Darth Nihilus is one of Star Wars Legends’ most
iconic Sith Lords, a terrifying being with the ability to devour entire planets’ worth of Force
energy. We’ve talked a fair bit about Nihilus on this channel, and in a recent-ish video, we
discussed how, contrary to what you might expect, Nihilus actually had an apprentice. Indeed, for
an eldritch abomination known for destroying planets and leeching the life forces
of everyone he met, Nihilus actually had a fair few followers. Indeed, the Lord of
Hunger commanded his own miniature Sith Empire, with a vast fleet and hidden allies in Republic
space. But who were Nihilus’s followers, and what compelled them to join his cause? In
this video, we’ll be answering those questions. Darth Nihilus rose to power after the end of
the Jedi Civil War, a devastating conflict between the Republic and Darth Revan’s
Sith Empire. In the Battle of Rakata Prime, the last battle of said conflict, the Republic
escaped destruction by carrying out a devastating decapitation strike against Sith leadership,
taking out all the Empire’s leading Sith Lords and military leaders in one fell swoop. The
Sith Empire promptly imploded, experiencing its own brief but devastating civil war before the
Republic could reclaim most of its lost territory. After the end of the Sith Civil War, the Sith
Empire ceased to exist as a political power, but many Sith holdouts persisted. Many powerful
Sith Lords survived the fall of Revan’s empire, and several Sith fleets escaped the devastation as
well, fleeing beyond the borders of the Republic. The Republic Navy fought these Sith remnants
whenever it encountered them, and as the years went on, the Sith holdouts declined in number,
allowing the Republic to go back to failing of its own accord. Most of the Sith holdouts who
remained, however, regrouped under Darth Nihilus. Nihilus was one of the greatest Sith Lords
to survive the Sith Civil War. He, together with Darth Traya and Darth Sion, made up the Sith
Triumvirate, which united the scattered remnants of the Sith and directed them in the Dark Wars,
a series of campaigns to exterminate the Jedi and destabilize the Republic. But the Sith Triumvirate
was more of an alliance than a concrete ruling body. Its three members each controlled
their own faction of Sith. Traya commanded the Trayus Academy on Malachor V, Sion led a sect
of Sion Assassins, and Nihilus commanded an army. Only a mutual hatred of the Jedi
held this alliance together, however, and once the Jedi were mostly gone, each
Sith faction became more pronounced. This came to a head when Nihilus and Sion
overthrew Darth Traya and exiled her, with Sion absorbing most of her underlings. After
Traya’s exile, the alliance between Sion and Nihilus became little more than a formality. Both
Sith Lords went their own ways, with Sion and his assassins hunting for Jedi to kill, and Nihilus
and his followers looking for planets to eat. The heart of Nihilus’s empire was the barely
spaceworthy wreck of the Republic battlecruiser the Ravager, the Dark Lord’s personal vessel.
Nihilus tore the Ravager from the gravity wells of Malachor V and made it his base of operations.
He almost never left the battlecruiser’s bridge, leaving the finer details of his operations to
his underlings. There were many underlings aboard the Ravager – a collection of Sith Troopers,
crewmen, and Dark Jedi who had escaped the Civil War. All of the beings aboard the Ravager
were slowly drained of their life forces by their proximity to Nihilus, becoming little more than
zombie-like slaves to the Dark Lord’s will. This was especially true of Nihilus’s bridge crew, who
appeared half-dead and were no longer capable of independent thought, reliant entirely on Nihilus
for direction. The Dark Jedi and some of the Sith Commandos who served aboard the Ravager
seemed a little more resistant to this effect, but many of the rank-and-file Sith Troopers
were slowly killed in this manner as well. The Ravager wasn’t the only ship in Nihilus’s
fleet, however. At least four Interdictor-class Heavy Cruisers served under Nihilus’s command,
each capable of carrying 48 Sith Fighters and around 3600 Sith Troopers. The Sith aboard
these ships were too far removed from Nihilus to be affected in the same way as his slaves
aboard the Ravager. The exact composition of the crew of these ships is unclear, but at
the very least, Nihilus’s fleet contained several Sith Masters, dozens of apprentices
and Dark Jedi, hundreds of Sith Fighters, tens of thousands of Sith Troopers and
Commandos, and legions of battle droids. Nihilus had other allies as well. As we’ve
discussed before, Nihilus had an apprentice, Visas Marr, with whom he shared a Force
bond. She was resistant to Nihilus’s draining effect and usually stayed aboard
the Ravager, leaving only when her master sent her to hunt someone down. Nihilus also had
non-Sith allies. During the Onderon Civil War, which happened concurrently with the Dark Wars,
General Vaklu and Colonel Tobin of the Onderon military secretly pledged their support
for Nihilus in exchange for help with their planned coup against Queen Talia. When Vaklu
and his Onderon Separatists made their move, Nihilus dispatched legions of Sith to
support them, including Sith Masters, elite Sith Commandos, and at least one of
Nihilus’s heavy cruisers. When Vaklu’s bid for control of Onderon failed, Tobin fled the
planet and joined Nihilus aboard the Ravager. Evidently, quite a few beings served Darth
Nihilus. In fairness, some of them were slaves or allies manipulated into serving the
Lord of Hunger’s whims, but many of those who followed Nihilus did so of their own accord.
The crews of the other ships in Nihilus’s fleet, the Dark Jedi, and the Sith Masters who
served under Nihilus knew exactly what they were doing and were well aware of how
Nihilus fed on planets. This seems insane. After all, anyone familiar with Nihilus could
tell that he didn’t care about the Sith cause at all.The only thing he gave a damn about was
consuming the Force wherever he could find it. But Visas Marr might help us shed some light on
why people followed Nihilus. As she described it, Nihilus’s motives went beyond
simple hunger. He had a cause, and he’d intended to convert her to it upon
taking her as an apprentice. As she described it: It’s unlikely that Nihilus converted all
of his followers to his “cause.” however. He likely just converted actual Sith - the
Masters and the Dark Jedi - and controlled his fleet and troops through them. To
convert the Darksiders who served him, Nihilus manipulated a trait that many
Sith shared - a hatred of what they perceived as lesser beings. Nihilus and his
followers saw other living beings as vermin, needless clutter that made the universe chaotic
and messy. Their goal was to kill them all. This was an extreme version of Sith ideology, one
fueled by the Sith’s defeat in the Jedi Civil War. One of the cornerstones of any Sith’s
worldview was a belief that they were superior, and that everyone else existed to serve
them. Sith ideology was a cult of strength, one that prized power above all, and the Sith
believed that this single-minded focus made them the strongest of all. Yet they lost the
Jedi Civil War, and their empire was cast down and torn to pieces. The Sith were on the verge
of victory before the Battle of Rakata Prime; there were barely over a hundred Jedi
left, and the Republic was on its last leg. They had been weak, and yet they
dealt the Sith a humiliating defeat. Sith survivors would have been consumed by
rage over this turn of events, angry not only because they had lost but because they had
lost to such weak enemies. The Sith who Nihilus gathered likely harbored hatred and resentment
for themselves as well as the Jedi. Darth Nihilus spoke to their bitterness, promising them
a chance to exact revenge on their enemies. Nihilus wasn’t very subtle about the fact that
he’d eventually turn on his followers and destroy them as well, but his Sith likely didn’t
care. After the fall of their empire and the humiliation of their order, all they cared about
was vengeance. This sentiment, to various degrees, was likely held by the Sith Troopers and
Commandos under Nihilus’s command as well. Nihilus’s Sith were fanatics of
the most dangerous sort. They hated everyone and everything, and as they
displayed in the Battle of Telos IV, this led them to attack enemy combatants
and civilians with the utmost brutality. At Telos, Nihilus’s soldiers and Dark Jedi
slaughtered any civilians they encountered, spreading as much death and destruction as
they possibly could. They hated it all, and wanted nothing except to watch all the ungrateful
weaklings who had rejected the Sith Empire burn. Even for a Darth Nihilus-related topic, that got pretty dark. Don’t do the Dark
Side, kids - it’s just not good for you. But what do you think? If you were a Dark
Jedi left leaderless after the Sith Civil War, would you follow Darth Nihilus or Darth Sion? Feel
free to post your thoughts in the comments below.
