Why the greatest galatic heroes of all time are Sith Lords. (Bane/Revan Spoilers)

[Lecaja]

Thanks to the retcons introduced to cannon by Swtor as well as the Dawn of the Jedi novels for the past 25000 thousand years the galaxy has been caught in the middle of a war between light and dark force users. The only time we can confirm the galaxy to be at peace was for three hundred years thanks to Revan, who also gets credit for a mostly cold rather than hot war that embroils the game and a thousand years of peace through the deliberate machinations of Darth Bane. See kids, it's the Sith Lords that bring peace to the Galaxy not the Jedi.

[drakensang]

You would have a more peaceful time under imperial rule too. In democracies you always get those pesky disagreements which sometimes erupt into minor skirmishes. Under a tyrannic, imperial rule this would happen less often, because dissenting populations are swiftly pacified by a little orbital bombardement or a culling of random parts of said population.

 

Much less unrest this way.

[BrianDavion]

except this is wrong.

 

there's HUUUGE stretches of eras that are little detailed when peace reigned for long stretches of time. they just don't get much info because this is Star Wars

 

 

really by and large 99% of the history we've seen has been of the last 5000 years or so of the republic's history.

[DAWUSS]

except this is wrong.

 

there's HUUUGE stretches of eras that are little detailed when peace reigned for long stretches of time. they just don't get much info because this is Star Wars

 

 

really by and large 99% of the history we've seen has been of the last 5000 years or so of the republic's history.

 

Apparently, covering times of peace is boring...

 

But really, it's not all that weird especially when you consider the events of World History. That's filled with war after war after war. Many of them obviously weren't world wars, but there is a long list of wars that have taken place throughout history.

 

Maybe what Star Wars needs are more small scale wars. Obviously not at TOR's point in the timeline, but maybe in those unrecorded eras.

[Alzor]

Obviously you haven't heard of

 

 

My smuggler Alzzor

 

 

Greatest hero in galactic history.

Edited November 19, 2013 by Alzor

[Stinghen]

Thanks to the retcons introduced to cannon by Swtor as well as the Dawn of the Jedi novels for the past 25000 thousand years the galaxy has been caught in the middle of a war between light and dark force users. The only time we can confirm the galaxy to be at peace was for three hundred years thanks to Revan, who also gets credit for a mostly cold rather than hot war that embroils the game and a thousand years of peace through the deliberate machinations of Darth Bane. See kids, it's the Sith Lords that bring peace to the Galaxy not the Jedi.

 

That's a shallow interpretation, kid. You said "Darth" Revan brought peace. Really? He waged war against the Mandalorians, a war that he admitted to have turned him to the Dark Side and into the Emperor's puppet. So off he goes, becomes Darth Revan, and returns to the galaxy.... and he wages a war. For two years. Then he gets his incompetent butt captured and mind-wiped. That's when things turn, because his "heir" Darth Malak, actually the guy who betrayed him and allowed his incompetend butt to be effortlessly captured in the first place, actually proved even worse than his predecessor in the war he waged, so Revan, now as a Jedi (no longer a Dark Sider) turned on him, chopped him up and disappeared. But the aftermath of his little empire continued a silent war that nearly broke the Republic in the few years that followed.

 

So no, Darth Revan was a warmonger. Jedi Revan was the restorer of the peace. So sorry kid, your appraisal of the situation stands on its head.

 

And the Jedi Revan (again) stopped the Emperor from precipitating into an attack before the Republic was ready to weather it. The Jedi Revan also "scared the Emperor" into thinking of peace. But the Cold War was anything but a peaceful period. Look at Balmorra, Coruscant (the Desolator Crisis), Taris, Alderaan, The Black Talon, The Esseles, The Maelstrom, The Foundry (oh! Here's Revan again showing some affection to the Dark Side and wanting to wage a genocidal war against the Sith Empire)... All that takes place while the Treaty of Coruscant is still in effect.

 

And Bane's order kept the Republic at peace? Do you really think the Sith were interested in keeping the Republic at peace? They worked hard so the Republic could grow unchecked by majour threats, sure, but to do so they sparked more than their share of conflicts. Just read the novels again. And these conflicts were all in preparation for the bigger one, the Clone Wars. All a Sith scheme. So, please don't tell me how Sith revere peace when the first line of the Code reads "Peace is a lie."

[BrianDavion]

Apparently, covering times of peace is boring...

 

But really, it's not all that weird especially when you consider the events of World History. That's filled with war after war after war. Many of them obviously weren't world wars, but there is a long list of wars that have taken place throughout history.

 

Maybe what Star Wars needs are more small scale wars. Obviously not at TOR's point in the timeline, but maybe in those unrecorded eras.

 

except small wars happen all the time, given the size of the galaxy there's proably ALWAYS small local conflicts. they just get no attention.

[StarMagus]

The game would be pretty boring if all you did was go out and farm moisture and then return to a cantina to watch a twi'lek dance until you felt good enough about yourself to go out and farm some more moisture so you could eventually sell It all for a new couch for your house.

 

Wait.. I think they called that SWG.

[Alzor]

The game would be pretty boring if all you did was go out and farm moisture and then return to a cantina to watch a twi'lek dance until you felt good enough about yourself to go out and farm some more moisture so you could eventually sell It all for a new couch for your house.

 

Wait.. I think they called that SWG.

 

Low blow man...low blow.

[DAWUSS]

The game would be pretty boring if all you did was go out and farm moisture and then return to a cantina to watch a twi'lek dance until you felt good enough about yourself to go out and farm some more moisture so you could eventually sell It all for a new couch for your house.

 

Wait.. I think they called that SWG.

 

Many X-Wing pilots died at the hands of my KSE Firespray during that era.

[kEs_Ha]

That's a shallow interpretation, kid. You said "Darth" Revan brought peace. Really? He waged war against the Mandalorians, a war that he admitted to have turned him to the Dark Side and into the Emperor's puppet. So off he goes, becomes Darth Revan, and returns to the galaxy.... and he wages a war. For two years. Then he gets his incompetent butt captured and mind-wiped. That's when things turn, because his "heir" Darth Malak, actually the guy who betrayed him and allowed his incompetend butt to be effortlessly captured in the first place, actually proved even worse than his predecessor in the war he waged, so Revan, now as a Jedi (no longer a Dark Sider) turned on him, chopped him up and disappeared. But the aftermath of his little empire continued a silent war that nearly broke the Republic in the few years that followed.

 

So no, Darth Revan was a warmonger. Jedi Revan was the restorer of the peace. So sorry kid, your appraisal of the situation stands on its head.

 

And the Jedi Revan (again) stopped the Emperor from precipitating into an attack before the Republic was ready to weather it. The Jedi Revan also "scared the Emperor" into thinking of peace. But the Cold War was anything but a peaceful period. Look at Balmorra, Coruscant (the Desolator Crisis), Taris, Alderaan, The Black Talon, The Esseles, The Maelstrom, The Foundry (oh! Here's Revan again showing some affection to the Dark Side and wanting to wage a genocidal war against the Sith Empire)... All that takes place while the Treaty of Coruscant is still in effect.

 

And Bane's order kept the Republic at peace? Do you really think the Sith were interested in keeping the Republic at peace? They worked hard so the Republic could grow unchecked by majour threats, sure, but to do so they sparked more than their share of conflicts. Just read the novels again. And these conflicts were all in preparation for the bigger one, the Clone Wars. All a Sith scheme. So, please don't tell me how Sith revere peace when the first line of the Code reads "Peace is a lie."

 

Bravo!! Very well argued and formulated!

[Baalzie]

T So, please don't tell me how Sith revere peace when the first line of the Code reads "Peace is a lie."

 

Just to be picky, no one said sith REVERE peace, only that they BROUGHT peace through their actions...

IF you want to complain, please do it about what was actually said... (Your points still stand though, just nitpicking)

[Stinghen]

Just to be picky, no one said sith REVERE peace, only that they BROUGHT peace through their actions...

IF you want to complain, please do it about what was actually said... (Your points still stand though, just nitpicking)

 

Nitpicking indeed. What would happen if Palpatine had won the Galactic Civil War? He'd have gone off exploring and expanding the Empire until someone throttled him. Depending on that someone (which could well be Darth Vader), the war would even continue.

 

And be realistic - even the Jedi had to fight wars in order to protect the Republic and allow it to exist. And no Jedi denied that fact, despite what people might think because of the Mandalorian Wars.

[errant_knight]

So...I never read the books, so the only thing I know about Bane is that he came up with the rule of two, that he's widely revered and that he was fairly uber. Thing is, I have a hard time seeing him as good for the sith rather than the instigator of self-genocide. While it's pretty obvious that the sith can't continue as they are currently without losing the empire, I can't help but think that there was a better solution than ceasing to exit as a race.

[Stinghen]

So...I never read the books, so the only thing I know about Bane is that he came up with the rule of two, that he's widely revered and that he was fairly uber. Thing is, I have a hard time seeing him as good for the sith rather than the instigator of self-genocide. While it's pretty obvious that the sith can't continue as they are currently without losing the empire, I can't help but think that there was a better solution than ceasing to exit as a race.

 

Well, we have to commit to a somewhat relative interpretation of what "good" is. To a Sith, the more powerful they become, the better. Bane's system takes the natural enmity every Sith has towards each other (stemming from their absolutely warlike philosophy) to a whole new level, because the Master must always strive to create the deadliest apprentice, while still watching out for betrayal, and knowing he was breeding the weapon that would destroy him in the end. The apprentice would know he must work very hard to earn the scraps of power his master doles out, and having a lifetime to come into his own allowed for the creation of progressively more deadly Sith Lords. The relationship between the Sith also became that much more personal, the mutual hatred between master and apprentice, because there was no longer a cutthroat society with multiple ambitions that could easily work against the truly gifted Sith before they could achieve full power.

 

This was very good to the Sith as a whole (strange concept, because "whole" under Bane's rule meant two), since they could commit to their destructive, power-grubbing nature more freely than in a Sith society, only observing the tenet that they must remain hidden, and always furthering the Grand Plan. Proof of that is that Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious both were able to greatly advance the Grand Plan and see its completion in a matter of, at most, forty years since Sidious became Sith.

[errant_knight]

It just seems short sighted. I mean, you're killing off the best genetic material and hoping for a random appearance of appropriate genes instead.

[Euphrosyne]

This was very good to the Sith as a whole (strange concept, because "whole" under Bane's rule meant two), since they could commit to their destructive, power-grubbing nature more freely than in a Sith society, only observing the tenet that they must remain hidden, and always furthering the Grand Plan. Proof of that is that Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious both were able to greatly advance the Grand Plan and see its completion in a matter of, at most, forty years since Sidious became Sith.

I don't think that Bane's construction for the Sith was that useful.

 

First reason: you say that Plagueis and Sidious were able to extirpate the Jedi and establish a galactic empire within forty years of the initiation of their Grand Plan. But what does that say about Bane? Bane had been dead for a thousand years. He didn't seduce Anakin Skywalker or engineer the Clone Wars. Why exactly should we credit Bane for something he had nothing to do with?

 

You might say that it was the institutional framework of the Sith Order that Bane created that made Plagueis and Sidious' plan possible. I don't think that's particularly valid, either. Did Sidious really need the spur of the Rule of Two to drive him to overthrowing Plagueis and the Republic? Or would he have done it anyway, because his was a truly transcendent Force talent and because he was one of the most gifted politicians and plotters in the history of the galaxy? I tend to believe that the latter was true, which is my second reason: neither the Rule of Two specifically nor the institutions of the Banite Sith in general played a significant role in the creation of the Galactic Empire.

 

If it was Bane's plan and Bane's rules that positioned the Sith for their killing blow, why didn't it happen sooner? You say that the fact that the Grand Plan came to fruition in forty years is a testament to Bane's ability. But in reality, it didn't take forty years: it took a thousand years. There's the third reason. I mean...a thousand years? And two guys manage to handle it all in the course of forty? That's a colossal indictment of the usefulness of the Banite Sith. They spent a millennium with their collective thumbs up their collective butts until they lucked into finding somebody who was actually competent and could work toward the overthrow of the Jedi and the Republic.

 

Not that Sidious' success was ever assured by any stretch of the imagination. The entire Sith Order - both of them - came extremely close to extinction several times while Sidious was still Plagueis' apprentice, and even Sidious' final victory over the Jedi brought him within literal inches of death, especially in his lightsaber duel with Mace Windu. Here was the fourth reason, in my opinion: the Rule of Two introduced a colossal weakness into the Sith and made the order that much easier to exterminate. There were only two of them at any one time, and if they were both killed, then that was it. Boom. The Jedi win. It didn't just make them vulnerable to attack, it made them vulnerable to random chance. Accidents happen. Staking the fate of the entire Sith Order on two mortal lives wasn't genius - it ought to have been suicide. At Endor, it would've been suicide, had Plagueis and Sidious not assiduously ignored the Rule of Two by seeding the galaxy with zillions of dark-side adepts, like Vergere and Lumiya, who resurrected the Sith and kept the Order and its traditions alive.

 

The fifth reason is more contextual, based on what Bane gave up to get his Rule of Two Order, and it's the one that was brought up before. Before Bane, there was the Brotherhood that Lord Kaan created. It possessed an empire that ruled half the galaxy (albeit the half that kinda sucked), possessed a vast military, and which was fighting the Republic in a war that saw the two contestants match each other blow for blow. True, the Ruusan campaign weakened Kaan's Empire a great deal, and raised legitimate questions about his military judgment and about the potential for a Republic victory. Even so, the Brotherhood was far from out of the fight, and both the Republic and the Jedi were near the end of their rope as well. Kaan still stood at the head of hundreds of Sith Lords, and his army and armada, while somewhat diminished, still at least rivaled that of the Republic. And then Bane intervened. The chief Sith Lords vanished, the rest fell to infighting and were wiped out by the Jedi, and the Brotherhood's military surrendered. Bane destroyed a colossal amount of Sith power with his thought bomb, and the sole reason he did so was so that he could be the one in charge.

 

So not only did Darth Bane leave the entire existence of the Sith Order to utter chance, he did so by destroying one of the most powerful Sith Empires in the history of the galaxy. And he was retroactively validated for this decision by the actions of men a millennium in the future who had barely anything to do with him, and who actively sabotaged the Rule of Two that was his sole legacy to the Sith Order.

 

Viewed with even a shred of objectivity, I think that Bane and his Rule of Two come out looking pretty stupid.

[Stinghen]

It really is a matter of opinion, I think. The only way to conciliate the Sith philosophy in a way that would not prevent the endless self-destruction that spelled doom for every Sith Empire previously was to cut the numbers, so the power games, which all Sith think is a necessity, can be carried out "safely" and in the shadows. Besides, with every passing "generation", the Sith would become stronger, and that we effectively see.

 

But as to the Grand Plan, it was only part of the several consequences to the Rule of Two. It was not well-defined and clear-cut when Darth Bane established the new paradigm. It basically consisted of causing the Republic to grow complacent over time, while the Sith accumulated resources and connections. By the time the 1000 years had passed, the two Sith Lords (Plagueis and Sidious) were already arguably the most powerful beings in the galaxy, with the control and support of the Banking Clan of Muunilist, all of Palpatine's political connections, and all connections the Sith inherited from the work of previous Sith Lords. The victory of the Sith was only made possible from one thousand years of silent preparation.

 

Moreover, now the Sith were forced to curb their own power games so they do not destroy their long work. And so, the success of the Grand Plan suggests that, whenever a Sith Apprentice crossed his master and got him killed, that was not done at the expense of the Plan. Darth Plagueis displayed that when he killed Tenebrous, Darth Sidious displayed the same caution when killing his own master. Darth Vader also showed this wit - in trying to convince Luke to turn to the Dark Side in Ep V, so they could both turn on the Emperor without jeopardising the war against the Alliance.

[Sarlegant]

Sidious, of the movies, didn't need to be Sith at all... at the end of this Rule of Two, a clever politician tactician assumed power though legal methods. The fights with Mace Windu and Yoda were just eye candy in the bigger scheme.

Case in point, Hitler didn't have Force Powers.

 

So, if the argument is the Rule of Two laid the groundwork for Sidious, then it's a false arguement.

 

The after the movies Sidious is just too ridiculously over-powered near Immortal GoD nonsense. That Sidious didn't need a Death Star, much less a lightsaber. That Sidious, didn't need an apprentice, so the Rule of Two argument is again proven false.

[Stinghen]

Sidious, of the movies, didn't need to be Sith at all... at the end of this Rule of Two, a clever politician tactician assumed power though legal methods. The fights with Mace Windu and Yoda were just eye candy in the bigger scheme.

Case in point, Hitler didn't have Force Powers.

 

So, if the argument is the Rule of Two laid the groundwork for Sidious, then it's a false arguement.

 

The after the movies Sidious is just too ridiculously over-powered near Immortal GoD nonsense. That Sidious didn't need a Death Star, much less a lightsaber. That Sidious, didn't need an apprentice, so the Rule of Two argument is again proven false.

 

Sidious played at not being a Sith to trick the masses. But he could not have achieved what he did were he not a powerful Sith Lord. As I said in my previous post, Palpatine had access to a vast array of resources which would be unavailable to him if he weren't the Dark Lord of the Sith, and which all played into his ascension to power.

[Sarlegant]

One does not need dark force powers to acquire a vast array of resources and contacts...

 

The whole Sith versus Jedi theme was just illusion to draw away from a retelling of Hitler's rise to power.

[Stinghen]

One does not need dark force powers to acquire a vast array of resources and contacts...

 

The whole Sith versus Jedi theme was just illusion to draw away from a retelling of Hitler's rise to power.

 

That's funny. If Palpatine weren't the Dark Lord of the Sith, how would he have fared against the four Jedi Masters that came in to arrest him? There's more to Star Wars than the rise of a tyrant, mate, if everything the story relays to you is this, you'd be better off reading history books.

 

There is more to Palpatine than just the political creature. He rose to power, he even desired to be raised to power becaue he was the Dark Lord of the Sith.

[StarMagus]

If Palpatine weren't the Dark Lord of the Sith, how would he have fared against the four Jedi Masters that came in to arrest him?

 

They came to arrest him because they believed ((correctly)) that he was a dark lord of the Sith. If he wasn't one, they wouldn't have come to arrest him, so he wouldn't have needed his powers to defeat them.

[Stinghen]

They came to arrest him because they believed ((correctly)) that he was a dark lord of the Sith. If he wasn't one, they wouldn't have come to arrest him, so he wouldn't have needed his powers to defeat them.

 

If he were "Hitler" he wouldn't have given up his emergency powers anyways. Don't downplay the importance of Sidious' true nature just because he posed as the common old man. Darth Sidious wears the mask of Palpatine, not the other way around.

[Aurbere]

They came to arrest him because they believed ((correctly)) that he was a dark lord of the Sith. If he wasn't one, they wouldn't have come to arrest him, so he wouldn't have needed his powers to defeat them.

 

The original plan was to get him to give up emergency powers and, if he refused, remove him from office for breaking his word (remember that he said that he would lay down his emergency powers when the war was over, and Grievous' death ensured the war's end). The plan changed when they found out Palpatine was actually Darth Sidious.