The Lost Tribe (Kesheri Sith) and Vanity

Ship bonded with Vestara because she was a trainee and that was its function, to train apprentices. She also happened to be the first Sith it encountered on Kesh.

Palpatine didn't know about the Lost Tribe. He knew about Luke. Palpatine didn't know about Abeloth, either, despite her apparent great Force presence in the Maw.

 

Excessive use of the dark side will deform you, yes, by what seems to resemble premature aging. But that takes a lot of dark side use. It's not KOTOR game mechanics; you don't turn into a zombie after you spend a month on the dark side. Palpatine is the only person we've really seen who's been horribly disfigured by intense use of the dark side. I really don't think the Lost Tribe are drawing on the dark side with Palpatinistic intensity and duration. There's no reason to think that the twenty-, thirty-, and fortysomething Sith we've been seeing are going to be ugly. There may be some subtle aging effects, and Gavar certainly looks rugged on the Allies cover, but the fact that they're not ugly hardly points to some unusual situation. Exar, Ulic, Zannah, Malak, Traya, Maul, Dooku, Jerec, Sariss, Brakiss -- none of them were hideously deformed by usage of the dark side. Palpatinistic extremes are the exception, not the rule.

 

In my own head, the excuse I've given that is due to Kesh being either in, or next to the Kathol sector, so being masked by the Rift.

 

Nothing for nothing but the Lost Tribe of the Sith is a complete bore. Can't get myself to read it, even if I try.

 

There's Ommin, Amanoa and Malgus. They're deformed on a Palpatine, and more, level.

 

Amanoa wasn't really deformed. She simply looked old. Which she was.

Ominin was also old.

As for Malgus. Well the latest trailer shows us exactly how he got so messed up. Its also a distinct possibility that he is Rattakai.

 

Uh... she was queen for 18 years and had her daughter during that time. I don't think she's as old as you are thinking.

As well, whether true or not, The Wook describes Ommin as "Soon after, Ommin lost control of his own body?the price he paid for the power of the dark side..."

 

We don't know hold old she was when she became Queen. And its a stressful life. Valorum was prematurely aged.

Heck, Obi-Wan was prematurely aged. And unlike Ominin, Amanoa wasn't even a particularly powerful darksider.

Ominin was old, but yes, his use of the Force had a great deal to do with this. But like Amanoa, I don't think he was a natural when it came to the Force, and so his study of extremely advanced techniques of Sith sorcery and alchemy affected him very seriously. Thats what the degeneration is caused by, after all. Overdrawing power. Some would be more affected than others based on their innate ability.

 

Sidious, as Havac has said, was an extreme example - he was also old for a human, on top of being a Sith Master, but the thing that really nailed his coffin appearance-wise was how extensively he messed around with the Force. The very essence of the dark side is misusing the Force, whether intentionally for things like Sith sorcery or on the spur of the moment in a dark rage like a Sith marauder.

As to how much ROTS affected this ... it's been argued to death by fans far more steeped in SW lore than I. I'd say he was seriously affected, to be sure, between generating and reabsorbing that much lightning in a very short period. How much, OTOH, I'm less brave about speculating.

There is, however, something to be said for the idea that excessive Force use - regardless of light or dark - in a very short time-frame can be damaging. Luke's light-ball stunt in TJK offers support to this; Jacen, however, taught him techniques to counter some of that, by TSW (IIRC).

Is it possible - and I'm just tossing this out as an idea - that the very thing that caused the Corbos Exiles to be hounded so severely during the Second Great Schism was the misuse of the Force to warp life, as opposed to other "overload" techniques?

At first, it seemed quite obvious, since much of the canon I've read (especially The Essential Guide to the Force) indicates that of course warping life with the Force was what caused Ajunta Pall and his pals to be kicked out to the Stygian Caldera. But I got to thinking; the Jedi have been ... shall we say, not happy with, but accepting of, sizeable uses of the Force if they deem it in the greater good (on the small scale, a Jedi's self-sacrifice, or on a larger scale, things such as the wall of light that ravaged Yavin 4).

Clearly, churning out Leviathans is going to be frowned upon, and it definitely should be. But what if the Exiles' experimentation started in a more innocent fashion - Force-based genetic therapies, for example? Did the Jedi throw out a concept that was potentially promising had it been sanctioned and carefully controlled?

And what of Vergere's Art of the Small? If Mara had been pregnant with Ben during the Second Great Schism, would Vergere's tears have been viewed as the boon they were (at least up until Mara's last month of pregnancy), or would the Council have screamed bloody murder?

Back to the central topic: the Tribe is vain, to be sure. But maybe their high standards for beauty are a reflection of their recognition that it takes a great deal of control and caution to use the Force as willfully as Sith do, as deeply as the powerful Sith Lords do, and not eventually melt down ...

 

Some of it could be a case of "Practice makes perfect."

As was pointed out, Luke got shriveled up when he created the illusion of the Jade Shadow for the first time. The next time he did it, no damage. Similarly, I believe if Jacen had managed to achieve his enlightened state a second time, the toll on his physical appearance would have been less taxing.

So from this, you get the notion that while some disfiguring may occur, there's not really enough significance in the Lost Tribe's history to suggest that anyone had to constantly whip his/her peers to stay in power.

The KotOR degenerating scheme was exaggerated and Palpatine's instant change from ugly to please help must have been a result of his using Lightning on Windu at such a close range where the damage could have arced back onto him and his Force showdown with Yoda.

All in all, there's nothing to show that the Lost Tribe ought to be disfigured. We haven't seen any displays of tremendous power from them yet. One could argue Luke was distracted when Galaan rebuked his ship tug as Vestara was racing into the fray, so that little episode wouldn't have caused much shriveling.

And Havac, c'mon man, Traya was ugly.

 

I think it's a good point that maybe the fact that the Keshiri Sith have been so underwhelming when facing the Skywalkers is because of their emphasis on physical beauty and the fact that over usage of the darkside deforms the person.

I think this Sith are probably the closest that could come to being grey in the EU, as long as they learn the benefits of learning Jedi techniques.

They're dark, but they don't lose themselves to the darkness (see Anakin in ROTS). They have an open mind to learning techniques and increasing their own power. While they do look for more individual power within their society, they look at things that could benefit their society.

 

Maybe they become the Imperial Knights.

Yeah, I don't really think so either, but a lot can happen in 80-90 years, and something has to have happened to them between FotJ and Legacy. Either they vanish, they're whipped out, they're absorbed into the Jedi or One Sith, or they become the IKs.