Most Sith are Humans as opposed to... Sith?

[StarMagus]

In the game it seems that most of the NPC Empire side force users are Human and not Sith. Is that on purpose? Are the Sith ((race)) really that few in number?

[Darth_Wicked]

In the game it seems that most of the NPC Empire side force users are Human and not Sith. Is that on purpose? Are the Sith ((race)) really that few in number?

 

They are and there are several reasons for that, starting with the fact that the Republic pretty much tried to wipe out the Sith species at the end of the Great Hyperspace War, to the fact that the Pure Blood started to mingle with slaves, other humans and so forth, thus diluting EVER further the purity of the Pure Sith.

 

There's a reason why Darth Ikoral left known Sith space, in search of other Pure Bloods who were led astray 1300 years back and the fact you have this Pure Blood Sith Lord on Korriban, judging the purity of the Academy Overseers.

[StarMagus]

Thanks! Other question... if you unlock the Sith Race in the game can you then go and create a Sith Jedi? I would so do that for the *** value. "They let you into the Jedi Academy?"

[Darth_Wicked]

Thanks! Other question... if you unlock the Sith Race in the game can you then go and create a Sith Jedi? I would so do that for the *** value. "They let you into the Jedi Academy?"

 

Yes. However, said choice will have no bearing whatsoever in the dialogue, so don't be surprised if no one ever addresses the fact you're a Pure Blood.

[StarMagus]

I'm on an RP server.. the real fun will be chilling out as a Sith "Jedi" at a bar, waving to people and going "Sup?"

[Darth_Wicked]

I'm on an RP server.. the real fun will be chilling out as a Sith "Jedi" at a bar, waving to people and going "Sup?"

 

I can feel their hatred already.

[StarMagus]

I'm going to group a bunch and always take Dark Side options as well.. and show dark side corruption will be checked.

 

It's going to be glorious.

 

Jedi Master 1: "You know that Sith we let join our order?"

 

JM2: "Yeah?"

 

JM1: "It turns out he's evil... who could have guessed that?"

[BrianDavion]

honestly at this point most people are proably just gonna shrug and go "ohh look another one"

[Eillack]

At this point in time, the actual Sith race is dwindling closer to extinction. That is why there will be more Human "Sith" than actual Sith.

[Euphrosyne]

In the game it seems that most of the NPC Empire side force users are Human and not Sith. Is that on purpose? Are the Sith ((race)) really that few in number?

They are and there are several reasons for that, starting with the fact that the Republic pretty much tried to wipe out the Sith species at the end of the Great Hyperspace War, to the fact that the Pure Blood started to mingle with slaves, other humans and so forth, thus diluting EVER further the purity of the Pure Sith.

 

There's a reason why Darth Ikoral left known Sith space, in search of other Pure Bloods who were led astray 1300 years back and the fact you have this Pure Blood Sith Lord on Korriban, judging the purity of the Academy Overseers.

The problem of the Sith is a bit more complex than that.

 

Let's start with out of universe reasons. The main reason that the Sith aren't really that populous in the Empire is because the devs wanted to draw connections between the chauvinist Human High Culture Empire of Palpatine in the Star Wars films and the Sith Empire in this one. They wanted the Empire of the game to be comparable to the Empire of the movies so that casual fans who didn't know anything about Star Wars history or the Sith race or anything like that would have a ready-made niche. This motif is everywhere: the uniforms, the ships, the titles, the hierarchy, the emblems, the architecture...you name it, basically.

 

The in universe reasons suffer from a severe lack of plausibility. In Tales of the Jedi, which depicted the Great Hyperspace War and serves as the first real source for the Sith Empire, the Sith knew effectively nothing of humanity. The empire was an isolated Outer Rim monoculture that centered around quasifeudal personal politics and power structures, and the arcane rituals of the dark side, and that's basically it. Only later on did the retcons start to seep in: that the Sith were aware of the Republic even if not in direct contact with it (plausible), and that the Sith Empire contained large numbers of humans that just happened to be totally invisible in the comics (very implausible).

 

Accompanying that was a bizarre redefinition of the Red Sith identity. In Tales of the Jedi and the subsequent materials, the backstory was that the Sith Empire was created by the fusion of exiled Dark Jedi from the Third Great Schism with the Red Sith underclass that they discovered on Korriban. Two millennia of interbreeding erased most of the genetic distinctions between rulers and ruled, such that pretty much all of the ruling Sith of the kissai and massassi castes were more or less hybrids of these two. In Ragnos' time, the fewer Red Sith features a Lord possessed, the greater prestige he retained - because it indicated that his bloodline from the Hundred-Year Darkness remained relatively "unpolluted".

 

All of this rests on a fairly dubious understanding of genetics and an embarrassingly primordialist conception of ancestry and "race", but it was still internally coherent. Then came SWTOR, which expanded the Sith backstory even further - but in more bizarre ways.

 

In order to explain how a random fragment of an alien Outer Rim empire turned into a human-dominated behemoth, the writers first incorporated large numbers of humans that had been missing from the original sources, like we mentioned earlier. Fine, whatever. They then added in the Republic's strange genocide. Now, the original story of the Great Hyperspace War had a different ending to the war. When Republic forces reached Korriban, they discovered the tiny remnants of the fleets that the various Sith warlords had set on each other in the aftermath of Naga Sadow's flight to Yavin 4. Seeing no real enemy to fight and no threat to Republic space, they basically just went home. But in the game's alterations of continuity, the Republic's forces continued to prosecute the war, by landing forces on Korriban and the other Sith planets and engaging in a brutal house-to-house genocide - therefore giving a shred of justification to the eventually-resurgent Sith Empire in its holy war on the Republic, and also conveniently offering an explanation for where all the Red Sith went: they were murdered.

 

This is weird for a lot of reasons. I'll spoiler them below because this post is more than long enough already.

 

First of all, that's not really the way genocide works. Massacring billions of people is really hard if you don't have a planet-busting laser at your disposal. In order for the Republic to manage it the way it did, Republic leaders would've had to place immense strains on both domestic opinion and on the psychological state of the soldiers who carried out the dirty deeds. It's almost certain that such a course would have been unsustainable; it was difficult enough for the Nazis, who had to mechanize the entire process to keep from wearing out their military and secret police. Mass Effect had it more or less right: the massacre of an entire species with a star-empire of its own takes a long freaking time. The Protheans lasted for a hundred years against the vastly technologically superior Reapers; the Republic enjoyed none of the Reapers' advantages and quite a few disadvantages into the bargain, and moreover possessed an at least marginally democratic government that would have been utterly incapable of pursuing such a policy for the amount of time it would require to work.

 

Secondly, it's unclear why anybody would've agreed to it. Most of the time, genocide happens when there's a deep, ingrained cultural hatred, or in the "service" of some military goal, or for economic gain...you get it. None of those really applied. The Republic had won the war, so lengthening it and placing immense strains on the Republic military by engaging in the genocide of an entire species makes no sense. There was barely any contact between Sith and Republic before the war, so it's not like there was that much score-settling to do. The Republic didn't work the Red Sith to death as slave laborers and didn't plunder the place for its fabulous wealth (lol). SWTOR's Codex describes the genocide as having taken place in order to eliminate any threat posed by the Sith against the Republic once and for all. Compared to the genocides of Earth history, that is an extremely dubious reason, to say the least.

 

An important note: this is not the result of blindly pro-Republic prejudice talking. (And it's strange that I have to say that, but oh well.) It would be unusual for the Republic, or any society really, to have not committed any war crimes at all. I've written stories from the Sith point of view about Republic atrocities. Rest assured that I am perfectly willing to agree that they happened, do happen, and can happen in the future. What I am concerned about here is the plausibility of such atrocities. Collateral damage, revenge killings, use of banned weaponry, and terror bombardments would all make sense with the justification given in the Codex. The near-total genocide of an entire species would not make sense, especially with that justification.

 

Thirdly, it still doesn't really explain the issue of where all the Sith went. Unless the group that the Sith Emperor brought with him into exile consisted almost entirely of humans with virtually no Red Sith, and every single Red Sith other than the Emperor's group was killed, the proportions still wouldn't make any sense. And the Sith Emperor ignoring his prized "purebloods" in favor of a glut of humans is hard to imagine. Furthermore, the populace of the Sith Empire in SWTOR is strongly implied to be significantly higher than the population of Naga Sadow's Empire, ignoring all the new territories it conquered. This demographic achievement, if the Sith population were reduced to almost nothing outside of the Emperor's exile contingent, would be truly incredible. The only way to even sort-of plausibly explain humans being included in the Sith society of Tales of the Jedi is to give them very small numbers; otherwise the cultural prejudice so strongly in favor of the human genetic features possessed by the elite would be nonsensical. Yet humanity vastly outnumbers Red Sith in SWTOR. The mind boggles.

 

 

Anyway. All of that has resulted in a Sith Empire with a strange biracial prejudice and an increasingly odd backstory. Now, if we ignore how bizarre the lore around the Sith Empire is, the story is just fine. It's just that that lore is bizarre, and it's bizarre because of fairly sketchy reasons.

[Xilizhra]

What if the Republic carried out its genocide primarily with battle droids? That'd actually be rather interesting when taking Revan's plot into consideration...

 

Also, doesn't TOR take place something like 2000 years after the Great Hyperspace War? I think there'd have been enough time.

[Euphrosyne]

What if the Republic carried out its genocide primarily with battle droids? That'd actually be rather interesting when taking Revan's plot into consideration...

 

Also, doesn't TOR take place something like 2000 years after the Great Hyperspace War? I think there'd have been enough time.

The only image ever shown of the genocide depicted organic soldiers and no battle droids carrying out the holocaust. A battle droid army adds even further implausibility because there was no such thing at any point during the Great Hyperspace War. They would have to invent one of those, too, and then explain why it did not take part in the conflict.

 

SWTOR occurs 1300 years and change after the Great Hyperspace War. No figures were ever given with regard to Sith demographics before or after the Great Hyperspace War, nor do they exist for SWTOR's time period. We lack information on average family sizes, Sith economics, or anything else that might help to give the whole thing more of a foundation. It's not totally unthinkable that the Sith could go from a ragtag bunch of refugees to populating several planets with billions (?) of inhabitants in the course of a millennium and a half, but it would probably require technological augmentations to fertility and massive participation by the state. Both of those things make it highly implausible that the Red Sith would become as demographically marginalized as they have, because presumably a Red Sith-dominated state would have considerable interest in maintaining the numbers of its Herrenrasse, much as the Nazis made efforts to increase the fertility and the family sizes of "Aryan" families.

[StarMagus]

It actually wouldn't be that hard for any race with tractor beams and massive space ships to genocide a race. You grab an asteroid with your ship and set it off to impact on the planet causing an ELE.

 

If because the other side also has super tech, you send in your troops to bust the bunkers ((it would have to be bunkers)) and any shield settlements.

 

Knocking a population down to 1% or .1% makes it far easier for your flesh and blood troops to land and kill off the rest.

[Euphrosyne]

It actually wouldn't be that hard for any race with tractor beams and massive space ships to genocide a race. You grab an asteroid with your ship and set it off to impact on the planet causing an ELE.

 

If because the other side also has super tech, you send in your troops to bust the bunkers ((it would have to be bunkers)) and any shield settlements.

 

Knocking a population down to 1% or .1% makes it far easier for your flesh and blood troops to land and kill off the rest.

Very true. Unfortunately, Korriban was not hit with an extinction-level event.

[AlrikFassbauer]

I'm on an RP server.. the real fun will be chilling out as a Sith "Jedi" at a bar, waving to people and going "Sup?"

 

My Sage is an Rattataki. He was found, and raised with no contact whatsoever to his species' culture.

 

This is usually the way people use when they want to play someone who isn't supposed to be good or evil.

[StarMagus]

Very true. Unfortunately, Korriban was not hit with an extinction-level event.

 

That we know of... the planet in the one picture of the purge does not look like a planet that a multi-world empire came from. It looks like some sort of falling apart 3rd world village.

[Euphrosyne]

That we know of... the planet in the one picture of the purge does not look like a planet that a multi-world empire came from. It looks like some sort of falling apart 3rd world village.

Korriban before the Great Hyperspace War, as shown in the images from Tales of the Jedi and in flashbacks from Star Wars: Legacy, looks pretty much exactly the same as it does in Knights of the Old Republic and SWTOR.

[Slowpokeking]

Funny thing is, Exar Kun's Sith Empire didn't have that strong prejudice, many Sith are non human races.

 

Later the Banite Sith also accept all races.

[Highborne]

In the game it seems that most of the NPC Empire side force users are Human and not Sith. Is that on purpose? Are the Sith ((race)) really that few in number?

 

Re: the bolded - yes. Why? First, because the Sith (racial) traditions keep their numbers low - constant conflict etc. Second, because the Republic attempt at genocide was all but successful - the only Sith who exist are the descendants of those few who managed to flee the rampaging Republic forces after the Great Hyperspace War.

[Stinghen]

Re: the bolded - yes. Why? First, because the Sith (racial) traditions keep their numbers low - constant conflict etc. Second, because the Republic attempt at genocide was all but successful - the only Sith who exist are the descendants of those few who managed to flee the rampaging Republic forces after the Great Hyperspace War.

 

Vitiate also played an important role in the reduced numbers of the Sith. His ritual on Nathema cost the lives of all the people who dwelt there, not just the "8000 Sith Lords" he gathered there to decide the fate of the Empire.

 

The problem the human populace of the Sith Empire presents is not only the justification of why they are the majority, but also where the blazes they came from if Vitiate's Empire spent 1300 years in hiding. 1300 years would be more than enough to replenish an Empire-wide population (Sith also copulate, and they're not moral about it), and when/how did the shift and turn of the majority populace from Red Sith to humans take place. The Red Sith being few after the Great Hyperspace War is easily justifiable (even without that little developped "purge"). The Red Sith not upholding their "blood purity" and xenophobia that we see in the games along the 1300 years is not.

 

So, in order to place the gamers on a "familiar environment", that is, for the sake of making SWTOR's Sith Empire feel like Palpatine's Galactic Empire that we see in the movies, consistency was sacrificed. It wasn't the first time Bioware did this.

[StarMagus]

Was this Bioware's fault or had something to do with Lucus Arts requiring that the games keep a look and feel of Star Wars?

[Stinghen]

Was this Bioware's fault or had something to do with Lucus Arts requiring that the games keep a look and feel of Star Wars?

 

When I look at some other EU sources (namely the Tales of the Jedi and the Jedi vs Sith comics), which have consistently different depictions of the galaxy at large and its inhabitants, I'm inclined to blame this one on Bioware. The things that identify these other sources as Star Wars are present (like blasters, lightsabres, hyperdrives, star wars and Jedi and Sith), without making the setting a carbon copy mashup of the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War.

 

After all, if this was 3700 years before the Galactic Civil War, why would everything look the same?

[Timo]

Maybe the Sith Genes are just very Recessive to the Human Genes. So the Human phenotype just took over after few Generations.

[Euphrosyne]

Maybe the Sith Genes are just very Recessive to the Human Genes. So the Human phenotype just took over after few Generations.

I'd be the first to say that I don't understand that much about genetics. But the problem is that the descendants of the human Dark Jedi who seized control of the Sith Empire all looked pretty much like Red Sith by the time of the Great Hyperspace War. If the genes were recessive, presumably the opposite would have happened, with more "human" features propagating through the Sith population over the course of the intervening two thousand years.

[Slowpokeking]

I'd be the first to say that I don't understand that much about genetics. But the problem is that the descendants of the human Dark Jedi who seized control of the Sith Empire all looked pretty much like Red Sith by the time of the Great Hyperspace War. If the genes were recessive, presumably the opposite would have happened, with more "human" features propagating through the Sith population over the course of the intervening two thousand years.

 

I think they might look like the Massassi warrios or some of the Kissai priests before the Dark Jedi came. Those Sith look quite different.

 

How come those Dark Jedi are all humans? From what we see in TotJ, 1900/2900 years after the exiles, the Jedi accept all races.