sith? Or any other Sithy topic we had found along the way

 

Not really sure what else can be said about Arkania... all we know for certain that it predated the arrival of the Exiles so not sure what else can be said in that regard beyond limited expansion beyond the Stygian Caldera. So far, an interesting theory that turned up from the comments of others is that its possible the Sith established their library/colony on Arkania and it was from there the Exiles learnt of the Sith. This could potentially change things from the Exiles accidently encountering the Sith to their entry being a deliberate act.

Plus, Zor likes the idea of Crucible being Collectors and Sith being the Reapers I quite like that as well since it helps build up the myth of the Sith.

 

The Sith wait in dark space.