“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.
