Star Wars Destiny Chronicles: Darksiders -- New Sith Wars

   This segment is me taking the chance to flesh out my fanon for the vastly unexplored era of the New Sith Wars. Among the characters written here are the unnamed Zeltron general, the mysterious Finn and Marka, and others from this era.

THE NEW SITH WARS
A Grain of Sand: The Tale of Darth Eradicus

   There was a time when Ardas Talvron could have been the most revered Jedi Masters of the Jedi Order and Count of his homeworld of Tralon IV. But he squandered it all with one simple mistake.

    Ardas was nineteen when his master Phanius left the Jedi Order. Left without a teacher, the Jedi Council deliberated over what to do with him. Do they give him another master? Transfer him to the AgriCorps? Or was he ready to pass the trials? The Grand Master, infallible in her wisdom, decided to let Ardas undertake the trials, confident that Phanius -- despite his unorthodox beliefs -- had taught his Padawan well enough.

    And she was right. Ardas passed the first four trials and was well on his way of becoming a Jedi Knight. Then came the fifth trial -- the Trial of Insight -- where Ardas was given the final task of locating a single grain of sand in a field of rocks.

    It took Ardas two days. He never found the grain of sand.

    Disappointed, the High Council denied Ardas the rank of Jedi Knight. Ardas was infuriated by this and accused the Council of rigging the test. Tearing off his Padawan braid, Ardas left the Jedi Order and went in search of his former master, finally realizing why Phanius had left in the first place.

    A year passed before Ardas finally found his master... who was no longer the man he once was.

    Since leaving the Order, Phanius had fallen to the dark side and infiltrated a number of Sith clans, thought destroyed by the Jedi. Uniting them into a new Sith Empire, Phanius ruled over them as Darth Ruin, Dark Lord of the Sith. Shocked by this, Ardas quickly overcame his fear and pledged his loyalty to his master. In return, Darth Ruin named him Lord Eradicus and bestowed him a set of armor infused with the dark side.

    As Eradicus, Ardas served as Shadow Hand to the Dark Lord, though many Sith regarded him as little more than a squire. Desperate to achieve some form of recognition, Eradicus returned to his homeworld of Tralon IV and overthrew the Count of Tralon, naming himself ruler of the planet. However, this had not been the first time that the throne had been claimed by a Sith; not wishing to live under such tyranny again, the Great Houses banded together and led a massive coup against Eradicus, driving him off the planet. He had been Count of Tralon for no more than a week.

    Disappointed with his apprentice's failure, Darth Ruin planned on ridding himself of Eradicus and find a more suitable squire. By this time however, Ruin's self-centered, solipsistic rhetoric had provoked the ire of his followers. Eradicus recognized this and decided to take advantage of it, leading the Sith in assassinating Ruin and bringing the Dark Lord's reign to a premature end.

    With the position vacant, Eradicus naturally claimed the title of Dark Lord, naming himself Darth Eradicus. The other Sith accepted his rule, figuring that he would be easier to manipulate than Ruin, and followed him as he led an attack on the Republic, conquering a number of worlds in the Outer Rim. His most successful campaign was that on the Thanium Worlds, and he planned on taking control of the entire Tion Cluster in order to make up for his failure on Tralon.

    However, Eradicus ended up doing more damage to himself than the Republic. Extensive use of the dark side had caused his body to fracture and decay, making him look twice as old as he actually was. By a mere thirty years of age, Eradicus had since isolated himself in a citadel on Rhen Var, shutting himself off from his empire and communicating only via hologram.

    By 1977 BBY, Darth Eradicus was only forty-two years of age but looked and acted like a hundred. In his decrepit state, the Dark Lord of the Sith was vanquished by a slab of stone that had fallen out of the wall, which he tripped over and fell onto the floor, breaking his back. Unable to call for his servants, Eradicus simply laid there as he watched everything he had worked for slip through his finger, like grains of sand....

General Adriav and the Black Knights

    By nature, Zeltrons are an empathetic, peaceful race that celebrate love and hedonistic pursuits. However, depending on circumstances, a Zeltron could grow up to be one of the most ruthless figures in history.

   Adriav was born in a spaceport on Bakkah, a remote world in the Outer Rim Territories. His mother had been attempting to find transportation back to Zeltros only for the spacelanes to be shut down due warring Republic and Sith forces in the Thrasybule sector. As a result, she was forced to deliver the baby there in the spaceport and raise him on her own.

    Shortly after being born, Adriav and his mother were kidnapped by Sith pirates and taken to their base on Bakkah. While his mother was taken to the dungeons, never to be seen again, Adriav caught the eye of Lord Dread, leader of the Sith pirates, who sensed the infant's Force-sensitivity. From this early age, Adriav was raised to be a Sith, his empathetic abilities stunted and corrupted by the overwhelming dark emotions he was surrounded with.

   By adulthood, Adriav had become one of Lord Dread's closest confidants. As the crooked Twi'lek was getting on in his years, Lord Dread chose then to reveal to Adriav that he was, in fact, not the first Lord Dread. The title had been passed down to him from another pirate, a Gotal, who received it from his Skrilling predecessor, and so forth. Wishing to retire, Lord Dread told Adriav that he was now worthy of the title and named him Lord Dread the Seventh. Upon receiving this honor, Adriav struck down the Twi'lek and tossed his corpse into the same dungeons his mother had been sent to.

   Taking control of the Sith pirates of the Thrasybule sector, Adriav soon came into contact with a figure who went by the name of the Dark Underlord. A marauder who had been earning the Republic's ire for several years now, the Dark Underlord had been drawn to the sector due to the presence of a strong dark side epicenter. Knowing the Republic were hot on his trails, the Dark Underlord required an army in order to combat enemy forces. Recognizing the Dark Underlord to be far stronger and more proficient in the Force than he was, Adriav submitted his services to the marauder. The Sith pirates thus became the Black Knights and Adriav received the rank of general.

    In time, the Dark Underlord discovered the source of what he had felt: a temple located on Malrev IV. Repurposing the temple into a fortress, the Dark Underlord ruled his army through Adriav, who served as the face for the Black Knights during their war against the Republic. This led to some erroneous accounts that Adriav himself was the Dark Underlord; only the Jedi sensed there was someone else working behind the scenes.

   In 1750 BBY, the Dark Underlord had concentrated all of the Malrev temple's energies into an amulet, which he believed would allow him to destroy the Republic in one swift stroke. Realizing that the Dark Underlord had to be stopped no matter the cost, Jedi Master Murrtaggh organized an assassination plot to take out the Dark Lord of the Sith. He paid a group of Mandalorian mercenaries to attack the Sith camp on Malrev IV, knowing it would draw out General Adriav. The Zeltron took the bait and the Black Knights were kept preoccupied while Murrtaggh infiltrated the Dark Underlord's fortress.

    Realizing that he had been deceived, Adriav broke off from the fight with the Mandalorians and retreated to his master's fortress. Upon arrival however, he found the Dark Underlord laying at the feet of Murrtaggh, the Sith amulet in his hands. Seeing that the Togorian's natural green eyes had turned sunken and yellow, Adriav realized that the amulet had taken control of the Jedi Master. 

   Indeed, the Dark Underlord himself was possibly controlling Murrtaggh through the amulet, even in death. Adriav had heard the rumors of his master being the resurrected spirit of Xendor, pulled from the depths of Chaos. Had his master simply been using a host body, a la Lord Vitiate, and was now using Murrtaggh as his host? Had the Dark Underlord, like Vitiate, been planning on sacrificing Adriav and the Black Knights in order to sustain himself?

   Adriav did not wish to find out. Instead, he lunged at Murrtaggh and drove his blade into the Togorian's heart. Then, ignoring its whispers, he smashed his hilt into the amulet, cracking it and releasing its energies. Because of the temple's fortified walls, the dark side energy was contained within the structure, preventing it from reaching outward.

   When Adriav emerged from the temple, broken amulet in hand, the battle had already ended. The Black Knights had been defeated by the Mandalorians and were now scattered. Evading detection from Republic forces, Adriav returned to Bakkah. Upon setting foot in the spaceport, he was assaulted by pirates -- locals, rather than Sith. Exhausted and weakened from what had just taken place, Adriav allowed himself to stabbed repeatedly by the pirates, who took the amulet before leaving him to his death, letting his body rot away in the very place he had been born.

    Millennia later, the Sith amulet would later resurface during the Galactic Civil War. The Sith Lord Darth Vader sent Imperial forces to secure the amulet, only to be defeated by Luke Skywalker. Escaping Bakkah with the amulet, Skywalker saw to its destruction. Years later, the temple where the Dark Underlord had met his demise was taken over by the Devaronian technician Cartariun, who used the dark side energies to control the local Irrukiine. His brief reign was brought to an end when he was killed by his accomplice Girov Dza'tey, who would shortly meet his own fate when a pilot from Rogue Squadron rammed her fighter into the temple, killing him and destroying the Sith Temple.

Living in Darkness: The Story of Darth Rivan

Finn and Marka

    Even before the Rule of Two was officially established by Darth Bane, its tenets had long been prevalent in Sith history, dating as far back as the reign of Darth Revan and perhaps even further.

   In the final years of the New Sith Wars, most Sith factions had united under the banner of Lord Kaan, forming the Brotherhood of Darkness. However, not all Sith were joined under Kaan. One such notable exception was the Sith terrorist known as Miden Finn.

   Born on the urban world of Lexrul, Finn was discovered by the Sith Lady Lydia at age nineteen. By this time, the Sith were in the middle of a civil war, failing to take advantage of the Republic's virtual non-existence. Lydia was member of a small faction based in the Mid Rim that followed the practice of taking on only one apprentice, thus mitigating the chance of betrayal and infighting.

    It wasn't long before Finn struck down his master and took on an apprentice of his own. He selected a young boy by the name of Dev, who hailed from the rural regions of Lothal. Together, the two infiltrated worlds belonging to the Republic and enemy Sith factions and committed acts of terrorism against them.

    A year prior to the final Battle of Ruusan, Finn and Dev visited the planet Tralon IV to conduct business with one of their targets. While there, they encountered a Toydarian slave master, who offered to sell them a young woman by the name of Marka. Dev empathized with the girl, having grown up in poverty as well, and struck down the Toydarian in anger. Finn rebuked his apprentice for showing sympathy for the girl and, ignoring her pleas to be taken with them, returned his ship. Minutes later, Marka joined him, having killed Dev and taken his lightsaber, and became Finn's new apprentice.

   When the Brotherhood of Darkness met its end during the Seventh Battle of Ruusan, Finn saw this as his opportunity to consolidate his power and become the Dark Lord of the Sith. Blinded by his own ambition, he failed to foresee Marka's own cravings and soon found himself plummeting into a sarlacc pit on Aargonar, having been pushed by Marka just as she had done to Dev.

    With her master's death, Marka sought out to further her knowledge of the dark side, visiting Sith tomb worlds and temples. This inevitably brought her into the path of Darth Bane and his apprentice Zannah, who were rebuilding the Sith on their own terms, following the same tenets as Finn had. When Marka pleaded Bane to teach her, he ignored her and returned to his ship, leaving her with Zannah.

   Minutes later, Darth Zannah rejoined him, having killed Marka and taken her lightsaber. Together, the two Dark Lords of the Sith departed from Korriban, leaving Marka's corpse to be swept away by the changing sands.