Throughout its long history, the Republic has seen many conflicts. Few of these, however, have spanned the galaxy, and fewer still have been fought on a scale such as that seen over five thousand years ago in the Great Hyperspace Wars. Many do not realize, but it was, in fact, this conflict that introduced the galaxy to the Sith Empire. Before I get carried away, though, I should explain the background of the conflict...

Five thousand years ago, the galaxy was at relative peace and the Republic was expanding at an enormous rate. To heighten and take advantage of this expansion, the government and several large corporations were sponsoring expeditions to explore new hyperspace routes and find new areas of unexplored space. Bounties were offered for the location and mapping of new sectors, and many brave explorers set out to earn the rewards. Of course, hyperspace exploration was a dangerous occupation. Without hyperspace bouys to mark safe lanes, there was always the possibility of emerging from hyperspace into a planet or other solid object, or any other of a number of stellar dangers. "Jumping blind", as navigators call it, has claimed the lives of many spacefarers and their ships when they jumped into a star or radioactive nebula or some such.

At any rate, two such explorers at the time were Gav and Jori Daragon, two down-on-their-luck space navigators who hoped to free themselves from debt by finding a new hyperspace route. They did so, but the route proved to be too dangerous to use when at least one ship was destroyed by the gravitational pull of a nearby star. The brother and sister team were held responsible for the ship's destruction. Fleeing their persecutors, the pair jumped blindly into unknown space, but had to land their damaged ship on the planet Korriban, heart of the Sith Empire. The Sith Empire was a conglomeration of dark Jedi whose ancestors had been exiled by the Jedi Order. The Empire was ruled by a Dark Lord of the Sith, a position which was being contested by several factions when the Daragons landed on Korriban. Convinced to join the faction led by Naga Sadow, the two soon learned that they were being used by Sadow to eliminate his competition. He turned the Force-sensitive Gav to the dark side of the Force and allowed Jori to flee back to Republic space. This, too, however, was but a ploy - a homing device led Naga Sadow and the united forces of the Sith Empire well beyond the borders of the Republic.

Fortunately, Jori had managed to convince the Jedi and the Empress Teta (the monarch whose system she had fled to from Korriban) of the impending danger. When Sadow and the Sith jumped into the system, they found a legion of the Empress's forces and several Jedi waiting. Unprepared for the assault, the forces of the Republic waged a long and bloody battle and were nearly overwhelmed. Gav Daragon, who had been leading the assault under the influence of the dark side, retreated his forces after his bodyguards slaughtered an old family friend. If not for this retreat, the Sith may have won. However, as Gav and his forces retreated back to Sith space, they were followed by Republic and Jedi reinforcements. The fleets met in the skies above Korriban and waged brutal war. Many thousands were lost by both sides, including the death of Gav Daragon and nearly all of the Sith forces. Sensing defeat, Naga Sadow, the Dark Lord of the Sith, fled to Republic space and disappeared.

The forces of the Republic continued to search out and pursue Sadow and his remaining forces throughout the Republic, and whereever the two forces met, death and destruction followed. Having little regard for life, Sadow finally escaped by using his Sith sorcery to collide two stars, causing the death of an entire inhabited star system and crushing the Republic forces that followed him. The archives of the Jedi tell us that he then settled on the jungle moon Yavin IV and slowly began to rebuild his empire on the planet. Fortunately, even Naga Sadow could not escape the ravages of time and finally succumbed to death. However, the Sith would live on in the form of one of his students, Freedon Nadd.

Once a Jedi apprentice, Nadd had been passed over for graduation to the rank of Jedi Knight. In a fit of rage over this slight, he slaughtered his Master and turned to the dark side of the Force. Fleeing to Yavin IV and finding Naga Sadow's remote empire, Nadd was schooled in the teachings of the Sith. Until the reigning Sith Lord died, however, Nadd could not obtain the rank, so he fled to Onderon, hoping to begin his own empire. The citizens of Onderon throned him king, and his descendants would rule on for generations. Nadd, himself, however, was defeated by the Jedi after they learned of his dark-side rule. His body was entombed on Onderon's moon, but his bloodline would continue to practice his dark arts. Generations later, his spirit returned to instruct first the Krath, then Exar Kun in the ways of the Sith. Although Nadd, Kun, and the Krath were all destroyed during the Sith War, the knowledge contined to pass from master to apprentice.

Although the Sith were widely believed to have been destroyed after the Sith War, they again appeared after nearly three thousand years of silence. A Sith Lord named Kaan gathered about twenty thousand dark-side warriors on the planet Ruusan. Apparently, the guiding rule of a single Dark Lord of the Sith had vanished over the millenia, and "tribes" of Sith had spread throughout the galaxy. Kaan was somehow able to unite the various groups, culiminating in a single large army of Sith warriors. The Jedi soon learned of Kaan's plans and sent their own army of equal size to defeat the uprising. The Battle of Ruusan, as it's now called, can be called only a bloodbath. In a devastating display of lightsaber battle, the forces began to shatter the planet with their power. In fact, it is said that the carnage was so great that the Jedi began to restrict the knowledge of lightsaber construction to their own Order. At any rate, the Battle of Ruusan was ended when Kaan released a Sith weapon called the "thought bomb", a weapon of such magnitude that it instantly vaporized all combatants, including Kaan. Only a single Sith escaped - an apprentice named Bane.

Bane escaped and fled to Onderon. On the moon of Onderon, he discovered a Sith Holocron and used its teachings to complete his training. Seeing the pattern of war and defeat in the Sith's history, Bane restructured the Order. Bane rebuilt the Sith on the precept that only two Sith could be active in the galaxy at any given time - a Master and an apprentice. When the Master died, the apprentice became the Master and took his own apprentice. The new Sith Order would rely on cunning and stealth rather than force and power. Sith apprentices were trained in the arts of patience and strategy rather than conquest. Until the rise of the Empire, the Sith remained in this manner, rarely crossing paths with the Jedi. In fact, by the time of the Clone Wars, even the Jedi believed their ancient enemies to be extinct. They were soon proven wrong, however.

During the Clone Wars, the Sith revealed their renewed existence to the Jedi. Even so, little did anyone suspect that a Dark Lord of the Sith would emerge as the new Emperor of the Known Galaxy. Yes, indeed - the man known as Palpatine was, in fact, a member of the Sith Order. In fact, according to Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, it would appear that Palpatine was the reigning Master when he came to power. His Sith apprentice, Darth Vader, is as reknowned throughout the galaxy as Palpatine himself. Later, after his death and apparent "resurrection", Palpatine took Skywalker as his apprentice. The remnants of the Empire later established a Shadow Academy to rival Master Skywalker's Jedi Academy on Yavin IV. This act apparently disbanded the Master/Apprentice structure, as the Shadow Academy had several students at any given time. Eventually destroyed by Master Skywalker and his students, it is unknown what has become of the Sith Order.

I have been assured by Master Skywalker, however, (who has far more experience in these matters than myself, I should note) that the Sith Order is not dead, but is likely waiting for an opportunity to strike again. One must wonder - so long as the Sith exist, can the galaxy truly be safe? Ah, well, I am old and quite afraid that the question must be answered by the next generation. Perhaps by studying the past, our children and grandchildren will be prepared for the future. We can only hope.