Five thousand and one hundred years before the Battle of Yavin, the Dark Lord Marka Ragnos ROSE to power. By CRUSHING his adversaries and gaining wealth and glory for the Sith Empire, he commanded respect and loyalty from many subjects. His leadership led to the Golden Age of the Sith and allowed him to rule the Empire for a century.
Toward the end of Ragnos’ rule, two Sith sorcerers sought to replace him as the next Dark Lord — Ludo Kresh and Naga Sadow. Sadow believed it was time to expand their Imperial Territory for limitless glory and power.
On the contrary, Kresh believed expanding their massive Empire would threaten its stability and destroy what the Sith had forged. Kresh disagreed with Sadow’s desire for immediate expansionism and saw him as a threat to the Sith’s supremacy.
Sadow subscribed to a more liberal ideology that allowed other species to integrate with Sith forces and rise in rank under his command. Kresh perceived this as a dilution of the Sith bloodline that would ultimately lead to the Empire’s downfall.
Kresh and Sadow’s opposing ideologies spawned a political rivalry that escalated to a bloody battle after Marka Ragnos died and his reign ended.
The deadlocked conflict for the throne led Naga Sadow to stage a republic attack to manipulate the Imperial council to elect him as Dark Lord of the Sith.
Kresh and his followers discovered Sadow’s treachery but were unable to stop him. With the Empire now under Sadow’s command, he invaded the Republic in what is now known as the Great Hyperspace War.
Although the Sith were a formidable force, they underestimated the strength of the Jedi and the Republic. Eventually, the Sith Empire fell underneath the Republic’s tenacity. Fearing death, Sadow fled back to Korriban.
When he arrived, Kresh, believed to be dead, attacked the weakened Sadow with a fleet of warships. As a space battle raged above the skies of Korriban, Republic forces joined the fight from Hyperspace following Sadow’s retreat. They were determined to kill Sadow for the horrors he wrought on the Republic.
In the end, Kresh was killed in the battle, and Sadow narrowly escaped to the uninhabited moon, Yavin IV.
Unaware that Sadow survived, the republic fleet returned home, claiming victory. The once-great Sith Empire was no more, and Korriban became a desolate wasteland.
In the aftermath of the Empire’s destruction, a small sect of traditionalist Sith abandoned Korriban and journeyed beyond the reaches of wild space to the planet of Draka.
They rejected Sadow’s liberal views and believed he was responsible for the Empire’s destruction. The traditionalists renounced the war machine that had permanently damaged their legacy. And so, with the hopes to rebuild their lost Empire, the traditionalists lived in secret isolation for millennia.
As the decadence of their isolation obscured ancient Sith histories and traditions, new leadership decided to expand the race, fearing the threat of extinction.
On Draka, they recognized a new species of natives deemed worthy of interbreeding with their bloodline — the demon dragons. This forced alliance created a hybrid Sith species and allowed their race to expand for thousands of years.
Still, many Sith viewed the hybrids as second-class citizens and warned of a downfall similar to Ludo Kresh’s foreshadowing generations before.
As inter-special tensions rose, a powerful Sith, Seraph — the last-born Sith of pure blood, arose above the noise and united the lost tribes of the Sith under a common purpose — retribution against the Republic. For a time, tensions eased as the focus of the Empire became War. Nearly one-thousand years before the battle of Yavin, Seraph ordered the Imperial Force to be rebuilt.
Even though the Sith tribes were more formidable than their state after the Great Hyperspace War, their numbers were too few to wage an intergalactic war campaign. They needed to recruit the hybrid Sith if they were to claim victory.
Most purebloods understood the necessity of Seraph’s interracial unity but established a strict hierarchy that prohibited hybrids from positions of power. Most ancient Sith referred to their inferiors as lessers and implemented rules that prevented their advancement within the Empire.
The Sith viewed the lessers as weak and demanded their subservience- and the Sith overlords ensured that the Empire would not be dismantled by hybrid impurity. They had come too far to risk failure — and believed their lessers were unworthy of the ancient legacy they would restore. Their return to power and glory they knowingly deserved would exalt their race to the level of gods — that the galaxy had no choice but to FEAR.
Tales of the Sith is a fan-fiction series that surrounds the events of Mike The Marine’s award-winning fan film, The Dark Resurgence, that creates an alternate Star Wars timeline after the events of Return of the Jedi. Sign up for my email list to receive updates on future episodes and narrative films.
by Mike The Marine
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