A Journey Through 25,000 Years of Existence: The Complete Timeline of the Republic

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“The Old Republic was the Republic of legend,  greater than distance or time. No need to note   where it was or whence it came, only  to know that… it was the Republic.” So wrote the Ancient Order of the Whills in their  chronicles of the history of the Star Wars galaxy,   centuries after the fall of the Galactic Empire.  In their time, the Galactic Republic was dead and   gone, having collapsed long ago under the weight  of its own failures. But it nonetheless cast a   shadow over galactic history. No power in the  galaxy had nearly as titanic a role in history   as the Republic, and only the Jedi Order itself  surpassed it in age. The Republic, at the time of   its transformation into the Empire, was 25,034  years old. It was so ancient that, in reality,   humanity literally has nothing that can compare  to its age, in terms of manmade constructs. But   the Republic did come from somewhere. It did  have a beginning. Today, we’ll be discussing it. In the year 25,200 BBY, the Infinite Empire  of the Rakata, which had previously been   the dominant force in the galaxy, collapsed  between the pressures of slave rebellions,   a brutal plague, and a civil war. As the  Rakata quickly retreated from the known galaxy,   fleeing back to Lehon, their homeworld, they  left dozens of formerly enslaved species behind,   well aware that there were other civilizations  and other livable worlds out in the wider galaxy.   Some, like the distant Tionese and their Hutt  rivals, reacted by trying to kill each other.   Others, like the civilizations in what would  become the Core Worlds, started to talk instead. The Core Worlds, specifically the strip of space  that would be nicknamed "the Arrowhead" in later   years, were already teeming with activity well  before the Rakata left, however. By the time   the Rakata discovered them in 30,000 BBY, the  Humans of Coruscant had already transformed   their homeworld into a massive planetary city  and had discovered interstellar travel. Unlike   with some of the other worlds they enslaved, the  Rakatan grip on Coruscant was unusually light,   likely due to the fact that the planetwide  city was impossible for them to tightly   control. As a result, the Humans began  to quietly steal Rakatan technology. By 27,500 BBY, humanity had advanced enough  that it was able to send out sleeper ships   from Coruscant, colonizing other worlds and  forming dozens of satellite civilizations.   In the Core Worlds, Human sleeper ships  landed on Alsakan, Axum, Metellos, Tepasi,   Kuat, Alderaan, Corfai, Koros Major, Rendili,  Corulag, Chandrilla, Brentaal IV, Esseles,   Rhinnal, and Ralltiir, with each world  becoming the heart of a new civilization.   When the Rakata left the Core two thousand  years after these colonization efforts began,   humanity had already built itself  a rather expansive civilization. These ancient human colonies had already developed  their own distinct cultures, governments,   and niches in human civilization by this point  in time. The seven worlds of the Koros System,   which were Gillad, Mozos, Koros Major, Tryast,  Phiris, Phoros, and Ronika, became their own   fractious civilization, which didn’t unite for  over twenty thousand years but still managed   to contribute greatly to Human civilization,  being humanity’s primary sources of carbonite.   Alsakan and Metellos took after Coruscant in  becoming city-planets. Alsakan built up its own   civilization that came to rival Coruscant  itself, while Metellos acted as more of a   Coruscanti satellite. Corfai established itself  as a hub for trade with Corellia and Duros,   while Tepasi and Alderaan established  monarchies that would last for millennia   to come, with Alderaan becoming widely  known for its natural beauty as well. Early sleeper-ship expeditions colonized six  worlds in the Ringali Shell, which became   the cores of small civilizations that enjoyed  frequent contact due to their close proximity to   each other. Brentaal IV became a major trading  hub, Chandrila became an agricultural world,   Corulag became well known for its races, and  Raltiir established a banking system that endured   even up to the Mandalorian Wars. Esseles, another  Ringali Shell world, founded the Esselian Empire,   conquering Rhinnal and eventually  eighteen other worlds in the region. Esseles wasn’t the only one of humanity’s colonies  to form its own empire, either. Rendili and Kuat,   both worlds that would later become famous for  their warships, became military fortresses with   their own mini-empires; Humbarine, another one  of humanity’s most important worlds, actually   originated as a Kuati colony before breaking  off to form its own civilization. And Axum,   together with its sister world Anaxes, became the  heart of the Azure Imperium, an ancient empire   known for its navy. Other notable civilizations  were built around Shawken and Kaikelius. There were other civilizations in the Core  as well. The Humans of Corellia, for example,   were actually already in place well before  Coruscant started sending out sleeper ships,   having been transplanted to the system by the  Celestials long ago. The Corellians united with   the Selonians and the Drall, the native species of  Selonia and Drall, two other worlds in the system,   and together they colonized Talus and Tralus,  forming the Five Brothers, a union that started   building up its own mini-empire. The  Duros of nearby Duro did the same,   and established relations with Corellia, the Human  colony of Corfai, and the Herglic Trade Empire in   the Southern Core. Other alien civilizations  in the Core included the Columi of Columus,   an advanced race that had discovered interstellar  travel tens of thousands of years before,   and the Caamasi of Caamas, a peaceful people  known for their morality and beautiful homeworld. With the Rakata out of the Core, all of these  civilizations began to expand and collide,   some peacefully and some with war. More  importantly, however, they began to examine   the technology the Rakata had left behind. Rakatan  technology was far more advanced than even that of   the Columi, but slowly, the Core civilizations  started to figure out how some of it worked.   Technology as crucial as droids and blaster  weaponry originated in this way, and for the   record, this is why technology in the Star Wars  universe seemingly advanced so slowly. For most   of the Republic’s history, the advancements  made were just Republic scientists learning to   reverse-engineer Rakatan technology better, before  they eventually came to understand and surpass it. In 25,053 BBY, about a century and a  half after the fall of the Infinite   Empire, the most important of these Rakata-based  inventions came about: the hyperdrive.   Scientists working on Corellia and Duro had  studied Rakatan hyperdrive technology for   decades after the fall of the Infinite Empire,  trying to get it to work. They had one major   obstacle in this process - the Rakatan  hyperdrive, like most Rakatan technology,   could only be operated by Force-sensitives. The  devices essentially used the Force to streamline   hyperspace travel, allowing Rakatan ships to  just home in on Force-sensitive worlds. The   Corellian and Duros eventually figured out how  to remove these components, creating a device   that instead just allowed for travel through  hyperspace. Thus, the modern hyperdrive was born. Hyperdrive technology spread  like wildfire. At first,   hyperspace travel relied on beacons built  at jump-points, which broadcast signals to   replace the Force signatures that Rakatan  hyperdrives used for navigation, a system   that was eventually phased out altogether. The  Core Worlds quickly built their own beacons,   and soon, the first hyperspace routes were formed  between them. However, the spread of hyperspace   technology sent tremors throughout the Core. Not  all of these early civilizations were as peaceful   as the Alderaanians and Caamasi. Some had built  empires with strong expansionist tendencies and   saw the hyperdrive as an opportunity  they could use to take over the Core. Parts of the Core were already at war by  the time the hyperdrive came into being,   but its discovery brought the war to the entire  region. It is unknown what the sides were in   this conflict were exactly, but there are a  few that we can easily determine. Coruscant,   Alsakan, and their respective colonies were  likely major factors, as were Corellia, Duro,   and their own colonies. Kuat and Rendili, both  of which were very militarized, likely fought,   as did Humbarine. Axum and its Azure Imperium  probably played a major role in the conflict,   and the same was surely true  for the Esselian Empire. The various warring factions quickly grouped  up into two alliances - one led by Coruscant,   and one led by a group of vicious warlords, which  history remembered as the forces of evil. Based on   divisions from the early Republic era, we’d  guess that Coruscant was allied with Koros,   Alderaan, the Azure Imperium, Humbarine,  Metellos, Kaikelius, Corellia, Duro,   Columus, Caamas, and Corfai. The  so-called “forces of evil” were   likely based around the Esselian Empire, the  most expansionist of the Core civilizations,   which was likely allied with Corulag, Chandrilla,  Brentaal IV, Ralltiir, Kuat, Tepasi, Shawken,   Rendili, and Alsakan. Little is known about  the participants on either side, though we do   know that the brutal warlord Zakrinand Minus  was involved, likely on the side of evil. Very little is known about this conflict, except  for how it ended. A group of Jedi Knights,   whose Order was at that time based  far beyond the borders of the Core,   fought on the side of Coruscant, which helped tip  the tide in Coruscant’s favor. They were aided by   the Order of Dai Bendu, one of the galaxy’s most  ancient orders of Force-sensitives. With the help   of the Jedi and the Bendu, Coruscant  and its allies eventually won the war.   This conflict was the last war fought between the  civilizations of the Core until the Clone Wars   split the galaxy in two, and in later years  it was referred to as the Unification Wars. In the aftermath of the Unification Wars, all  the greatest worlds of the Core came together   to discuss their future - a shared future.  Representatives from Coruscant, Alderaan,   Corellia, Duro, Alsakan, Caamas, Axum, Brentaal,  Kuat, Esseles, Rendili, Humbarine, Chandrila,   Rhinnal, Shawken, Tepasi, Corulag and Kaikielius,  among others, met and made the decision to unite   under one government. Fifteen humans, led by  a representative of Alderaan’s House Organa,   drafted the Galactic Constitution, a document that  outlined plans for a government run by a Senate,   detailed protections for various rights  of member worlds and individual citizens,   and the formation of a republic of which all the  Core Founders would be members on equal terms. And thus, in 25,053 BBY, the hyperdrive was  discovered, the Unification Wars consumed the   Core, and at the end of it all, the Galactic  Republic came into being. Coruscant was chosen   to be the new capital of the Republic, as it  sat at the end of crucial hyperspace routes   leading to Corellia and Esseles, which would  become the start of the Corellian Run and the   Perlemian Trade Route, respectively. To  represent itself, the Republic chose the   very symbol that the Bendu Monks had marched  under in the Unification Wars - eight spokes   united around a common center, representing  how the Force connected all living beings. “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights  were the guardians of peace and justice in the   Old Republic” -- as Luke Skywalker was told  by Obi-Wan Kenobi not long before the Battle   of Yavin. At various points in their shared  history, in fact, the Jedi and the Republic   might as well have been synonymous considering  how closely they worked with each other. But   how did this arrangement begin? How did the Jedi  Order come to serve the Republic? In this video,   the second installment in our series on  Republic history, we’ll be exploring just that. When we left off at the end of our previous video,  which discussed the settling of the Core and the   Unification Wars, the year was 25,053 BBY, and  the Galactic Republic had just been founded.   Over the course of the next few decades,  it began to solidify and explore more of   the galaxy. Historians consider this the start of  the Expansionist Age, a roughly five-thousand-year   period of history that marked the earliest period  of the Republic’s development. During this first   leg of that period, the Core Worlds were explored  a bit more, with routes in the Arrowhead region   being made more reliable and stray systems in the  region being added to the charts here and there. Meanwhile, the Republic also began to  expand into the Colonies, the region just   outside the Core Worlds. Over the course of the  Republic’s first centuries, a wide swath of the   region was opened up, with Neimoidia, Kattada,  Commenor, Kelada, Byblos, Carida, Uviuy Exen,   and Arkania all joining the Republic during this  time. The first years of the Republic also saw   the blazing of the first of the Republic’s most  crucial hyperspace routes. In the southwest,   Corellians and Duros blazed the start of a route  that, thousands of years later, would become   the Corellian Trade Spine. In the southeast, the  Corellians extended the Spin - the route between   Corellia and Coruscant - into the start of the  Corellian Run, which by 24,500 BBY had reached   Iseno and Denon, two worlds in the Inner Rim that  would become rich and powerful in later years. But the work of the Corellians couldn’t compare  to the sheer luck of the Perlemians. Perlemia   was a small shipyard world located on the Axis,  a route that stretched from Coruscant to Raltiir,   connecting some of the most powerful Core Worlds.  The Perlemians worked to extend the route, pushing   it northeast into the unknown, and they struck  gold. Between the founding of the Republic and   25,000 BBY, in just fifty-three short years,  these madlads pushed what would become the   Perlemian Trade Route all the way into the Outer  Rim. Along the way, they discovered a number of   soon-to-be-important systems, including Yabol Opa,  Castell, Tirahn, Tanaab, Lantilles, Roche, Abhean,   Lianna, and eventually Columex. The Republic  explored a bit of the space near Columex, and in   25,000 BBY, they discovered Ossus, where they made  their first official contact with the Jedi Order. The Jedi Knights, the followers of the Light  and defenders of the balance of the Force,   were one of the most ancient organizations in  the galaxy. The foundations of the Jedi Order   were laid in 36,453 BBY, when the Tho Yor, a  mysterious collective of ships that resembled   Mortis, gathered Force-sensitives from all  over the galaxy and brought them to Tython,   a world in the Deep Core. Tython was exceptionally  strong in the Force, and those beings who were   brought there by the Tho Yor dedicated their  lives to its study, naming themselves Je’daii. For over ten thousand years, the Je’daii of  Tython studied the Force, but the peace of   that idyllic world was shattered a few centuries  before the formation of the Republic. Originally,   the Je’daii had studied both the Light and the  Dark, which they referred to as the Ashla and   the Bogan, but over time, members of the order  began to drift towards one side or the other.   Most of the Je’daii gravitated towards  Ashla, the Light Side, as they came to   recognize that balance in the Force was only  achievable through its supremacy. But others,   influenced by the Rakata, gravitated instead  towards the Bogan, believing it would grant them   greater power. The two sides clashed in the Force  Wars of Tython, which lasted for about a decade. The followers of Ashla eventually  defeated the followers of Bogan,   and in the aftermath of the conflict,  they formed the Jedi Order, dedicated   to ensuring the supremacy of the Light  and, thus, the balance of the Force.   But despite the Jedi victory, the Force Wars took  their toll on Tython. Since the planet and its   ecosystem was so heavily attuned to the Force,  the Force Wars wreaked havoc across its surface,   and the Jedi were forced to abandon it, as  it was barely even inhabitable at that point.   Using Rakatan Force-attuned hyperdrives, they  travelled across the galaxy and settled on Ossus. Ossus was a unique world that reminded the Jedi  of Tython in its prime -- a world of natural   beauty and astrological uniqueness. Located  in the Adega System, Ossus had two suns,   Adega Prime and Adega Besh, and unusually, it  orbited them in a figure-eight pattern. When the   Republic discovered Ossus in 25,000 BBY, they made  their first official contact with the Jedi Order.   The Jedi Knights had been known  to the Republic beforehand,   as a few had fought in the Unification Wars, but  they were mostly treated as beings of legend,   and it wasn’t until contact was made with  Ossus that the legends were confirmed. While their basic precepts were the same, the Jedi  Order of 25,000 BBY was quite different from the   Jedi Order of the movie era. The Jedi were always  in favor of the Light Side, their High Council was   in place from the beginning, and their ranks  and many of their traditions were present in   the earliest incarnations of their Order. But  in general, the Jedi Order of those times were   far less rigid than it would eventually become.  The ancient Jedi were allowed to have families,   for example, and their temple on Ossus was less  of a headquarters and more of a gathering site.   Furthermore, they had not yet invented  their iconic lightsabers. Instead,   they used specially-forged swords imbued  with the Force, which made them sharper,   more durable, and more in tune with the user. Some Jedi welcomed ties with the Republic and  immediately began travelling to Republic worlds,   seeking to maintain peace and justice.  Others were more skeptical, however,   so the Order debated whether or not to officially  join the Republic for weeks. But ultimately,   after revered Jedi Master Haune Tiar toured the  Republic and was satisfied with what he saw, the   Order did in fact choose to officially ally itself  with the Republic. From that point forwards,   the Jedi Knights served as the guardians  of peace and justice across the Republic,   a role they would continue to fulfil in various  ways for the next twenty-five thousand years.   Many Jedi settled on worlds across the  Republic as permanent protectors and sages,   becoming Jedi Watchmen, while others  largely remained on Ossus, which became   a fortress-world of the Republic, serving  to protect it from threats on the Outer Rim. But ironically, the first real threat to the  Republic that the Jedi fought off came from   within the Jedi Order itself. By 24,500 BBY, the  Jedi Order had comfortably settled into its place   in the Republic, and its various doctrines became  more rigid. The Jedi Council, in particular, was   becoming more dogmatic, especially when it came to  studying other Force traditions. A number of Jedi   resented this, including one promising student  named Xendor. Hoping to solve the problem, Xendor   and his close friend Arden Lyn asked the Council  for permission to start a satellite academy far   from Ossus, where they would study a variety of  other Force traditions alongside the Jedi ways.   The Council shot this idea down, but Xendor and  Lyn left to start their satellite academy anyway,   taking a large number of followers  with them. They settled on Lettow,   a world on the borders of the Deep Core that was  pretty much on the opposite end of the Republic. On Lettow, Xendor founded an academy,   where he was quickly joined by thousands of  Jedi renunciates and other Force-sensitives.   They operated similarly to the Jedi but with a  much less rigid hierarchy, and a strong emphasis   on individualism, in contrast to what they viewed  as the collectivist ways of the Jedi. At first,   Xendor’s teachings were a mix of a  wide variety of Force traditions,   but they gradually became dominated by the  study of the Bogan, the Dark Side of the Force.   Xendor and his followers became enthralled by the  darkness, as the Jedi Council had feared, so the   Jedi began gathering on Ossus, fearing Xendor  would become a threat to the Republic. In turn,   Xendor and his followers began to militarize,  naming themselves the Legions of Lettow. As the Jedi began openly building an army on  Ossus, Xendor, now the General of the Legions   of Lettow, believed war was inevitable. Hoping  to end it before it began, he struck first,   launching an attack on Ossus that the Order  easily repelled. The Jedi beat the Legions   of Lettow back down the Perlemian in short  order, bringing the war to the Core Worlds,   the heart of the fledgling Republic. This  war became known as the First Great Schism.   Battles were fought between the Jedi and the  Legions on Brentaal IV, Chandrila, Corulag,   Metellos, and even Coruscant itself.  The outcome of these battles is unknown,   but it can be assumed the Jedi won all or  most of them, and though both the Jedi and   the Legions claimed they were trying to defend the  Republic, the Republic generally stayed out of it. In short order, the Jedi Knights pushed the  Legions off the Perlemian and down the Corellian   Run, cornering Xendor on Columus, a world close  to Lettow. On Columus, Xendor and some of his   best Legionnaires, including the likes of Sethul  Asaiage and Tun Bohoi, stood against the armies   of Awdrysta Pina, nicknamed the Green Blade, the  leader of the Jedi armies and a legendary warrior.   Xendor and the Legions fought well, but the Jedi  had a crucial advantage, one that had allowed them   to win the prior battles of the schism - battle  meditation. That rare Jedi technique allowed   generals like Pina to coordinate entire armies  through the Force, and in the First Great Schism   his forces surrendered themselves entirely to  his direction, creating a sort of battle meld   that allowed the armies of the Jedi to fight as  a singular unit. Xendor and his followers were   disgusted by this, viewing it as insectile and a  surrendering of individuality, and refused to do   the same. As a result, they were slaughtered,  and Xendor himself died at Pina’s hands. The Jedi then launched an attack on Lettow, in  which Xendor’s academy was destroyed, as were   most of his followers. Only Arden Lyn, his right  hand, escaped, fleeing into the unknown, into   which Awdrysta Pina pursued her. Neither were seen  or heard from for the next twenty-five thousand   years, and with the destruction of the Legions  of Lettow, the First Great Schism came to a   close. The conflict was more or less forgotten  in short order. Even though it was technically   a full-scale war, it was quite small in scale,  as both the Jedi Order and the Legions of Lettow   were only a few thousand strong each, and the  battles between them were small and quick. The Republic pretty much ignored the whole thing,  while the Jedi willfully let it fade into legend;   by the time of the Clone Wars, it was pretty much  myth. Only Xendor’s name was remembered from the   period, and even then, it was remembered only as  profanity - an ignoble legacy for a guy who really   wasn’t all that bad. In the aftermath of the  First Great Schism, the Republic kept expanding,   and the Jedi kept protecting it, righting  small-scale wrongs and generally ensuring   safety and stability. However, only a few  hundred years later, the Jedi would be called   to action en masse once more, as the Republic  faced its first real threat - the Tionese. The Clone Wars, in many ways, were less one  big conflict than they were a collection of   thousands of more local grievances flaring up once  more. Some, like the conflict between the Andoan   Spiverelda and the Andoan Free Colonies, began  only a few decades before the Clone Wars. But some   were a continuation of truly ancient grievances,  which had troubled the Republic many times before.   The Tion Cluster’s animosity towards the Republic  is perhaps the most notable of these conflicts,   and in this video, which is a part of our  series on the history of the Republic,   we’re going to explore what led to that  region becoming the heart of the CIS. In our last video in the series, we discussed  how the Jedi Order came to be affiliated with   Coruscant, and ended with the first war to  break out in the Republic. But that war,   the First Great Schism, was limited in scale,  and the Republic was barely even involved in   it. Instead, the Republic's first true war  happened five hundred years later, in around   24,000 BBY. At that time, Republic  hyperspace scouts were eagerly pushing   along the Perlemian Trade Route into the Outer  Rim, seeking new civilizations to trade with.   There was danger in doing so, of course. Upon  joining the Republic, the Jedi of Ossus warned   that pirates and bloodthirsty empires lay  not far from the borders of the Republic,   and actually joined the Republic mostly  to help insulate it from those dangers.   But this didn’t deter the Republic’s scouts,  and soon enough, they discovered the Tionese. At   the time, the Galactic Republic was still rather  naïve, possessing no real military aside from the   small fleets maintained by some of the richer Core  Worlds. Its scout ships were only lightly armed,   and when they first made contact with the Tionese,  they did so in the hopes of establishing trade   with their new neighbors. The Tionese, on the  other hand, were a completely different story. The Tionese were human, the descendents of  a pair of ancient sleeper-ship colonies that   were established on Barseg and Janilis VII,  two thousand years before the Republic was   even an idea. They adapted old Rakatan  technology discovered on those worlds,   coming up with primitive hyperdrives, war  droids, and beam-tubes, the ancient ancestors   of the modern blaster. They quickly  spread out across the Tion Cluster,   a large swath of space in the distant Outer  Rim. They quickly splintered into a variety   of warring civilizations, but they nonetheless  managed to maintain a somewhat universal culture. By 25,150 BBY, Tionese civilization had become  dominated by three warring factions - the Livien   League, ruled from Desevro; the Kingdom of Barseg,  ruled from Barseg; and the Kingdom of Cron,   ruled from Chandaar. Around that time, the  Kingdom of Cron came under the rule of the   infamous pirate-king Xer VII, who executed a  series of campaigns known as the Cronese Sweeps.   He conquered the Kingdom of Barseg and a massive  swath of the cluster beyond it, with only the   Livien League remaining independent of his rule.  Xer moved the capital of his new empire to Argai,   and divided it into three provinces,  ruled by Chandaar, Cadinth, and Raxus. In 25,130 BBY, Xer died and was succeeded by  his son, Xim, who was determined to expand his   father’s empire. He was tremendously successful.  Not only did he conquer the Livien League,   but he also greatly expanded the  borders of Tionese civilization,   and by 25,100 BBY, Xim’s Empire was  the largest state in the entire galaxy.   Rule of the Empire was divided between Xim’s  throneworlds, the richest and most powerful of   the Tionese worlds. Within the original borders  of the Tion Cluster, he chose Argai, Chandaar,   Cadinth, and Desevro as his seats of power, and as  the Empire expanded, new throneworlds were added.   As Xim pushed into the region known as the Thanium  Worlds, which stretched out to the Radama Void,   and the Far Indrexu, which lay Rimward of  the Cluster, Thanium and Yutusk joined the   list of throneworlds. When he conquered the  lush region known as the Kiirium Reaches,   Huronom and Astigone became throneworlds as well.  And Xim didn’t stop there; he was always pushing   the borders of his realm. Unfortunately for  him, he largely chose to push them southwards. As Xim’s Empire reached southwards across  the Rim, it eventually encountered another   powerful civilization - the Hutt Empire. In his  arrogance, Xim saw the Hutts as ripe for conquest,   and declared war, claiming Sleheyron as his  ninth throneworld and engaging the Hutts in   several large battles at the planet Vontor.  But Xim underestimated his wily enemies. In   preparation for the Third Battle of Vontor, the  Hutts enslaved three entire species - the Niktos,   Klatooinians, and Vodrans - and formed them into  huge armies, which they unleashed against Xim’s   war droids in that last fateful battle. The  Hutts were victorious, and the being history   would remember as Xim the Despot was captured  and humiliated, dying a slave in a Hutt dungeon. Following Xim’s defeat, his empire splintered,  with the Hutts claiming many of their southern   territories for their own and frequently raiding  the rest for slaves and plunder. The Tionese   splinter-states, which included the Honorable  Union of Desevro and Tion, the Jaminere Marches,   the Kingdom of Cron, the Thanium Dominion, the  Indrexu Confederation, and the Keldrath Alignment,   were constantly seeking to return to their  former glory and take revenge on the Hutts.   But the Hutts themselves remained far from Tionese  reach, and they were always sure to send sinister   warfleets to frak up any Tionese civilization  that got too powerful for their liking. The Hutts were still unknown to the Republic  when they encountered the Tionese, but news of   the contact made its way to Hutt ears. The Hutts  feared the two human civilizations would unite   against them, so in 24,500 BBY, they attacked  the Kiirium Reaches, the southernmost Tionese   colonies, without warning in a campaign known  as the Devouring. This genocidal war saw the   Kiirium Reaches utterly annihilated, stripped  of all inhabitants and thoroughly plundered.   When Republic scouts eventually reached  the region, they named it the Ash Worlds. The Tionese were still reeling from this genocide  in 24,000 BBY, and as they began to learn more   about the Republic, they saw an opportunity. The  Republic was wealthy and technologically advanced,   with better hyperdrive technology than either  the Tionese or the Hutts. Despite this, however,   it didn’t have a standing military, so  some among the Tionese hoped to conquer   it and use its technology to exact revenge on  the Hutts. Desevro led this effort, getting   the Honorable Union on board with the idea and  then making alliances with the Kingdom of Cron,   the Jaminere Marches, and the Thanium  Dominion as well. They reverse-engineered   Republic technology and began building new  war fleets at Arcan, Jaminere, and Thanium. Somehow, the Republic didn’t see war coming,  even when the Jedi repeatedly warned them about   it. The Senate did absolutely nothing until,  in 24,000 BBY, the Tionese stormed down the   Perlemian Trade Route, first conquering Abhean  and then Roche, Lantilles, Taanab, and Tirahn.   Frantically, the Republic began cobbling  together a military, but it did so much   too late, and the Tionese breached the Core  Worlds before their new warships were ready.   Using devastating pressure bombs, the Tionese  destroyed the shipyards of Perlemia and Axum   and then proceeded to unleash their new  weapons of Alsakan and Coruscant itself.   Their assaults were devastating but not  crippling, and the Republic quickly prepared   for a counterattack. At Corellia, Rendili,  and Humbarine, vast fleets of warships were   nearing completion -- the first vessels to be  put to use as part of the new Republic Navy. The Tionese foothold in the heart of the  Republic was weak from the beginning,   as their tactics were still based on those  pioneered by Xim the Despot, who took inspiration   primarily from his time as a pirate. As a result,  the Tionese focused more on plundering than they   did on actually securing territory, and so when  the Republic finally executed its counterattack,   the Tionese were routed and quickly pushed  out of the Core. Emboldened, the Republic   Navy rallied at Anaxes, Axum’s sister world, and  began pursuing the Tionese back up the Perlemian. The Tionese War lasted for a hundred  years, most of which was a series of   back-and-forth campaigns between the Tion  and the Core. Over the course of this period,   Anaxes - now the headquarters of the Republic Navy  - gained a reputation as the Defender of the Core,   as the Tionese were never again successful in  getting past it and into the Republic at large.   Fleets launched from Anaxes pushed the  Tionese further and further up the Perlemian   as the Republic pooled its industrial  resources to build up its new military. As both the Republic and the Tionese turned the  Perlemian worlds into war camps and entrenched   their armies, the Senate sought out other ways  to get an advantage over the Tionese. Republic   merchants with contacts in Hutt vassal-colonies  managed to provoke the Hutt Empire into a new   campaign against the Tion, which forced  the Tionese to redirect some of their   forces to defend their southern borders. After  a lengthy debate, the Jedi Order also decided to   get involved in the war, concerned that the  galaxy would sink into barbarism otherwise. As the Tionese were slowly pushed back, their war  effort became fanatical, for they came to believe   that defeat would mean the destruction of their  culture and civilization. Their tactics came to   incorporate sudden raids and even suicide attacks,  which in turn further radicalized the Republic   Military, which adopted a strategy of total war.  They eventually pushed the Tionese back out into   the Tion Cluster, which they then invaded, using  their own pressure bombs to annihilate Cadinth,   Jaminere, Thanium, Chandaar, and Barseg.  At last, in 23,900 BBY, the Republic Navy   attacked Desevro itself. Knowing they faced  defeat, the Desevrars offered an unconditional   surrender - a surrender the Republic ignored.  Seeking to send a message to the Tionese,   they pressure-bombed the entire planet, blasting  it into a barren wasteland. In short order,   the rest of the Tionese worlds surrendered, and  the Tionese War ended with a Republic victory. There was some blowback to the brutality expressed  at Desevro, however. The Jedi nearly broke with   the Republic entirely over it, and to placate  them, the Senate ordered the complete dissolution   of the Republic Navy, with its assets being  distributed to individual worlds to maintain.   Over the course of the centuries that  followed the end of the Tionese War,   the worlds of the Tion Cluster ended up joining  the Republic to seek protection from the Hutts,   with only Desevro remaining bitterly independent. Over the course of the next few thousand  years, the Republic continued to expand.   It pushed further into the Colonies,  further out along the Corellian Run,   and into the Inner Rim. Worlds like Devaron,  Allanteen VI, Ailon, Antar, Pantolomin,   and Champala joined the Republic. The Republic  made contact with other civilizations out in the   void as well, making alliances with Nouane and  the Ktilac Regions. The map you’re seeing now is   the Republic as it was by 22,000 BBY, during the  height of the Expansionist Era. By 20,000 BBY,   much of the Core, the Colonies, and the  Inner Rim had seen intensive exploration,   and a new chapter of Republic history  began - the Great Manifest Period. By that point, the Tionese Wars were thousands of  years in the past, and the Tion Cluster had been   completely absorbed into the Republic. But not all  of the Tionese were happy about it. Anti-Republic   sentiment lingered in the Tion Cluster for tens  of thousands of years after that initial conflict,   and in the Republic’s later wars, the Tion  often leapt at any opportunity to secede   from the Republic. The Clone Wars were one  such conflict. In 24 BBY, when Count Dooku   announced the formation of the Confederacy of  Independent Systems, he did so on Raxus Prime   in the Tion Cluster, which became the first sector  to secede during the subsequent Separatist Crisis. The Clone Wars tore the Galactic  Republic apart on an unprecedented scale,   due to the secession of countless  thousands of member systems.   Before that, the Republic had largely ruled  the galaxy undisputed for thousands of years,   with the only major exceptions most fans  know of being during the wars with the Sith.   But was the Clone Wars the first civil war  the Republic faced? The answer, in fact,   is no. In this fourth installment of our Republic  History series, we’re going to be taking a look at   the first civil war that split the Republic,  and why the galaxy was never the same again. Now, it’s been a hot second since we’ve done  a video in this series, so you might need a   quick bit of a recap before we begin. If that’s  the case, or if you haven’t watched any of the   prior videos in this series, we recommend you go  watch the first three now. In our first video,   we discussed the Unification Wars and the  formation of the Republic; in the second,   we discussed how the Jedi joined the Republic,  and their first major clash with the Dark Side;   and in the third, we discussed the Tion  Cluster and the Republic’s first war. When we last left off in this series, we discussed  the Tionese War and the subsequent integration of   the Tion Cluster into the Republic, as well as the  end of the first chapter of Republic history. By   the end of the Expansionist Era, the Republic had  fully explored and incorporated large swaths of   the Core Worlds, the Colonies, and the Inner  Rim, and was developing further out into the   galactic disk along the Perlemian Trade Route  and the Corellian Run. With the conquest of the   Tion Cluster, the Republic stretched far out  into the Rim along the Perlemian Run, and by   20,000 BBY, the Corellian Run had been heavily  developed as well. At that point in time,   explorers were instead turning their attention to   the wide chunk of space between the two  routes, a region nicknamed the Slice. Starting in 20,000 BBY, scouts  began pouring into the Slice,   heralding the beginning of a new chapter in  Republic history - the Great Manifest Period.   This period saw the Republic expand dramatically,  both in astrographic and bureaucratic terms. It   was during this period that many of the Republic’s  most infamous flaws, including its massively   convoluted bureaucratic process and constant  Senate gridlock, began to take root, as Republic   Space was expanding faster than the Senate could  keep up with it. As a result, many sectors were   far larger than they were legally supposed to  be, limiting representation for newer colonies.   This era also saw the creation of the Bureau  of Ships and Services in 18,000 BBY, a powerful   organization that controlled hyperspace navigation  across the entirety of galactic civilization. Galactic exploration during the Great  Manifest Period was largely pushed by three   powerful Core Worlds in particular:  Coruscant, Alsakan, and Corellia.   Coruscant, the Republic capital and the hub of  galactic civilization, coordinated the exploration   of the Slice from the Corellian Run, of which it  was the endpoint, discovering many new species   and welcoming them into the Republic. Corellia  pushed into the Wild Space south of the Core,   while Alsakan funded colonization efforts  northwards from the Perlemian Trade Spine.   Significant cultural differences emerged between  the worlds explored by Alsakan, those explored   by Coruscant, and those explored by Corellia,  resulting in the early Republic developing not   as one civilization, but as three. By the end  of the Great Manifest Period shortly before   17,000 BBY, the Republic was significantly  larger than it had been at the end of the   Expansionist Era. However, it was beginning  to fracture as a result of these tensions. Alsakan, the home of a proud people with a  distinct culture, had been Coruscant’s biggest   rival in the years before the Republic. They had  wanted the Republic to be more of a confederation,   a looser union than it eventually became, fearing  their culture would be lost otherwise. As the   Great Manifest Period went on and the Republic  became more consolidated and bureaucratic,   the Alsakani began to see these fears coming true.  Alsakan itself was becoming just another stop on   the Perlemian, a rest point between Coruscant and  Anaxes. As a result, Alsakan was constantly trying   to upstage Coruscant, dominating colonization  efforts along the Perlemian Trade Route,   which the Alsakani called the Axis. Alsakani  explorers pushed the borders of Wild Space in   the Slice southwards, discovering worlds like  Saleucami and Lorell, and they also funded   northwards expansion of the Republic, colonizing  Palanhi, Bogden, Obroa-Skai, and Serroco.   That latter region, the Northern Dependencies,  became particularly loyal to Alsakan, and many   Perlemian Worlds, including the Tion Cluster, came  to reflect Alsakani views on the Republic as well. Coruscant, meanwhile, took advantage of the  expansion of the Corellian Run, which by that   point stretched out to Mon Gazza in the Mid  Rim, and had reached the vital trade worlds   Churba and Paqwepor Minor as well. The Grand  Companies, a group of corporations on Coruscant   and Coruscant-loyal worlds along the Spin, the  stretch of the Corellian Run between Corellia   and Coruscant, dominated the colonization  process, which they used to exploit newly   discovered worlds. From Mon Gazza, Coruscanti and  Corellian explorers pushed into the Outer Rim,   discovering Geonosis, Shimba, and Manda in the  space beyond the end of the Run. They also made   contact with other spacefaring civilizations,  including the Bothans and the Lannik. More importantly, however, they pushed northwards  into the Slice, opening up first the Expansion   Region and then the Mid Rim. Thousands of worlds  were discovered by Coruscant-backed scoutships,   with notable ones including Umbara, Belasco,  Telti, Cyrillia, and New Apsolon. Many of   the worlds discovered in the Expansion  Region were rich in natural resources,   and so the Grand Companies took control  of these planets and began stripping them.   Critics began calling one particular swath of  the Expansion Region the "Exploitation Region"   because of how badly the corporations  were treating the systems there. Indeed,   many of these worlds were exploited so badly  they were rendered unable to support life,   and subsequently abandoned. By the time of the  Clone Wars, the Exploitation Region was considered   dead space, with few habitable worlds - and  even fewer hyperspace routes - left in the area. Corellia, meanwhile, just kinda did its  own thing south of the Corellian Run. It,   too, had significant cultural influence over the  Republic, with a stretch of the Run known as the   77 Sectors and pretty much all systems south of  the route taking after Corellia on most matters.   Unlike Alsakan, though, it wasn’t really bothered  by Republic expansion or Coruscant’s growing   dominance. The Corellians just stuck to doing  what they did best - exploring. As Coruscant   began to slowly take over the Corellian Run, the  Corellians began forging a new hyperspace route,   the Corellian Trade Spine, which they extended  from its former endpoint at Devaron far out into   Wild Space. They settled the region between the  Run and the Trade Spine, and they also pushed   out into the Southern Core, eventually coming up  against the borders of the Herglic Trade Empire. By the end of the 17,000s BBY, exploration was  beginning to slow down, and the Great Manifest   Period was coming to a close; this heightened  tensions between Alsakan and Coruscant,   as the Republic began to seek greater authority  over Alsakani colonies. Things finally came to a   head in 17,018 BBY, when Alsakan and its allies  sent fleets south into the Expansion Region,   claiming several resource-rich systems and  blocking the Grand Companies’ expansion path.   The Grand Companies sent a fleet of heavily armed  Duros merchant freighters in response, which   opened fire on the Alsakani warships above several  colonies. The Republic, following Coruscant’s   lead, resolved to officially support the Duros,  and a civil war began. Thus the Great Manifest   Period came to an end, and the Indecta Era  began, starting with the First Alsakan Conflict. In total, there were seventeen Alsakan  Conflicts between 17,018 BBY and 3017 BBY,   though we’ll only be discussing the first  two today. These were the first civil wars   faced by the Republic, though they weren’t  the sort of civil war we’re familiar with.   Instead of drawn-out campaigns and extended  periods of bloody infighting, the Alsakan   Conflicts mostly consisted of saber-rattling,  with a few notable battles here and there.   The Republic largely continued on as usual  during them, with the many neutral systems   serving as bridges between the warring parties  and thus leaving business mostly unaffected. The First Alsakan Conflict saw several  clashes between various Republic fleets   and Alsakani warships, beginning with the Republic  invasion of Virujansi, a world that, at the time,   was occupied by Alsakan. The Republic successfully  captured Virujansi, but Alsakan reclaimed the   world in a second battle six years later, from  which its warships would continue to launch raids   on the Exploitation Region. After the Battles  of Virujansi, what started as a small-scale   conflict between Alsakan and Coruscant’s Spin  allies dragged more and more systems into it,   with the northernmost parts of the civilized  galaxy largely siding with Alsakan and the   rest of the Republic siding with Coruscant.  Corellia, however, remained neutral, and the   parts of the Republic south of the Corellian Run  sided with it, forming the Corellian Hegemony. There was only one full-scale battle in the  centuries-long First Alsakan Conflict - the   Battle of Kes in 16,921 BBY, an orbital  clash above the sole system unfortunate   enough to lie between Coruscant and Alsakan on the  Perlemian. That battle ended in a draw, as orbital   minefields made that part of space impossible  to navigate, thwarting Republic plans to attack   Alsakan directly and end the conflict. Forty years  later, Republic-backed merchant fleets besieged   the Alsakani colony of Porus Vida, ultimately  conquering the world for the Republic. The   Alsakani responded in kind in around 16,800 BBY  with the Siege of Belasco, an unsuccessful attempt   to conquer what was then one of the most crucial  hyperspace junctions in the Expansion Region. The First Alsakan Conflict dragged on like a  crappy holodrama the producers just wouldn’t   cancel, ending in 16,700 BBY only because the  Bureau of Ships and Services threatened to   withhold navigational data from warships if  it didn’t. Coruscant and Alsakan worked out   the Challat Compromise in a bid to diminish  tensions, which granted established Republic   worlds more power in the Senate. This brought  peace for a little while, but it also worsened   Senate corruption, which in turn led to war  breaking out again just five hundred years later. The Second Alsakan Conflict picked up where the  first had left off, with the Alsakani attempting   a Second Siege of Porus Vida in about 16,100  BBY, unsuccessfully trying to reclaim their   lost colony. The Republic responded by pressing  its advantage, beginning the Gizer Campaign,   which advanced from Porus Vida towards Gizer,  an Alsakani stronghold on the Perlemian. The   Republic made some gains, but the Alsakani  still managed to maintain control of Gizer   itself in a series of skirmishes that  concluded the campaign in 16,000 BBY. Most of the Second Alsakan  Conflict consisted of an arms race,   with a period of four hundred years having  no notable battles or clashes of any kind.   This period ended in about 15,600 BBY with  Alsakan’s Core Campaigns, in which fleets of   Alsakani warships advanced towards Republic-held  Coruscant, Skako, and Commenor. Alsakan   was quickly pushed back by Republic forces at  Skako and Commenor, and the Republic kept the   Alsakani from attacking Coruscant in a battle at  Belgoth’s Beacon, a historical site that was one   of the Republic’s first hyperspace beacons.  Belgoth’s Beacon was destroyed in the battle,   becoming one of many historical treasures that,  regrettably, would be lost in the Conflicts. Shortly afterwards, in 15,500 BBY,  the Second Alsakan Conflict was put   on pause when hyperspace scouts discovered the  Duinuogwuin [Dween-ow-gwin], a reptilian species   commonly known as Star Dragons, near Murkhana  in the Tion Cluster. Upon encountering a race   of fifty-meter-long dragonlike creatures that  could survive in space and breathed atomic fire,   the scouts naturally freaked out, unintentionally  starting the Duinuogwuin Contention.   The scouts ran all the way back to Coruscant, and  hundreds of Star Dragons followed. They ravaged   Galactic City, but Supreme Chancellor Fillorean  was able to put a stop to this destruction and   negotiate peace with Star Dragon philosopher  Borz'Mat'oh. The Contention ended with the Star   Dragons peacefully acknowledging the Republic, and  the Second Alsakan Conflict continued, though not   for long. The last major strike in the Second  Conflict was the Strontium Raid of 15,480 BBY,   in which Alsakan attempted to capture Abhean, a  Republic-loyal world on the Perlemian. The strike   was unsuccessful, and the Second Alsakan  Conflict fizzled out around 15,400 BBY. As the Indecta Era came to a close around 15,000  BBY, tensions from the Second Alsakan Conflict   still simmered. These two conflicts were the first  civil wars the Republic ever faced - but not the   last. Alsakan and Coruscant would continue  to clash, leading long-standing prejudices   and rivalries to develop between their worlds.  Some of these prejudices would later blossom   into conflicts of the Clone Wars, the long-term  consequence of the first Alsakani secessions. As the Republic continued to expand,  the Alsakan Conflicts continued,   even as explorers from both Alsakan  and Coruscant began to reach the   borders of another civilization out  in the unknown - the Hutt Empire. Jabba the Hutt was said to have lived by a  simple axiom: “too much of a good thing is never,   ever enough.” This mentality was shared by  most members of his species, the bloated,   sluglike Hutts, who were one of the  wealthiest and most powerful races in   the galaxy. Virtually all of this wealth and  power was ill-begotten, a result of criminal   activity and ancient imperial conquests.  Their greed and ambition knew no bounds,   and thousands of years before the Battle of  Yavin, these traits led them to concoct a plan   to take over the known galaxy. We’ll be discussing  that plot, and the Republic’s equally abhorrent   response to it, in this fifth installment of  our series on the history of the Republic. Our story resumes where it left off  at the end of the last episode - in   15,000 BBY, at the end of the Indecta  Era. Up to that point in time,   despite some early civil wars. the Republic had  managed to insulate itself from major threats,   as most of the civilizations it encountered only  spanned a few star systems at most. However,   as the Indecta Era ended and the Kymoodon  Era began, that was about to change. By 15,000 BBY, the Republic had made contact  with several alien civilizations that had   neglected to join it, including the Bothans  of Bothawui, the Nautolans of Glee Anselm,   and the Zabraks of Iridonia. Tionese explorers  told tales of the distant alien world Salin,   while Republic scouts started to push further  into the Slice. But the Republic was also coming   up on the borders of two major alien empires:  the Herglic Trade Empire and the Hutt Empire. The Herglic Trade Empire controlled a large  swath of the Southern Core, just off the   Republic’s western border. From their homeworld  of Giju, the whale-like Herglics had influence   over many civilizations, including Abregado-Rae,  the Daupherm Planet States, and the Botor Enclave.   The Herglics were powerful, wealthy, and highly  advanced, having first taken to the stars   two thousand years before the Republic’s  formation. Fortunately for the Republic,   they were also quite friendly. They had known  of the Republic since its formation thanks to   regular trade with the Duros, and the Republic  had little to fear from contact with them. The Hutts, however, were another story entirely.  Like the Herglic Trade Empire, the Hutt Empire   was founded long before the Republic, and  it grew to be quite wealthy and powerful,   having enslaved entire species over the years.  Ruled from the ancient Hutt homeworld of Varl, the   Hutt Empire had been known to the Republic since  the Tionese War in 24,000 BBY. As the Republic   pushed further into the Rim, it was cautious of  this distant empire of gluttonous slugs, unwilling   to come into conflict with them. The Hutt Empire,  meanwhile, didn’t bother much with the Republic,   at least while the Republic’s colonies were  still far from its borders. When Republic   settlers started colonizing worlds closer to Hutt  Space, however, the Hutts responded with raids,   slaughtering or enslaving the populations  of entire planets. Though both sides stopped   short of full-scale war, a confrontation between  the two great civilizations became inevitable. Fortunately for the Republic, the Hutt  Empire imploded before that could happen.   In 15,000 BBY, the Hutt Empire tore itself  apart in a civil war called the Hutt   Cataclysms. For unknown reasons, Hutt clans  turned terrible weapons against each other,   reducing some of their most ancient  colonies to lifeless wastes. Worst of all,   the Cataclysms claimed Varl itself,  which had its atmosphere vaporized   and surface obliterated. Greatly weakened, the  surviving Hutts regrouped at the planet Evocar,   which they renamed Nal Hutta, and attempted  to cobble together a new civilization. With the Hutt Empire gone, the Republic  experienced another period of booming   expansion, much like the earlier Great  Manifest Period. But the Hutts had led   the Republic to develop a greater sense of  caution about colonization efforts, leading   to the reestablishment of the Republic Navy in  15,000 BBY. In its first few years of service,   the new Navy proved itself in border conflicts  at Caulbon, Esaga, and the Sundered Veil nebula,   as well as in a brief war against the Aqualish  of Ando. It also kept Republic borders safe   during the Herglic Crush of 14,743 BBY, a  civil war within the Herglic Trade Empire.   Following the Herglic Crush, there were  concerns within the Republic about whether   peace with the Trade Empire would last,  but these fears were assuaged in around   13,000 BBY, when the Herglics and their  empire decided to join the Republic. Of course, the Kymoodon Era wasn’t all fun  and games. Starting in 14,500 BBY, the Third   Alsakan Conflict began, which saw Coruscant-loyal  Republic forces attack Alsakani-allied worlds in   the Commenor Run Campaign, hitting Kattada,  Alderaan, and finally Tepasi before attacking   Alsakan itself, destroying the city of Rupacar.  That conflict ended in 14,300 BBY, after which   there was peace for about five hundred years. A  Fourth Alsakan Conflict followed from 13,800 to   13,200 BBY, shortly after which a Fifth Alsakan  Conflict erupted in 13,050 BBY. That conflict was   focused around the Northern Dependencies,  the Republic colonies north of Coruscant,   which had been largely settled by Alsakan. In  that conflict, the Alsakani Admiral Hirken,   equipped with a fleet of brand-new cruisers,  commanded a furious defense of these colonies,   routing Republic forces at Borleias,  Twith, Xa Fel, Dachat, Glee Anselm,   and Iridonia. His efforts ended the  conflict in Alsakan’s favor in 12,700 BBY. This was just in time, because the Republic was  starting to have real problems right about then.   Proper contact was finally being established  with the Hutts, as Republic scouts had blazed a   hyperspace lane, the Ootmian Pabol, from Gyndine  to Nal Hutta itself, the Hutts’ new homeworld.   This contact renewed concerns about the Hutts -  and not without reason. After the loss of Varl,   the Hutts had moved to Evocar, which they bought  piecemeal from the native Evocii through a series   of scams. After taking the planet, which was  renamed Nal Hutta, they all but exterminated the   Evocii. Inspired by this new method of conquest,  the Hutt leader Budhila Hestilic Amura instituted   a philosophy called kajidic. In line with kajidic,  the Hutts put an end to the old imperial ways,   eschewing military conquest in favor of achieving  economic control over planets and organizations. This ultimately led to the formation of the  Hutt Cartel, which became a powerful force   in the galactic black market. By the time of the  forging of the Ootmian Pabol, the Hutts and their   black market had become wealthy and powerful  enough to infiltrate the Republic itself. The   Hutts wanted to take over the Republic, but  not militarily - rather, they sought to seize   control of the Republic’s economy, and thus  indirectly conquer the galaxy from within.   From the beginning, the Hutts were met with  success. The Galactic Senate was already corrupt,   and the Hutts were easily able to corrupt  it much further, to their own benefit. But the growing corruption and gridlock in the  Republic had an unintended side-effect - it led   to the rise of a religion called Pius Dea [PIE-us  DAY-uh]. Centered around the worship of an entity   called only the Goddess, Pius Dea became popular  among the humans of the Core Worlds due to its   emphasis on purity, internal policing, and the  purging of unsavory elements within communities.   However, the religion had a dark underside  to it. Pius Dea was violently humanocentrist,   deeming virtually all alien species as  impure and lesser in comparison to humans. In 11,987 BBY, a Pius Dea conspiracy in the  Galactic Senate saw the corrupt Bothan Supreme   Chancellor Pers’lya impeached and assassinated,  with Contispex I, a Pius Dea adherent,   rising to replace him. So began the Pius Dea  Era, a dark time for the Republic. Over the   course of the next few decades, Contispex  transformed the Republic into a theocracy,   handing over virtually all important government  positions to members of the Pius Dea hierarchy.   Those of you who have seen our previous  video on this era know what came next. In 11,965 BBY, Contispex  declared war on the Hutts,   sparking the first of the thirty-four Pius  Dea Crusades. These horrible, genocidal wars   between the Pius Dea Republic and various alien  civilizations dominated the next millennium,   as millions of human soldiers crowded onto  cathedral ships and stormed alien worlds with   cries of “the Goddess wills it.” Under the  guidance of Contispex I and his successors,   who all took the name Contispex in his honor,  they wiped out entire species, and ruined the   civilizations of many more, carrying their wealth  and resources back to the Core aboard galleons. The first few Pius Dea Crusades were directed  against the Hutts, as the Hutts were widely hated   in the Republic. In the First, Second, Third, and  Fourth Crusades, the crusaders pushed the Hutts   back Rimward through Wild Space, slaughtering  any nonhumans they encountered along the way.   The brutality the crusaders showed in  these early battles shocked many in the   Republic. The Jedi Order, in particular,  condemned the crusaders’ actions and cut   ties with the Republic, withdrawing  to Ossus and refusing to participate,   though they were. at that point. unwilling to  battle the Republic they were sworn to protect.   Of course, some Jedi Knights fought against  the crusaders anyway, while a few troubled   souls joined them, falling to the Dark Side  and becoming the Order of the Terrible Glare. After the first few crusades, the Pius Dea turned  their attention to other alien species. While   aliens and alien-sympathetic humans were hunted  down and branded heretics [HEH-reh-tiks] within   the Republic, the military began  attacking neighboring civilizations.   In 11,884 BBY, the Great Northern Crusade, or  the Seventh Crusade, saw bloody assaults on the   Zabraks and the Ithorians, while the Crusade of  the Wilds in 11,791 BBY, or the Tenth Crusade,   saw the genocide of various species living  along the Salin Corridor. Fortunately,   not everyone in the Republic was keen to go along  with this madness. In 11,820 BBY, the Alsakani   finally did something useful in the Sixth Alsakan  Conflict, during which they established lines of   communication with the Duros, Herglics, Hutts,  and other alien species. The Alsakani offered   these species covert protection from the  Republic in the centuries that followed. The Pius Dea Crusades went on for nearly  a full thousand years, and featured many   terrible atrocities. The Eleventh Crusade  devastated Herglic Space, while the Twelfth   Crusade saw the Republic Navy bomb the Zarracines  of Zarracina III and the Teirasans of Teirasa   back into the stone age. Not every species  the Pius Dea fought was wiped out, however.   The Baragwin, the targets of the Fifteenth  Crusade, were able to weather the storm,   as were the Bothans and Lanniks, the  targets of the Twenty-Third Crusade. By 11,500 BBY, the Pius Dea  dominated millions of worlds,   a mix of human colonies and conquered alien  worlds. Many of the more remote colonies became   Ordnance/Regional Depots, or ORDs for short,  which were essentially naval fortress worlds.   On these worlds, many of which retained the  prefix Ord even to the modern era, the Pius   Dea housed fleets of sinister Cathedral Ships,  tasked with laying waste to any nearby alien   civilizations perceived as a threat, alongside  smaller man-o-war vessels and primitive bi-wings. But despite the establishment of this well-oiled  military machine, the Pius Dea’s wars began to   stall in around 11,100 BBY, likely due to a  lack of good targets. As a result, the zealotry   of the Pius Dea Republic turned inwards,  and a bloody series of Inquisitions began.   As the Republic tore itself to shreds,  Caamasi diplomats finally convinced the   Jedi Council to end their centuries-long  Recusal, and the Order entered into a   conspiracy with the Caamasi, the Alsakani,  and an alliance of other alien species.   After the Thirty-Fourth Crusade in 11,057 BBY,  they spread a secret heresy among the Pius Dea,   allying with millions of Renunciates in the  military who were sick of all the cult garbage. In 10,967 BBY, these heretics declared  themselves, sparking the Renunciation,   a brutal civil war that was also  known as the Seventh Alsakan Conflict.   Under the leadership of the Jedi, the Renunciates,  the Alsakani, and their alien allies waged war   across the galaxy, smiting Pius Dea fleets at Ord  Mirit, Ixtlar, Fondor, Ord Carida, and Cyrillia.   Most of the Republic Military defected to join the  Renunciates, but the Pius Dea Faithful nonetheless   retained their fleets of cathedral ships and their  crusader armies. However, a year into the war,   the cult was dealt a killing blow when the Bureau  of Ships and Services sided with the Renunciates. The Bureau seeded every cathedral ship in the  fleet with bad navicomputer data, forcing the   ships to jump out into the middle of nowhere,  and then remotely disabling their hyperdrives.   Most of the surviving crusaders were left to  starve in the void, as they damn well deserved.   But the vanguard of the Pius Dea fleet was  sent to Uquine, where it was routed by the   Jedi and the Renunciates. After a team of  Jedi Knights boarded the fleet’s flagship,   the Flame of Sinthara, and captured Contispex  XIX, the Pius Dea finally collapsed. The   cult was purged from the Republic, and  its leaders were imprisoned for life. An uneasy period of rebuilding and  reconciliation ensued, during which   the Jedi all but took over the Republic in a bid  to put it back together. They were successful,   in the end, but worse problems than  the Pius Dea were soon to follow,   as a new threat to the Republic  blossomed within the Jedi Order itself. Ever since its beginning, the Jedi Order  struggled with the Dark Side. It was born out   of conflict with Darksiders in the Force Wars  of Tython, and fought the Legions of Lettow,   a group of Dark Jedi, in the First Great Schism  shortly after the Republic’s founding. But no   Dark Side threat faced by the Order was as  dangerous or as well known as the Dark Lords   of the Sith. The Sith were the enemies of the Jedi  for thousands of years, and the great wars fought   between the two orders consumed the entire  galaxy. In this week’s entry in our series   on the history of the Republic, we’re going to be  discussing the first of these terrible conflicts. When we last left the Republic, it wasn’t doing  too well. The year was 10,966 BBY, and the galaxy   was in chaos in the aftermath of the Pius Dea  Crusades. The Crusaders had been defeated;   their cathedral ships were adrift, lifeless,  in the middle of nowhere, and Contispex XIX,   the last of their leaders, had been imprisoned  for life on Caamas. The Jedi had led a coalition   of Renunciate heretics, Alsakani and Corellian  separatists, and nonhuman rebels to victory,   but in the process, much of the Republic had  been destroyed, and it needed to be rebuilt. Fortunately, the Jedi stepped into  the power vacuum left by the Pius Dea,   and put the Republic back together. The  Grand Master of the Order, Biel Ductavis,   replaced Contispex as the Supreme Chancellor,  while the Jedi and Caamasi set about bridging   divides between humans and nonhumans all over  the galaxy. Over the course of the Ductavis Era,   the Republic speedily recovered. By  10,000 BBY, it was ready to pick up   where it had left off before the Pius Dea,  continuing to expand and explore the galaxy. As explorers pushed the fringes of known  space, a few more Alsakan Conflicts occurred,   and some new external threats emerged as well.  In around 10,000 BBY, the young conqueror Vall   Kumauri conquered a few dozen planets on the edge  of Republic space, declaring himself the ruler of   the Kumauri Empire. Normally, the Republic would  just quietly eliminate hostile factions like his,   like swatting a mosquito. But Kumauri was a  much more serious threat than the Republic   usually faced. The conqueror had a fleet  of innovative new battleships equipped with   powerful mass driver cannons, which took  in asteroids and lobbed them at targets.   These mass drivers could crack a  warship in half with a single shot,   and when fired at planets, they had the  potential to devastate entire ecosystems. Despite his impressive new toys, Vall Kumauri  was quickly defeated by the Republic Navy,   and his empire was absorbed into the Republic.  But the legacy of his mass-drivers endured. The   Republic Navy copied Kumauri’s designs, and  mass-drivers were used as terror weapons by   both sides in the Tenth Alsakan  Conflict a few centuries later.   They were particularly notorious for their role  in the Osara Municide, in which the Republic Navy   bombed Osara, an Alsakani colony in the Northern  Dependencies, to the point of lifelessness.   This was the first equivalent of a Base Delta  Zero strike since the fall of the Rakata,   and unfortunately, it was not the last, either. It  did, however, lead to more important technological   developments. Planetary shields and turbolasers  were developed after the Tenth Alsakan Conflict,   allowing planets to better defend themselves  against bombardment in the future. The Ductavis Era was followed up by the Rianatus  Period, which lasted from 9000 to 8000 BBY.   Remembered for the 275-year-long reign of  revered Supreme Chancellor Blotus the Hutt,   the Rianatus Period saw the Republic expand  southwards, discovering Malastare, and northwards,   rounding off the Northern Dependencies.  It was followed by the Subterra Period,   which lasted from 8000 to 7000 BBY, during which  time the Republic faced several new threats. In 7811 BBY, Republic scoutships in the Northern  Dependencies encountered the Waymancy Hollow,   a small alliance of factions opposed to Republic  expansion. These factions were diverse, including   the Sisters of the Machinesmith, the mercenary  army of Whirl-Point-Six, the nests of Neshtab,   the Wives of Tingrippa, and a few other alien  races, but they all had the same goal - the   destruction of the Republic. To that end, they  had spent a thousand years studying Republic   military technology, improving on it in every  possible way. After the first contact between the   Republic and the Waymancy Hollow, war began, and  right away, the Republic was seriously outmatched. That war was later named the Waymancy Storm,  as it was both quick and terribly destructive.   Waymancy ships poured into Republic space,  destroying colonies across the Northern   Dependencies and annihilating entirefleets  of Republic warships. But the Republic fought   back. It had the advantage of numbers, and more  importantly, it had the advantage of spirit.   Volunteers from Rimworlds affected  by the conflict poured into the   Republic Military and fought the  conquerors with unmatched courage. The Republic was able to grind the  advance of Waymancy forces to a halt,   and then, using Waymancy technology that  had been reverse-engineered in a secluded   Axum shipyard, it began a counterattack.  The battleships of the Republic Navy and   the fearless Rocket-Jumpers put an end to  the Waymancy Storm by the end of the year,   utterly destroying the Waymancy factions  and conquering their worlds. The latest   threat to the Republic was defeated - but  a worse threat was just over the horizon.   The Republic's greatest crisis came in  7003 BBY, this time from within. And no,   we’re not talking about another Alsakan Conflict  - this threat came from within the Jedi Order. Since the end of the Pius Dea Crusades, the Jedi  Order had flourished. In those days, thousands   of Jedi Knights roamed the galaxy, serving as  watchmen for isolated planets or wandering heroes.   At the same time, Jedi Masters gathered on Ossus,   studying the Force in the peaceful  seclusion of the Order’s homeworld.   The light of the Jedi seemed brighter than ever -  but as we all know, the brighter the light gets,   the darker its shadow becomes. The Dark Side was  spreading within the ranks of the Order itself,   and its adherents were more numerous than they had  been for over ten thousand years. These Dark Jedi   declared themselves and broke away from the Order  in 7003 BBY, beginning the Second Great Schism. The Dark Jedi fled into Wild Space following  their exile from the Order, and at first,   the Jedi on Ossus were content to leave them  there. But then reports began to trickle in   about these Darksiders and what they were doing  with their newfound powers. They had fallen so   far into the Dark Side’s embrace that they had  begun to use their powers to warp life itself,   to alchemically mutate living creatures into  terrible abominations bound to their will.   The Dark Jedi had created the first of what  would later be called Sithspawn. On top of this,   they were attempting to take  their powers a step further,   studying how to use the Dark Side to mutate other  sentients and extend their own lives indefinitely. This left the Jedi with no  choice - they had to go to   war to stop their fallen brothers and the  nightmarish monsters they were creating.   Unlike in the First Great Schism, in which the  rest of the galaxy took no part, the Jedi received   the backing of the Republic Military in this  conflict. With both the full might of the Jedi   Order and the Republic set against them, it seemed  that the Dark Jedi would be easily defeated.   Things weren’t as they seemed, however. The Dark  Jedi had known war was coming ever since their   exile, and in the years before the war broke  out, they had amassed a vast army of monsters. Unlike the last Great Schism, this war between  Jedi wasn’t over in a few months, or even a few   years. It lasted a full century, from 7000 to  6900 BBY, coming to be known as the Hundred-Year   Darkness. In those terrible years, light and  dark clashed all over the galaxy. Jedi and Dark   Jedi fought in ferocious protosaber duels, while  entire colonies were consumed by battles between   the Republic Army and vast hordes of huge monsters  and Dark Side zombies. The Dark Jedi proved to be   more relentless than their enemies had bargained  for, always fighting to the death. To make matters   worse, their ranks were constantly bolstered  by new defectors from within the Jedi Order. Despite this, the Jedi and the Republic initially  had the advantage. The armies gathered by the   rogues were animalistic and reckless, and after  the initial shock of the first few battles,   the forces of light had an easy time dispatching  them. The Dark Jedi were pushed back beyond the   frontier, and their numbers were slowly whittled  down. Unwilling to give up, they responded by   creating the worst monsters yet - the Leviathans.  These massive, reptilian beasts feasted on   the souls of their victims, storing their life  forces and accumulated knowledge in blister-traps   on their backs. The Dark Jedi unleashed them  upon the galaxy, and so began a counterattack. But in the end, the Leviathans only bought the  Dark Jedi a few decades. The Jedi recovered,   and with the help of the Republic, they pushed  the Darksiders back one again. Leviathans fell,   one by one, to protosabers and Waymancy-designed  turbolasers, and the numbers of the Dark Jedi   began to dwindle. By 6900 BBY, a hundred  years into the war, the Dark Jedi had   been pushed back to the remote mining world  Corbos, where they prepared for a last stand. The Battle of Corbos was the most terrible  battle of the Hundred-Year Darkness.   The cornered Dark Jedi unleashed  the last of their monsters and   Leviathans against the Jedi and  their allies, killing thousands.   But in the end, the Darksiders were only  delaying the inevitable. After the last of   their ships were destroyed in orbit, the Republic  Navy used battleships based on Kumauri designs to   bombard Corbos from orbit, wiping out most of  the remaining Dark Jedi and their monsters. Only twelve of their greatest champions survived,  including the sorceress Sorzus Syn, the formidable   general XoXaan, the gifted admiral Remulus Dreypa,  the cunning warrior Karness Muur, and Ajunta Pall,   their leader. The Republic wanted to publicly  execute these Dark Jedi, but the Jedi Order   refused. The Jedi marched the Darksiders onto a  drone-operated galleon and shot them out into the   great beyond, hoping they would come to redemption  on some distant world beyond the fringe. Instead, by fate or the Force,  the vessel brought these twelve   Exiles to a desolate planet called Korriban.  There, they discovered natives called Sith,   a species of red-skinned humanoids strong in  the Force, and naturally inclined towards the   Dark Side. The Sith were initially fearful of  these outsiders, who they called Jen’jidai,   but the Exiles were nonetheless able to infiltrate  their society. The Sith took them to Ziost,   their frigid adopted homeworld, where the Exiles  won the trust of the Sith King Hakagram Graush.   Then Ajunta Pall betrayed and murdered Graush,  claiming the throne of Ziost and rule over   the Sith people. He and his followers seized  control of Sith society, establishing an empire.   In triumph, they claimed new titles for  themselves, becoming the Dark Lords of the Sith. The Sith Lords would spend the next two  thousand years growing their empire,   eagerly awaiting the day when they would  strike back against the Jedi and the Republic. When we last left off, the Hundred-Year Darkness  had just ended in 6900 BBY, and twelve exiled Dark   Jedi had landed on Korriban and become the  first Lords of the Sith. They claimed Ziost,   the icy adopted homeworld of the Sith species, as  their capital, and founded the first Sith Empire.   Beyond the fringe of known space, they  and their successors amassed armies,   and plotted revenge on the Republic. But the  Republic wasn’t really concerned with the Sith;   indeed, it didn’t even know they existed.  It was more worried about the Mandalorians. We’re betting you were wondering when  the Mandos would finally appear in our   stories of the Republic’s olden days. Truth  be told, the predecessors of the Mandalorians,   a species of gray reptilians called the Taungs,  had actually been roaming the galaxy since   before the Republic was even formed. But they  didn’t become relevant to the galaxy until,   in 7000 BBY, a Taung named Mandalore led his  people to a new planet out beyond the northern   fringe of the Republic, a jungle world that they  claimed and named Mandalore, after their leader. The Taung followers of Mandalore the First, as  he came to be known, were the first Mandalorians.   In those early days, they defeated the  fearsome Mandallian Giants, the Jakelians,   the remote human colonies on Gargon and Concord  Dawn, the Fenelar, and the Tlön. As they went,   they began to adapt alien technologies  and strategies into their warmaking,   appropriating Fenelar ships, Jakelian blades,  and even recovered Republic rocket-packs.   The Mandalorians also fought a few small wars  on frontier colonies, including the Pathandr   Fury of 5451 BBY and the Nakat Incursions of the  5130s BBY. This all but completely stymied the   Republic’s northwards expansion, though as of 5000  BBY, the Mandalorians’ crusades had yet to result   in anything serious. Additionally, while northward  expansion was stalled by Mandalorian raiders,   southward expansion opened up for the Republic.  In around 5500 BBY, two new hyperspace megaroutes   were blazed - the Rimma Trade Route and  the Corellian Trade Spine. Between them,   new avenues for colonization sprung up, and  the Republic once more began to prosper. In 5000 BBY, the Republic’s newfound age of  prosperity was crowned off by something entirely   unexpected - the unification of the Koros System.  The seven worlds of the Koros System in the Deep   Core were among humanity’s first colonies,  yet they had remained separate for seventeen   thousand years. It was only with the ascension  of Empress Teta in 5010 BBY that that started   to change. Teta launched what she called the  Reunification Wars, an attempt to bring the whole   Koros system under her rule. The war lasted for  ten years, but with the help of the Jedi Odan-Urr,   Teta emerged victorious, ushering in  newfound prosperity for the system. Not everyone in the Koros System felt the  benefits of this prosperity, however. The   young hyperspace scouts Gav and Jori Daragon, for  example, were almost out of both money and luck.   They had lost their parents in the Battle  of Kirrek, the last clash of Teta’s wars;   they were in debt for repairs on their ship,  the Starbreaker 12; and to make matters worse,   their most recently-discovered route, which passed  over the red giant Primus Goluud, was unstable.   A local crime lord had lost a fortune to the red  giant, and wanted the Daragon twins dead over it.   With their lives at risk, owning nothing but their  ship and the clothes on their backs, Gav and Jori   took to the stars once more. Charting their course  at random, they ventured far out into the unknown. With their random jump, they  found the most improbable route   in the history of the galaxy - the Daragon Trail,   a straight-shot from Koros to Korriban. In  doing so, they also found the Sith Empire. The Sith were in a rather tumultuous state at  the time. For over a century, the empire had been   ruled by the Dark Lord Marka Ragnos, who ushered  in the Golden Age of the Sith. But shortly before   the Daragons’ foray into the unknown, Ragnos  had died, and he had left no clear successor.   Moreover, in his last decades, the Sith Empire  had become stagnant. Some of the Sith Lords,   led by Ludo Kressh, were perfectly fine with this.  Others, like Naga Sadow, dreamed of conquest.   However, the dreams of this latter group were  repeatedly frustrated by the Stygian Caldera, a   shroud of nebulae and interstellar gasses that cut  Sith Space off from the rest of the galaxy. They   had no way to get beyond it, to find new targets  to conquer - until the Daragons arrived, that is. The Daragons’ arrival came right in the middle  of a battle between Ludo Kressh and Naga Sadow,   Ragnos’s prospective successors. They called off  their duel as soon as the two scouts stepped out   of their ship, ordering their Massassi warriors  to seize them. The Daragons were taken to Ziost,   where a fiery debate began between the Sith Lords.  Ludo Kressh believed that the new arrivals should   be immediately executed, fearing they were the  precursor to a Republic strike force, but Naga   Sadow instead argued that they should be released  and allowed to lead the Sith back to the Republic.   Where Kressh saw the Republic as a potential  threat, Sadow saw it as a target ripe for   conquest. Sadow eventually won the other Sith  Lords over, becoming Dark Lord of the Sith over   Kressh’s objections. He consolidated his power by  seemingly wiping out Kressh and his forces in a   battle over Khar Delba, during which he allowed  Jori Daragon to escape in the Starbreaker 12. But this was a trick - he had planted a tracking  device on the ship, hoping Jori would lead him   to the Republic. Naturally, she did exactly that,  fleeing back to Koros Major to warn Empress Teta   of the coming invasion. Teta and Odan-Urr,  her Jedi advisor, heeded these warnings,   but the Senate on Coruscant didn’t, and so the  Republic was unprepared when the invasion came.   Just as Jori had predicted, a vast armada of Sith  warships tore down the Daragon Trail and launched   a colossal assault against the worlds of the  Koros System, the start of the Great Hyperspace   War. And that wasn’t all - this invasion fleet  was being led by none other than Gav Daragon. As he had mustered his forces back on Khar Shian,  Naga Sadow had continued to introduce Gav to the   ways of the Sith, manipulating him and blaming  his family’s woes on the failures of the Republic.   Detecting that the young man was  Force-sensitive, Sadow planned to   make him an apprentice, and tasked him with  leading the invasion of his own homeworld. At first, the Sith assault on the Koros System was  a massive success. Gav’s ships easily dispatched   Empress Teta’s battle-weary fleet, and hordes of  Massassi warriors were making good progress on all   seven worlds. Content that Koros was secure, Naga  Sadow then ordered his fleets to begin assaults on   the rest of the Republic as well. Sith warships  stormed down the Koros Trunk Line, attacking   Kaikelius and the shipyards of Foerost, before  arriving in the skies above Coruscant itself.   From there, Sith fleets also attacked  Metellos, Ixtlar, Basilisk, and Shawken,   but the Sith’s biggest assault force was  reserved for the galactic capital itself.   Led by Sith Lord Shar Dakhan, a massive  fleet crowded the skies of Coruscant,   raining drop-pods full of Massassi  and warbeasts onto Galactic City.   Coruscant’s unprepared defenders were swept away,  unable to contend with the sheer size of the Sith   army, and soon the Jedi were fending off Massassi  on the steps of the Senate Building itself. But just as quickly as it had started, the Sith  invasion began to fall apart. On Koros Major,   Gav Daragon was confronted by Jori, who  showed him the damage he had done to their   home. Remorseful and full of doubt, Gav fled  back to his master, who was camped out in a   meditation sphere above Primus Goluud. Gav fired  on the meditation sphere, breaking Sadow’s focus.   In the process, he revealed a crucial  weakness of the Sith armada - most of it   didn’t exist. Sadow had been creating massive  illusions on the systems the Sith had been   attacking from his meditation sphere, making  his armies appear far larger than they were.   With his concentration broken, Sadow’s illusions  vanished, and the tide of the war began to turn. The Republic Navy counterattacked from  Anaxes, driving the Sith from Coruscant,   the Koros System, and the other Core Worlds.  The Sith fleet regrouped at Primus Goluud,   but the Republic followed them there, led  by Empress Teta, Odan-Urr, and Jori Daragon.   The Sith weren’t keen to admit defeat, however.  Sadow lured Gav Daragon to his meditation ship   and then trapped him there, returning to his  flagship, the Corsair. Aboard the Corsair,   Sadow activated a superweapon that caused Primus  Goluud to become extremely unstable, hoping to   cover the retreat of his forces with a supernova.  But Gav warned the Republic about what Sadow was   planning, and also informed them that the Sith  Empire was unprotected without Sadow’s armies.   Armed with this knowledge, Teta and her  fleet followed the Sith back to their empire,   even as Gav Daragon perished in  the explosion of Primus Goluud. Sadow and the remnants of his forces limped  back to Korriban, where they found Ludo   Kressh and a hostile fleet waiting for them.  Sadow’s rival had survived the trap that had   been set for him and had usurped control of  the Sith Empire and its remaining fleets.   A battle erupted between the two Dark Lords,  destroying the rest of the Sith Empire’s strength.   Sadow was ultimately the victor,  killingKressh for real this time,   but the battle was scarcely over when Empress  Teta and the Republic Navy arrived and opened   fire on the remaining Sith ships. Sadow was  forced to flee as the rest of his fleet was   annihilated by Teta’s forces, ending the Great  Hyperspace War in a decisive Republic victory. Following the war, Supreme Chancellor Pultimo  sent the Republic Navy back into Sith Space,   accompanied by the Jedi, both ordered to finish  off the Sith Empire. Under the guidance of the   Jedi, the Republic tried to destroy only the  Sith leadership, but they soon found that the   entire populations of captured worlds killed  themselves once their leaders were eliminated.   Between the assault and Sith suicides, Sith space  was entirely devoid of life in just a year’s time. That wasn’t the last the galaxy  saw of the Sith, however.   Survivors regrouped on the remote worlds Thule,  Vjun, and Tund. A sizable part of the empire’s   population regrouped under the Sith Lord Darth  Vitiate and fled to the galactic rim. Naga Sadow,   meanwhile, led his ship of Massassi warriors  to Yavin IV, a remote jungle moon. There,   they began the work of building a new empire in  exile, constructing massive temples to hide their   terrible weapons. The Republic wouldn’t learn of  their little redoubt for another thousand years. At the end of 5000 BBY, the Republic was well  on its way to recovery from the shock of the   Great Hyperspace War. The Republic itself  had lost little due to the limited nature   of the Sith assault, while the Sith themselves  had been completely vanquished, or so the Jedi   thought. What had been a thriving empire just  months before was nothing but dust and echoes,   as its people were all either dead or hiding  in the far corners of Wild Space. With the   Sith Empire gone, the Republic once more began to  thrive and expand. The millennium following the   Great Hyperspace War was called the Post-Manderon  Period, and during it, the Republic once more   began to expand, pushing the borders of Wild  Space and reclaiming many sectors from the Hutts. As the Republic expanded, new conflicts sprang  up all over the galaxy. But wherever the fires   of war burned, the Jedi and the Republic Army  were quick to put an end to the fighting.   Using the first modern lightsabers, Jedi and  their Republic Rocket-Jumper allies put an end   to the Gank Massacres of 4800 BBY, the Kaikieli  Reconquista of 4225 BBY, the Battle of Lorell in   4030 BBY, and the Quesaya Border Conflict of 4007  BBY. There were two more serious conflicts in this   period as well. 4250 BBY say the Jedi Order have a  Third Great Schism, which ended when the surviving   Dark Jedi rebels destroyed the entire Vultar  System, killing themselves in the process. In   4015 BBY, the galaxy also experienced the Great  Droid Revolution, which the Jedi quickly stopped. In the last years of the Post-Manderon Period,  the Republic also started to have serious   trouble with the Mandalorian Crusaders,  then led by Mandalore the Indomitable.   Under his leadership, many Crusaders left  Mandalore and returned to their nomadic roots,   ravaging worlds as they moved from place  to place. Their raids began to escalate,   and the Crusaders even began attacking Republic  worlds. In 4024 BBY, the Crusaders wiped out the   Nevoota species in the Nevoota Extinction, and in  4017 BBY, they did the same to the Basiliskans.   These raids were nothing, however, compared  to the hell the Republic was about to endure. It began on Onderon, a hitherto unremarkable  world in the Slice with only one settlement - the   city of Iziz, an island of civilization in a  jungle full of vicious beasts. In 2400 BBY,   Onderon was conquered by Freedon Nadd, a Dark  Jedi who had been kicked out of the Order.   Unbeknownst to most of the galaxy, however,  Nadd wasn’t just a Dark Jedi - he was also   a Sith Lord. After his expulsion from the  Jedi Order, Nadd had traveled to Yavin IV,   where he encountered the remnants of the Sith. He  became the apprentice of the Dark Lord Naga Sadow,   who had hidden on the moon with his Massassi  warriors for six hundred years. Nadd learned   many of Sadow’s secrets before  killing him and leaving for Onderon. In his time as King of Iziz, Freedon Nadd turned  Iziz into a secret bastion of the Dark Side,   spreading Sith teachings even among  non-Force-sensitives. Those who opposed   his rule were banished to the jungles, which  was meant as a death sentence. But some of those   who were banished survived, and in time they  became the Beast-Riders, a second Onderonian   civilization. The Beast-Riders waged war against  Nadd and his followers, even after Nadd’s death. The Beast Wars of Onderon raged for four hundred  years, until, in 4000 BBY, Queen Amanoa of Iziz   called for Jedi help in resolving the conflict.  By that point, it was believed that the legacy   of Freedon Nadd was dead and gone, and the Jedi  arrived on Onderon believing that the Beast-Riders   were the ones that needed to be stopped. But  they quickly discovered the truth - Amanoa was an   adherent to Sith teachings, and the Beast-Riders  were the ones who were in the right. These   Jedi - a group led by Padawan Ulic Qel-Droma, his  brother Cay Qel-Droma, and follow Padawan Nomi   Sunrider - brought Amanoa to justice, deposing her  and negotiating peace between Iziz and the Riders. But that was only the beginning. Two  years after the end of the Beast Wars,   Sith sympathizers began an uprising  in Iziz. From beyond the grave,   the spectre of Freedon Nadd had been manipulating  his successors the whole time, and as a result,   the Sith teachings were far stronger on Onderon  than the Jedi had suspected. The same Jedi who had   ended the Beast Wars, with the help of Master Arca  Jeth, put down the uprising, but in the chaos,   they had failed to stop Nadd’s teachings from  escaping Onderon. Two visiting nobles from the   Empress Teta System, Satal and Aleema Keto, made  contact with Nadd’s spectre, as did Exar Kun, an   arrogant Jedi who was well on his way to the  Dark Side. Nadd taught the Keto cousins Sith   sorcery and helped them claim a trove of Dark Side  artifacts, and then he guided Kun to Korriban. In Korriban’s Valley of the Dark Lords, Nadd  goaded Kun into embracing the Dark Side,   and from there, he led the fallen Jedi to Yavin  IV, where he guided him to the remnants of Naga   Sadow’s empire-in-exile. Kun quickly mastered  Sith techniques that Sadow had left records of,   allowing him to subjugate the Massassi.  Determining that he no longer needed Freedon Nadd,   Kun destroyed his would-be master’s spectre  and claimed the title of Dark Lord of the Sith. Meanwhile, Satal and Aleema Keto returned home  and formed an organization called the Krath,   a Dark Side cult that quickly spread through  the Teta System. The Krath launched a violent   coup and seized control of the system, and  defeated a Republic fleet sent in to stop them.   Fearing that the rise of the Krath was the start  of a new Sith threat, the Jedi Order called a   conclave to discuss the matter on Dejerba. The  conclave was interrupted, however, by Krath war   droids, who killed many Jedi, including Ulic  Qel-Droma’s master, before being destroyed. Filled with grief, Qel-Droma vowed to stop the  Krath menace, and volunteered to infiltrate   the Krath to bring them down. He traveled to the  Empress Teta System and met with Satal and Aleema,   but instead of stopping them, he ultimately  fell to the Dark Side himself, killing Satal but   allying himself with Aleema. Sensing the young  Jedi’s fall, Exar Kun travelled to Koros Major   to kill Ulic, fearing that Qel-Droma would soon  become a rival. But as Kun and Qel-Droma fought,   they were interrupted by a vision of ancient  Sith Lord Marka Ragnos, who commanded them   to stop fighting. Ragnos proclaimed them both to  be the new Lords of the Sith, with Kun being the   Master and Qel-Droma being the Apprentice. When  the vision faded, Kun and Qel-Droma agreed to an   alliance - and vowed to destroy the Republic  between them. So began the Great Sith War. Kun and Qel-Droma wasted no time in beginning  their offensive. Using the Dark Reaper,   a Sith artifact Kun had recovered on Yavin,  Qel-Droma began to expand Krath space,   conquering several worlds near Empress Teta and  winning the allegiance of the Tapani Sector,   which included the shipyards of Fondor.   Qel-Droma also encountered the Mandalorian  Crusaders, and after beating Mandalore the   Indomitable in a duel, he won their allegiance  as well. Meanwhile, Exar Kun travelled to Ossus,   the Jedi homeworld, where he covertly  began turning young Jedi to the Dark Side. To cover for Kun’s activities, Qel-Droma launched  the Dark Reaper campaign, cutting a bloody swath   across the Tion Cluster. The ancient Sith  superweapon annihilated whole Republic armies   on Makem Te and Raxus Prime, but Ulic had  mixed feelings about using it, and covertly   tipped the Jedi off on how to destroy it. In a  battle at Thule, they did exactly that - and at   the same time, Qel-Droma took advantage of their  distraction to conquer the shipyards of Foerost. From Foerost, Qel-Droma and the Krath attacked  Coruscant itself. They carved a swath through   Galactic City, but at the last minute,  Qel-Droma was betrayed by Aleema Keto,   who recalled Krath forces and allowed him  to be captured. Outraged over the attack,   the Galactic Senate held a publicized trial  for Qel-Droma, which they hoped would help   reassure the Republic that they had things under  control. However, in the middle of the trial,   Exar Kun barged in, paralyzed the whole Senate  with the Force, freed Qel-Droma, murdered both   the Supreme Chancellor and his former master,  and left just as suddenly as he had arrived.   Understandably, this took the Republic from  a state of concern to one of sheer panic. They had good reason to be terrified. Upon being  freed, Qel-Droma began the Krath Holy Crusade,   in which Sith fleets cut a bloody swath across  the Republic, from the Core to the Outer Rim. Meanwhile, the Mandalorians launched their own  crusades, cutting across Wild Space to attack   Iridonia and moving up the Perlemian towards  Ossus. The Jedi stopped their advance, but around   the same time, they themselves were under threat.  On Exar Kun’s orders, hundreds of fallen Jedi rose   up and butchered their masters, joining Exar’s  Brotherhood of the Sith and attacking Republic   forces. Emboldened by these early victories, Kun  and Qel-Droma landed on Ossus, the homeworld of   the Jedi, under the cover of the Jedi infighting,  intending to loot several sacred Jedi sites.   There, Qel-Droma came face-to-face with his  brother, Cay, who he fought and killed in a duel.   Horrified by what he had done, Qel-Droma  abandoned the Sith and surrendered to Nomi   Sunrider, who stripped him of his  Force powers and took him prisoner. Around the same time, Krath fleets led by  Aleema Keto were moving towards Ossus along the   Perlemian, led by Naga Sadow’s ancient flagship,  the Corsair. During a battle in the Cron Cluster,   a collection of a dozen stars near Ossus, Aleema  used the superweapon aboard the Corsair to rip   out the core of a nearby star, as Exar Kun had  suggested she should do. But this was a trick,   a repayment for her earlier betrayal of Ulic. That  maneuver caused all of the stars in the cluster   to supernova at once, annihilating all ships  present. The resultant cataclysm devastated Ossus,   cleansing the planet of life. Most of the Jedi  were able to escape before the cataclysm struck,   however, and they moved their base of  operations to a new temple on Coruscant. The destruction of Ossus was the greatest victory  of the Brotherhood of the Sith, but fortunately,   it would also be their last. Following the  death of Aleema Keto and Qel-Droma’s surrender,   the Krath were left leaderless, and the Republic  launched a massive counteroffensive against their   fleets, annihilating them at Kemplex 9, Boonta,  Fondor, Gyndine, and Gamor. Around the same time,   the Mandalorian Crusaders were defeated in  a battle above Onderon, and Mandalore the   Indomitable was overwhelmed and killed by beasts  on Dxun, Onderon’s moon. Exar Kun suddenly found   himself the last leader of the Brotherhood, and  as his fallen followers were defeated by the Jedi   all over the galaxy, he retreated to Yavin IV.  Republic fleets followed him there, however, and   they bombed the whole moon to hell, setting fire  to its jungles. The Massassi were wiped out, and   Exar Kun vanished, presumably dead. The Great Sith  War was over, just as suddenly as it had begun. The war only lasted for a single year - 3996 BBY,  to be exact. Its impact, however, was immense.   It was just the first of the Old Sith Wars The thirty years after the Great Sith War were  called the Restoration Period, the calm before   the storm. During those decades, the Republic  rebuilt, overhauling its aging military and   adopting new blaster technology, an innovation  derived from Mandalorian weapon designs.   The last remnants of the Krath and Exar  Kun’s Sith followers were dispersed, while   Ulic Qel-Droma went into a self-imposed exile  on Rhen Var. The Jedi Order rebuilt as well;   having lost their homeworld of Ossus near the  end of the war, they set up shop in a new Jedi   Temple on Coruscant, and tried to rebuild after  suffering grievous losses to the Sith. In the   early years of the Restoration Period, the Jedi  Council also authorized the Great Hunt, in which   a team of Jedi were sent out to hunt down what  they thought were the last Sithspawn monsters. The peace of the Restoration Period didn’t last.  In 3970 BBY, the Argazda Sector, a small group   of systems on the Republic’s frontier, seceded  and became the Argazdan Redoubt. The Redoubt’s   ruling Argazdans, free of Republic scrutiny, began  a three-hundred-year-long reign of terror called   the Kanz Disorders, starting with the first of  what would be many genocides on Ereesus. But at   the time, the Republic wasn’t able to do much  about the Argazdans. They had bigger problems. The Republic wasn’t the only faction that was  rebuilding during the Restoration Period. In   a battle over Onderon at the end of the war,  the Mandalorian Crusaders, who had been allies   of the Sith, were defeated, and their leader  was killed by beasts on Dxun, Onderon’s moon.   But on the same day Mandalore the Indomitable  fell, another rose to take his place. A warrior   stumbled upon Mandalore’s body in the jungles  and, claiming his mask for his own, became the new   Mandalore, as had been tradition for millennia.  He declared himself Mandalore the Ultimate. Returning home, the new Mandalore rallied  his people in secret on Mandalore and Dxun,   where he declared a series of reforms that  would change the Mandalorians forever.   Where the Mandalorians had previously consisted  mostly of Taungs, they would henceforth accept   recruits from all species. Additionally, they  were to abandon their nomadic ways and keep the   worlds they conquered, so as to build up  a military force to rival the Republic’s.   In the decades after the end of the  Great Sith War, these Neo-Crusaders   conquered a vast swath of the Wild Space  beyond the Republic’s northern fringe. In 3976 BBY, Mandalore the Ultimate began what  would later be called the Mandalorian Wars.   At first, he and his Neo-Crusaders stayed  beyond the borders of the Republic,   conquering fringe worlds like  Cathar and Althir. But before long,   they began to bite into Republic territory,  clearly preparing for a larger invasion.   Despite the obvious nature of the growing  threat, the Republic, still war-weary,   neglected to do anything about it.  That mistake nearly proved fatal. In 3965 BBY, eleven years after the Mandalorians  began their campaigns, the Neo-Crusaders finally   began attacking Republic warships near Taris.  The war had come to the Republic at last - but   for nearly a year, it seemed to be limited in  scope. The Mandalorians only deployed limited   forces in the first year of this new stage of the  war, and they only attacked minor resource worlds.   Expecting that a greater Mandalorian  invasion would soon be coming, the Republic   Navy established the Jebble-Vanquo-Tarnith  Line, a security cordon just beyond Taris,   which they reinforced to the best of  their abilities. But it wasn’t enough. In 3964 BBY, this false war came to an abrupt end  when the Mandalorians unleashed a massive armada   against the Line, annihilating the Republic’s  fleets and seizing Taris and Vanquo in lightning   strikes. With his enemies in disarray, Mandalore  the Ultimate then ordered a full invasion of the   Republic. The Mandalorians struck in three sectors  at once, pushing Coreward from Taris while also   hitting the Tion Cluster and the Northern  Dependencies. Republic forces successfully   defended Ithor and Iridonia from the Mandalorians,  but elsewhere, they didn’t stand a chance. With every world the Mandalorians conquered, their  numbers swelled with millions of new recruits.   Entire sectors surrendered to them as they  advanced, terrified by whispers of Cathar,   where the Mandalorians had killed  nearly the entire population,   and Serroco, which the Mandalorians  had pummeled with nuclear bombs.   The Mandalorians cut deeper into the heart of the  Republic, culminating in the Mandalorian Triumph   in 3962 BBY. In that year, the Mandalorians pushed  into the Inner Rim and then the Colonies. Then,   with a massive assault on Duro, they breached  the boundaries of the Core Worlds themselves. In its hour of need, the Republic turned  to the Jedi for aid. But the Jedi Council   refused to intervene. They sensed that  a bigger threat was on the horizon,   and wanted to wait for it to reveal itself before  rushing off to war. Fortunately for the Republic,   a whole lot of Jedi thought that was bull-Sith.  Under the Jedi Knights Revan and Malak,   these Jedi Crusaders joined the Republic Military  anyway, becoming the galaxy’s first Jedi Generals. Beginning in 3961 BBY, these Jedi, called the  Revanchists, began a massive counteroffensive,   pushing the Mandalorians out of the Core and  back towards Wild Space. Led by the tactical   genius Revan and the unparalleled warrior  Malak, the Republic Military finally started   winning battles again. The cost of victory was  high, however. The Jedi found themselves having   to take moral shortcuts to come out on top,  matching the Mandalorians for brutality and   sacrificing thousands of soldiers in battle after  battle. In this manner, Revan and Malak slowly   but surely crushed the Mandalorians. In 3960  BBY, they reclaimed Taris and Dxun at a massive   cost in lives, and then they utterly defeated the  Mandalorians in the terrible Battle of Malachor V. Against all odds, the Mandalorian Wars ended with  a Republic victory. At Malachor V, Mandalore the   Ultimate was killed, and Revan hid his mask on  a remote ice world, leaving the Mandalorians   leaderless. They turned on each other, and their  empire collapsed, giving the Republic a bit of   room to breathe. But this peace wouldn’t last.  After the Battle of Malachor V, Revan and Malak   had disappeared, claiming they had other battles  to fight in the unknown space beyond Malachor.   For a year, they were presumed dead. Then, in 3959  BBY, they returned at the head of a massive fleet,   launching surprise attacks on the  shipyards of Foerost and Fondor.   They declared themselves Darth Revan and Darth  Malak - the Dark Lords of a new Sith Empire. The galaxy was stunned by this sudden betrayal.  Some in the Republic were shocked that Revan   and Malak had become brutal conquerors, and  resolved to fight back against the new Sith   threat. But others decided that their loyalties  lay with the heroes of the Mandalorian Wars,   not with the failing Republic. A huge portion of  the Republic Military defected to join the Sith,   as did many Jedi. So many Jedi  joined the Sith that this Second   Sith War was more commonly known by  another name - the Jedi Civil War. In just three short years, Revan’s Sith Empire  seized control of a full third of Republic space.   The Republic didn’t stand a chance. They  were still weak from the Mandalorian Wars,   they were badly outnumbered, and above  all, they just couldn’t compete with   Revan’s military genius. Once more, it fell  to the Jedi to save the day, and this time,   the Order went to war. Even as their numbers  were diminished by casualties and defections,   they took command of the Republic  Military and resolved to stop Revan.   They rallied behind Bastila Shan, a young  Jedi with the rare gift of battle meditation. Thanks to Bastila and her battle meditation, the  Republic was able to stave off the Sith advance,   at least for a time. In a major stroke of luck,   they even managed to capture Darth Revan himself,  leaving Malak to take control of the Empire.   They hoped that this would put a stop to the Sith  advance, but when Malak kept up the Sith offensive   like nothing had happened, the Jedi turned to  the captured Revan to save them. His mind had   been badly damaged in the battle in which he had  been captured, but the Jedi were able to heal it   and replace his old personality with a new one,  that of a soldier in service to the Republic.   The amnesiac Revan eventually rediscovered his  Force sensitivity on Taris, trained to become   a Jedi once more, and set out in pursuit of  the ancient Star Maps. These maps led Revan   and his followers to Rakata Prime, the heart of  the ancient Infinite Empire. There, they found   the Star Forge, a massive space station capable of  churning out infinite fleets - the source of the   Sith’s vast armada. In 3956 BBY’s Battle of Rakata  Prime, Revan killed Malak and rescued Bastila,   while the Republic Navy destroyed the Star  Forge, putting an end to the Jedi Civil War. Once again, the Republic had come frighteningly  close to certain doom, and once again, it was just   barely saved from destruction. After the death  of Darth Malak, the Sith had their own civil war,   a brief but destructive conflict that all but  wiped them out. Even as the redeemed Revan   vanished into Wild Space, seeking answers  to resurfaced memories, the Sith Empire he   had built destroyed itself. But even though the  Republic had won the Jedi Civil War in the end,   the victory was pyrrhic. There were only a  few hundred Jedi left at the war’s end, and   the Republic was still on the verge of collapse.  This time, the Republic seemed doomed not because   of the Sith or the Mandalorians, but because of  itself. It was terribly weak, and it was uncertain   whether it was even capable of rebuilding  itself. To make matters even worse, the Sith   weren’t quite finished. After the Sith Civil War,  the tattered remnants of Revan’s empire regrouped   at Malachor V under a triumvirate of Sith Lords  - Darth Traya, Darth Nihilus, and Darth Sion. Over the next few years, they began the Dark  Wars, a campaign of sabotage and assassination.   In secret, Sith Assassins carried out the First  Jedi Purge, while other Sith agents made the   Republic’s smaller problems grow worse. By 3951  BBY, it seemed that the Sith verged on victory.   The Jedi Order vanished into the shadows after  Darth Nihilus attacked during their last gathering   at Katarr; Republic restoration projects seemed  poised to fail, while worlds like Onderon were   openly considering secession from the Republic.  But yet again, the Jedi delivered victory   in the Dark Wars at the last minute. Meetra  Surik, an exile and the so-called last Jedi,   put a stop to a series of Sith plots and began to  rebuild the Jedi Order. Above Telos IV, she and   the Republic Navy destroyed Darth Nihilus and his  fleet, following which she killed Darth Sion and   Darth Traya on Malachor V, which was destroyed  entirely. The Republic wasn’t quite doomed yet. Following the end of the Dark Wars, both  the Republic and the Jedi Order rebuilt,   slowly but surely, untroubled by Sith threats  - for a time. Meetra Surik, meanwhile,   left known space in pursuit of Revan. On Malachor  V, she had learned that another threat to the   Republic had been lurking out in the unknown  the whole time, a threat that predated Revan,   the Mandalorians, or even Exar Kun. In a few  hundred years, that threat would reveal itself In   3950 BBY, the Republic was still reeling  from the aftermath of the Old Sith Wars,   but it was finally beginning to recover. It still  had many challenges to face, with the ongoing   Kanz Disorders and rogue infrastructure droids  being the biggest problems of the day. However,   it seemed like the Sith were gone, and the galaxy  seemed to be piecing itself back together in   their absence. It took a century or two for  the Republic to recover fully. Before long,   however, it was back on its feet,  ready to get back to expansion. Between 3705 BBY and 3693 BBY, one of the most  important astrographical developments in galactic   history occurred. By the time of the Old Sith  Wars, the galaxy had long been dominated by four   major hyperspace routes - the Perlemian Route,  the Corellian Run, the Corellian Trade Spine,   and the Rimma Trade Route. Now, a fifth  megaroute joined the list - the Hydian Way,   the first and only hyperspace route to  stretch all the way across the galaxy.   Brentaal-born hyperspace scout Freia Kallea,  together with the Duros Banu Hydian, had knit   together a hyperspace route from Farana on the  galaxy’s northeastern fringe to Imynusoph on the   southeastern fringe. This massive route quickly  became one of the most important in the Republic. Shortly after the blazing of the Hydian, the Kanz  Disorders finally came to an end. By that point,   the despots of the Argazdan Redoubt, a separatist  state on the Republic’s northern fringe,   had terrorized their neighbors for nearly  three hundred years, murdering almost five   billion innocents overall. Previously, the  Republic had been too weak and too busy with   the Sith to do anything about it, but by around  3700 BBY, the Senate was finally ready to act.   A Jedi-led Republic Military taskforce invaded  and completely dismantled the Argazdan Redoubt,   liberating Lorrd and the other planets  the Argazdans had oppressed. To the   optimists in the galaxy, it seemed that  the Republic would have peace once more. Of course, the optimists couldn’t have  been more wrong. For over a thousand years,   a dark secret had been lurking beyond the  borders of the Republic - the empire of   the True Sith. After the fall of the original  Sith Empire, refugees from Sith Space banded   together under Darth Vitiate and the True Sith  cult and fled the Republic’s genocidal assault   on their homeworlds. They wandered Wild Space  for twenty years before Vitiate led them to a   new homeworld - Dromund Kaas, a planet that, as  it turned out, was actually part of the original   Sith Empire. Nonetheless, it was a world that  neither the Jedi nor the Republic knew about,   and there, Vitiate and his followers  would remain hidden for a millennium. The True Sith stayed in the shadows during  the Post-Manderon Period, quietly conquering   worlds that the Republic didn’t even know about,  amassing great fleets and biding their time. They   built a new Sith Empire, with Vitiate as its  Emperor, and waited eagerly for their revenge   against the Republic. After the Great Sith  War, the Emperor began probing the Republic;   he influenced the beginning of the Mandalorian  Wars, and was also responsible for Revan’s fall   and the Jedi Civil War that followed.  After the end of the Old Sith Wars,   the Sith Empire continued to bide its time for  a few more centuries, building up an armada and   inserting agents into the governments of Republic  worlds. Then, without warning, they struck. In 3681 BBY, Sith warships dropped out of  hyperspace above Korriban, capturing the   planet from a small Republic military convoy and  kickstarting the Great Galactic War. From there,   Sith fleets began launching attacks all over  the Republic’s holdings along the Hydian Way,   capturing planet after planet  in their ferocious campaign.   The Republic Military, led once  more by Jedi Generals, fought back,   but the Sith had a stronger fleet and more  momentum. They won battle after battle,   with the most notable Sith victories being at  Sluis Van, Balmorra, Manaan, Hoth, and Ord Radama. The Republic fought well, earning its own  victories at Bothawui and Alderaan, but it   was simply unprepared for the Sith onslaught. The  Great Galactic War lasted for twenty-eight years,   all told, and the Republic Military just wasn’t  able to last for that long against the endless   forces the Empire seemingly had to throw at it.  Slowly, the Sith began to claim more and more   territory, and the Republic’s victories became  rarer. Things got worse when the Mandalorians   allied with the Sith and blockaded the Hydian  Way, causing mass goods shortages in the Republic. Finally, in 3653 BBY, the Sith concluded  the war with the Sacking of Coruscant. In   that climactic battle, a Sith force under Darth  Malgus stormed and destroyed the Jedi Temple,   while the Sith armada scattered Coruscant’s  defenders and ransacked the planet. Following this   decisive Sith victory, the Republic surrendered.  The Senate ratified the Treaty of Coruscant,   which yielded half of the known galaxy to the Sith  Empire, bringing an end to the Great Galactic War. The Great Galactic War was followed by an  uneasy, decade-long Cold War. Under the   Treaty of Coruscant, the galaxy was divided almost  evenly between the Republic and Sith, an entirely   unprecedented occurrence. Republic loyalists and  Imperials alike were confused by the sudden peace;   it seemed totally against the nature of the Sith  to agree to an armistice. This was something   that bothered many Sith as well, but it was a  development indicative of the direction in which   the Sith Empire was heading - away from the legacy  of the original Sith. We’ll get to that later. The Cold War involved a number of  proxy wars and minor skirmishes,   and though diplomats tried to keep the peace  between the Republic and the Empire during   this time, it was only a matter of time  before war started up again. In 3643 BBY,   nine years after the Treaty of Coruscant,  a new Galactic War began, as the Republic   attempted to reclaim lost territory and  the Sith tried to resume their offensive.   Early in the war, the Republic successfully  liberated Balmorra, while the Sith successfully   captured Taris, but for the first three years  of the conflict, the war was mostly a stalemate. The tides began to turn in 3640  BBY, however. Around that time,   Darth Vitiate had begun to prepare a great  ritual, one he believed would turn him into a god.   As this ritual threatened to cleanse the entire  galaxy of life, the Jedi hastily assembled a   strike team to stop him. Led by the Hero of  Tython, these Jedi confronted the Emperor on   Dromund Kaas and destroyed him, or so it was  believed. This was a massive blow to the Sith,   and resulted in the Empire fracturing into  various factions, which battled each other as   well as the Republic. Even the Hutts briefly  remilitarized and got involved at one point,   though they were quickly beaten back into Hutt  Space. However, in 3636 BBY, the second Galactic   War came to an abrupt end when a third major power  suddenly entered the war - the Eternal Empire. As it turned out, Darth Vitiate had another  avatar hiding out on Zakuul in the Unknown   Regions - Valkorion, the ruler of the Eternal  Empire. With a gargantuan automated armada   and legions of Force-sensitives, the Eternal  Empire surpassed the strength of both the Sith   Empire and the Republic. When it entered the  Galactic War, it quickly overcame both powers   and became the victor of the conflict. Both the  Republic and the Sith became Valkorion’s vassals,   and for a short while, the Eternal  Empire effectively ruled the galaxy. Valkorion’s victory didn’t last,  however. With the help of the Outlander,   his son Arcann overthrew him and took  over the Eternal Empire. Six years later,   the Outlander led a joint alliance of Republic  and Sith forces, called the Eternal Alliance,   in a revolt against the Empire, killing  Arcann and seizing control of Zakuul’s fleet.   For a brief time, there was peace in the  galaxy once again, but it ultimately only   took a few years for the Eternal Alliance to  fall apart, and for the Republic and Sith to   get back to fighting each other. All that remained  of the Eternal Empire rapidly faded into memory. By 3628 BBY, the Third Galactic War was on,  and this time, the Republic and the Sith were   much more evenly matched. The spirit of Darth  Vitiate was finally destroyed during this period,   and the Sith came under a succession of Emperors  and warlords. As fighting dragged on, however,   the Sith Empire began to noticeably change. It  had been moving away from Sith traditions for   centuries, as Darth Vitiate began to care about  himself and only himself, Sith ideology be damned.   Even before the Great Galactic War, the Empire  had started to bureaucratize. By the time of   the Third Galactic War, the Sith Empire was really  just a dark mirror of the Republic, with even the   Sith themselves becoming more like an evil Jedi  order than true Sith. There were even light-sided   and respectable Sith during this period who  fought for the Empire not out of support for   the Dark Side but a sense of patriotism. The  Empire was slowly ceasing to truly be Sith. Perhaps because of this change, the Sith Empire  slowly fizzled out. We don’t quite know when it   finally collapsed, though we do know that the  Galactic Wars ultimately ended with another   total Republic victory. There were a few more  minor Sith Wars after the Third Galactic War,   most notably the Darth Desolous Conflict, but they  became increasingly smaller in scale, until they   eventually stopped entirely. By 3000 BBY, the Sith  were, for all intents and purposes, extinct. They   survived only in small cults scattered across the  Outer Rim, impotent and in hiding from the Jedi. The Galactic Wars included some of the greatest  victories of the Sith, and for millennia,   the True Sith Empire came closer than any  other Sith faction to ruling the galaxy. They   were the last major wars the Old Sith would  ever fight, however. Under Darth Vitiate,   the Sith came closer to victory than ever before  - but because of Vitiate’s mad quest for godhood,   they never attained that victory. Once again,  the Sith were their own worst enemies here. As a final note, we just wanted to remind you  all that, since Star Wars: The Old Republic is   still releasing story content, this video might  end up being out of date sometime in the near   future. We don’t know how the Third Galactic  War ended because the game’s writers simply   haven’t gotten that far, and we don’t really  know how the story will develop in the future.   We’ve told you the important parts of the story  thus far, though, so that should cut it for now. So, that’s the story of the last set of wars with  the Old Sith. Following the fall of the Empire,   the Sith were largely believed to  be extinct - but, as we all know,   they wouldn’t stay that way. The  next set of Sith Wars were only a   millennium and a half away, and they  would be the most devastating yet. Our story last left off with the Old Sith dead and  gone, and the Republic beginning to rebuild. The   True Sith Empire, its successor states, and the  armies of Darth Desolous had all been defeated,   and, as far as the Jedi knew, the Sith were  extinct at last. By 3500 BBY, the Republic entered   the Inter-Sith Wars Period, a time of renewal  for galactic civilization. For five hundred years   after the end of the war with Darth Desolous, the  last of the Old Sith Wars, the Republic had peace. That peace was briefly broken in 3017 BBY,  with a sequel that nobody asked for. Remember   the Alsakan Conflicts? We discussed the first  of them in our fourth entry in this series,   if you need a quick recap. The first  conflict began in 17,000 BBY, with   many more following over the years. The last  we discussed was the Tenth Alsakan Conflict,   which happened in about 10,000 BBY.  In 3017 BBY, after a further six,   the Seventeenth Alsakan Conflict began, nearly  fourteen thousand years after the first. Once again, the Republic was split  between worlds loyal to Coruscant,   Alsakan, and Corellia. This time, however, the  Corellians got sick of everyone else’s Sith,   and finally got involved in the fighting.  Corellian frigates lashed out against both sides,   crippling both the Republic’s battleships and the  Alsakani’s missile cruisers. Corellia ultimately   proved victorious, and Prince-Admiral Jonash e  Solo negotiated a peace treaty between Coruscant   and Alsakan at swordpoint on the Senate floor.  The Alsakan Conflicts, at long last, were over. After the end of the Seventeenth Alsakan Conflict,  the Republic enjoyed a thousand years of peace.   During this time, there was a massive boom in  space exploration, the likes of which hadn’t   been seen for millennia. Vast swaths of the Rim  were opened up and incorporated into the Republic,   adding hundreds of new sectors. While that  sounds like a good thing, and while it was   initially considered a good thing, this new  wave of expansion came with a dark side. You see, when the Republic was first  formed, it was determined that each sector,   and thus one seat in the Senate, would represent  a maximum of fifty systems. This rule was later   stretched as the Republic expanded, but  nonetheless, the new wave of expansion   meant that hundreds of new sectors joined the  Republic in the span of just a thousand years.   This was a logistical nightmare that rendered  the Senate almost entirely ineffective,   as it meant there were tens of thousands  of Senators at any given time. The Republic   had become so massive that it was completely  paralyzed. This didn’t result in all that many   problems on its own, as individual sectors  were self-sufficient enough in peacetime,   with the Jedi and the Republic Military around.  But it would only take one good crisis to bring   down this house of cards, and sure enough, the  mother of all crises was just around the corner. At the end of the Inter-Sith Wars Period, an  Umbaran Jedi Master named Phanius left the Jedi   Order and began travelling across the galaxy,  seeking whatever remained of the Sith. Though   the Sith were believed to be dead, that wasn’t  yet the case. Scattered cults had preserved Sith   teachings in secret, and Phanius sought each of  them out, learning as much as he could from them.   In 2000 BBY, he returned to the galaxy at large  and declared himself the Dark Lord of the Sith,   taking the name Darth Ruin. At first, he  was joined by a group of fitty fallen Jedi,   but this number quickly swelled to the  hundreds. A Fourth Great Schism had begun. Darth Ruin and his followers, the New  Sith, carried out a guerrilla campaign   against the Jedi Order, a war that soon spread  to involve the Republic itself. Moving quickly,   the Republic mustered its Navy and  began another military buildup,   while the Jedi tried to nip the threat of the  New Sith in the bud. Despite their efforts,   the New Sith swelled rapidly. Darth Ruin himself  didn’t last long. He was relentlessly egotistical,   something that resulted in the deaths of many  of his followers, who eventually teamed up   and murdered him. That didn't stop the New  Sith, though. For the next thousand years,   which were later deemed the Draggulch Period,  the Republic was embroiled in the New Sith Wars. Like the Old Sith, the New Sith set out to build  an empire to rival the Republic, reclaiming old   Sith worlds like Yavin IV and Ziost. However,  their empire, if it could even be called that,   was nothing like those of past Sith orders. The  New Sith were extremely fractious, divided between   dozens of cults and orders led by self-proclaimed  Dark Lords of the Sith. This hamstrung the New   Sith, but it also made it harder for the Jedi  or Republic to defeat them. Whenever one Sith   army was crushed, two more sprung up elsewhere,  steadily wearing down the Republic’s strength. After the death of Darth Ruin, the next great Sith  leader sprang up around 1750 BBY. Called the Dark   Underlord, this shadowy specter assembled a Sith  alliance known as the Black Knights and launched   a concerted assault on the Republic. He was  ultimately defeated in the Battle of Malrev IV,   in which Jedi Master Murrtaggh forged an alliance  with the Mandalorians and crushed the Dark   Underlord. The Black Knights were scattered, but  the New Sith survived, and new Sith Lords rose to   fill the power vacuum. The Mandalorians continued  to help the Jedi and the Republic against the   Sith for the rest of the conflict, though not  even they were able to halt the Sith advance. By 1500 BBY, the Republic Military had grown  strong enough to slow the New Sith down,   winning major battles at Gap Nine, Corphelion,  and King’s Galquek. But in 1466 BBY, the New   Sith emerged victorious from the decisive  Battle of Mizra, which completely undid all   of the Republic’s earlier victories. In that  battle, the Sith massacred their opponents,   capturing hundreds of Jedi to turn to the Dark  Side and killing hundreds more. The Battle of   Mizra was so decisive that it effectively  cost the Republic control of the Outer Rim. After the Battle of Mizra, the war turned  against the Republic. Republic territory   atrophied as new Dark Lords rose and fell.  The Senate almost completely broke down,   and for the first time in nearly two thousand  years, the Republic hemorrhaged territory,   especially in the Rim. Commerce and the HoloNet  all but fell apart. Trying to stem the bleeding,   the Jedi all but took over the Republic. After  1400 BBY, every Supreme Chancellor for the next   four centuries was a Jedi, and during this period  many pockets of space came under the rule of Jedi   Lords. But the Jedi Order was too small to run  the galaxy, and could only prolong the inevitable. From 1250 to 1230 BBY, under Dark  Lord of the Sith Belia Darzu,   the alchemically created technobeast plague  ravaged the galaxy during the Sictis Wars,   turning living beings into mechanized zombies.  Around the same time, the deadly Candorian   Plague swept across Republic space and killed  billions. In response to these twin threats,   more and more sectors closed their borders  and left the Republic, worsening its decline. After the end of the Sictis Wars,  the Sith continued to grow stronger,   even as the Republic weakened. By 1100 BBY, the  Sith had gotten so strong they were able to launch   an assault on the Core Worlds themselves, the very  heart of the Republic. They came perilously close   to taking Coruscant, but at the last moment, their  advance was stopped as self-proclaimed Dark Lords   turned on each other, vying for supremacy.  With the Sith distracted by infighting,   the Jedi quickly beat them back to the  Rim, but the damage was already done.   The Republic had shrunk to just a scattering  of sectors, and for the next hundred years,   it all but ceased to exist. That century of  chaos became known as the Republic Dark Age. Fortunately for the Republic, the Sith were also  in turmoil for most of the Dark Age. However,   this ended in 1010 BBY, when fallen Jedi  Skere Kaan gathered the warring Sith Lords   and formed the Brotherhood of Darkness on the  planet Roon, the final form of the New Sith.   Under Kaan, the Brotherhood of Darkness  began another massive offensive against   what was left of the Republic, claiming vast  swaths of space in the Outer Rim and moving   coreward. Their victory seemed so certain  that the Hutts broke their long policy of   neutrality and officially joined the New Sith,  vastly increasing their territory and power. But even with the Republic on its knees, the Jedi  still defended it. Over the course of the New   Sith Wars, many Jedi had become lords, serving as  the legitimate rulers of sectors left undefended.   One of these Jedi Lords, who went  by the name Hoth, raised an army and   began a counteroffensive against the Brotherhood,  backed by what was left of the Republic Military.   Starting in 1004 BBY, Hoth defeated  the Brotherhood in system after system,   easing the pressure on the  Republic. The battle was joined. This final stage of the New Sith Wars  was called the War of Light and Darkness,   for it was almost entirely a battle between  the Sith and the Jedi, with the Republic too   weak to make a difference. In 1002 BBY, Hoth’s  army became the basis for an Army of Light,   a massive force of Jedi Knights and their  allies intended to combat the Brotherhood   of Darkness. The two armies clashed across  countless worlds before digging in to fight   over one last planet - Ruusan, an  unremarkable world in the Mid Rim. Over the course of 1000 BBY, the Jedi and  the Sith fought seven battles over Ruusan,   each exhausting virtually all the strength they  had left. Both sides fought hard, but thanks   to the timely arrival of Jedi Lord Valenthyne  Farfalla during the Seventh Battle of Ruusan,   the Army of Light ultimately triumphed. Lord  Kaan and the tattered remnants of the Brotherhood   retreated to the caves beneath the Valley of the  Jedi, where, on the suggestion of Darth Bane, they   created a thought bomb, a terrible Force weapon  that consumed the souls of all in the vicinity. In a last act of desperation, Kaan and the  Brotherhood detonated the thought bomb, killing   themselves, Lord Hoth, and a hundred other Jedi.  In doing so, they all but wiped out the Sith. Now   under the command of Lord Farfalla, the Army of  Light emerged victorious from the crucible of   Ruusan, though their losses were beyond the count  of grief. In winning the Seventh Battle of Ruusan,   they also won the New Sith Wars. Beyond  all hope, the threat of the New Sith had   been extinguished at Ruusan. The Republic, utterly  beaten as it was, had essentially won by default. 1000 BBY was the end of the era of the Old  Republic, and the beginning of a new age for   the galaxy. Over the course of the next few  centuries, it would again rebuild and become   greater than ever before. But its new Golden  Age wouldn’t last. A single Sith Lord had   survived the Battle of Ruusan, a Sith Lord named  Darth Bane. As soon as the New Sith Wars ended,   he set in motion his own campaign against  the Republic - the Sith Grand Plan. When we last left the Republic, it had  fallen to its lowest point yet. It had   endured a thousand years of the New Sith Wars  and a hundred years of the Republic Dark Age,   losing most of its territory and structure in the  process. In the Seventh Battle of Ruusan, however,   the Republic unexpectedly emerged victorious  from the New Sith Wars, thanks to the Army of   Light amassed by the Jedi Order. The galaxy  was still in shambles, but against all hope,   the Sith were gone, as far as anyone knew.  Of course, the Republic was almost gone too,   and the Jedi weren’t looking that healthy either.  But someone was bound to pick up the pieces. That someone ended up being Tarsus Valorum.  In the wake of the Seventh Battle of Ruusan,   what was left of the Galactic Senate elected him  Supreme Chancellor, making him the first non-Jedi   Chancellor in over four hundred years. Valorum  boldly sought not only to rebuild the Republic,   but to make it better than ever before. He  had quite a lot of work ahead of him, but   he met the challenge head-on. Valorum had barely  finished moving into his new office when he began   drafting a series of reforms aimed at totally  overhauling the Republic - the Ruusan Reformation. As part of the Reformation, the Republic  overhauled Senate representation and how   sector boundaries were drawn, greatly  streamlining the legislative process and   allowing formerly neglected Rimworlds to  finally get a say in government. In turn,   Valorum transferred vast amounts of power from the  Supreme Chancellor's office back to the Senate,   and imposed term limits on his own position.   The Reformation also dissolved the Republic  Military, relegating what was left of it to   sector-based Planetary Security Forces and  the much smaller Judicial Forces. Finally,   the Ruusan Reformation formally demilitarized the  Jedi, legally incorporating them into the Judicial   Forces, forcing them to give up their lordships,  and putting them under Senatorial oversight. The Ruusan Reformation not only allowed  the Republic to rapidly rebuild, but also   allowed it to rebound at an unprecedented rate.  Millennia’s worth of bureaucratic waste were   totally eliminated, and for the first time  in ages, the Republic became a functional   government again. As a result, the Republic  started to regain the territory it had lost,   at a rapid rate, a process Valorum called the  Great Reunification. Within a century of the   Ruusan Reformation, the Republic regained most  of what it had lost during the New Sith Wars.   With that said, there were a few regions  it never truly regained control of,   such as the Sith Worlds, and many  other regions fell under Hutt control. While the Republic underwent the Ruusan  Reformation, the Sith had a little   reformation of their own. Unbeknownst to the  Jedi, a single Sith Lord survived the Seventh   Battle of Ruusan - Darth Bane. Bane founded the  Order of the Sith Lords, which he ruled according   to the Rule of Two. He took a young girl as  his apprentice, who he named Darth Zannah,   and together they began rebuilding the  wealth and power of the Sith in secret. Unlike the Sith that came before him,  Darth Bane had no illusions of overcoming   the Republic by force. Instead, he concocted  the Sith Grand Plan - a plot to destroy the   Republic from within. He and his successors  would slowly build up a vast power-base,   hiding behind alter egos and weakening  the Republic gradually. There were flaws   in Valorum’s new system, and Bane was  determined to find and exploit them,   worsening corruption and the Republic’s other  weaknesses. What’s more, he planned to do so   without openly confronting the Jedi Order,  hoping to destroy them from within as well. The thousand years between 1000 BBY and 32 BBY  were called the Golden Age of the Republic,   and in many ways, that label was accurate. The  Republic’s Core regions enjoyed an unprecedented   era of prosperity, and even the Rimworlds were  better off than usual, a rarity under any galactic   government. But the Golden Age had a dark side  to it. There was the literal Dark Side, of course   - throughout the era, the Sith grew stronger,  slowly infiltrating the Republic and furthering   Bane’s Grand Plan. But the Republic faced a  number of other issues during this period, too,   many of which it could do nothing about. Three  problems stood out: piracy, slavery, and war. The dissolution of the Republic Military was at  first a boon to the sectors of the Outer Rim,   which could easily defend themselves for  the first time in their history. But as   the Golden Age went on, the Planetary Security  Forces of these remote sectors deteriorated,   as the Rimworlds were forced to rely on  exclusively the aging tech they had been   given under the Reformation. As a result,  piracy became a massive problem on the Rim,   as violent gangs could just steal a few  more modern warships and beat the Sith   out of whatever the Rimworlds could muster to  defend themselves. The Republic Judicial Forces,   including the Jedi, regularly tried to crush these  pirate gangs, but new ones just kept popping up. Slavery was outlawed in the Republic, of course,  and whenever it was uncovered in Republic space,   the Jedi put a stop to it. But there was  little the Jedi could do about the Hutts,   who now controlled a massive portion of the galaxy  and had built a whole civilization on the backs of   slaves. While the Jedi and the Judicial Forces  could deal with smaller slave civilizations,   like the Zygerrians or the Thalassians,  there was just nothing they could do   against the Hutts. Individual Jedi Knights  often swooped in and freed a few hundred   slaves at a time on Hutt-controlled worlds,  but this ultimately didn’t make a dent in the   Hutts’ vast slaving apparatus. Thus, slavery  persisted almost unchecked in Hutt Space. Lastly, the Republic had to deal with several  minor conflicts over the course of the Golden   Age. None of these were full-scale wars, of  course, but smaller conflicts did happen. Some   were simple local affairs; others, like  the Mandalorian Excision, were much more   involved. The Mandalorians had been allies of the  Republic and the Jedi during the New Sith Wars,   from the Battle of Malrev IV all the way to  the start of the Dark Age, at which point   they went off on their own. But the Republic  never really came to trust the Mandalorians,   and when they began a major rearmament two hundred  years after Ruusan, the Senate became uneasy.   Fearing that another round of  Mandalorian Wars were brewing,   the Jedi and the Judicial Forces launched  a preemptive strike on Mandalorian Space. Called the Mandalorian Excision,  this war took place in 738 BBY,   and saw the Judicial Forces absolutely  annihilate several Mandalorian worlds.   Whole regions of worlds like Mandalore were bombed  to dust, becoming vast deserts of white sand. The   Mandalorians’ military capabilities were almost  entirely eliminated, and the Republic installed   a puppet government on Mandalore, led by the  New Mandalorians, a local pacifist movement.   This stabilized the sector and reshaped the  Mandalorians into peaceful friends of the   Republic, at least for a time. The militaristic  side of Mandalorian culture never completely   faded, though, and Mandalore suffered several  civil wars over the course of the Golden Age. As the Golden Age continued, the various  problems of the Republic worsened,   no doubt thanks in part to the Sith. By 312  BBY, when the Trade Federation was founded,   things had intensified to the point that the  Republic was beginning to fear another collapse in   the Outer Rim. During the Golden Age, the Republic  had once more pushed the fringe of civilization,   settling new sectors of the Western  Reaches and the New Territories. However,   the Republic’s colonies in these regions were  severely neglected, and discontent was spreading. Hoping to resolve the various problems faced by  the Rim with a bandaid, the Republic declared the   whole Outer Rim a Free Trade Zone, meaning that  companies like the Trade Federation could operate   there tax-free. This measure was successful in  getting corporations to set up in the Outer Rim,   but it also ended up creating more problems  than it solved. The Trade Federation,   the InterGalactic Banking Clan, and the other  guilds built their own mini-empires out of   frontier colonies. They protected Rimworlds from  pirates and slavers with their private armies,   but then they turned around and  exploited the Rimworlds themselves. As far as the Senate was concerned, however,  the effort was a success. For hundreds of years,   the megacorporations were allowed to  do their thing out in the Rim, so long   as they didn’t cause problems for the central  government. However, as we all know full well,   the uneasy peace that the megacorporations  created didn’t last, and eventually,   the problems they caused became big enough  that the Republic had to get off its butt. Naturally, this was because of Sith manipulation.  In the hundred years before the Battle of Naboo,   Darth Tenebrous and Darth Plagueis slowly shaped  the megacorporations into Sith puppets. After he   killed his master in 67 BBY, Plagueis and his new  apprentice Darth Sidious slowly began to put these   puppets to use, leading them to militarize  and start new conflicts. As the Republic   Golden Age started to draw to a close, the Sith  orchestrated events like the Stark Hyperspace War,   using the megacorps to create small  fiascos that weakened the Republic. Starting in 33 BBY, the Sith began preparing  for the final stage of their Grand Plan.   By this point, the Republic had become  thoroughly bogged down with corruption,   and their corporate puppets all but owned vast  swaths of the Outer Rim. In his guise as Senator   Palpatine of the Chommel Sector, Darth Sidious  convinced Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum to   put an end to the Outer Rim’s Free Trade Zone.  This was the political equivalent of poking   a hornet’s nest. The Trade Federation  and the other guilds were beyond livid,   and objected to the measure. Valorum tried  to resolve the matter by holding a summit   between Senate representatives and the Trade  Federation directorate at Eriadu, but Sidious   ensured that the event was a total disaster,  further radicalizing the Trade Federation. We all know what happened next. Furious over  the taxation of the Outer Rim trade routes,   the Trade Federation launched a  blockade and invasion of Naboo,   the homeworld of the Senator who had put an end  to their Free Trade Zone. The following sequence   of events led to the discovery of the Chosen  One, the reveal of the survival of the Sith,   and the Trade Federation’s defeat on Naboo. But  most importantly, it propelled Senator Palpatine   of Naboo to the Supreme Chancellory. While  everyone was distracted by the Battle of Naboo,   the Sith quietly seized control of the  Republic, and the rise of the Empire began. This brings us to the modern era of galactic  history at long last. What you’re seeing   on-screen is a map of the galaxy as it was during  the Battle of Naboo, the start of the Prequel era. We really hope you’ve enjoyed our series on  the history of the Republic. It’s been a hell   of a ride, and for those of you who’ve  been watching from the very beginning,   thank you for your continued support.  We’ll see you all in the next video.
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Channel: Geetsly's
Views: 1,501,751
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Star, Wars, star wars explained, old republic explained, star wars the old republic, star wars battlefront 2, jedi sith history
Id: xiTq3JhpMPo
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 153min 33sec (9213 seconds)
Published: Sun Feb 05 2023
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