The Sith Emperor

## **Biography**

The Sith Emperor was born on the desolate Rim world of Indix circa 7,050 years Before the Battle of Yavin. Born in a cave to two colonists who secluded themselves from the surrounding primitive tribes indigenous to Indix, the Emperor knew no one outside of his parents and two older brothers during his formative years, and was raised in a repressive environment of religious fervor focused around a deity known only as 'The Left-Handed God.' Forbidden from reading lest the purity of his thoughts be corrupted by those of the maligned 'Outsiders,' he nonetheless was something of a prodigy, a prolific autodidact who poured through scrolls and datapads recovered from the wrecks of the thousands of ships that dotted the deserts of his home, as he followed in the footsteps of his father as a scavenger.

At age six, his mother Por'laen died during childbirth, his would-be sister meeting her demise also, imprinting deeply on his psyche a fascination with death that only burgeoned when a wild whisperkit who he had taken for a pet died two years later. Such was his morbid if sad obsession that he began to play with the whisperkit's remains, wishing desperately that such a precious thing be returned to him. His thoughts drifted to his mother's death earlier, and his mourning translated from denial to anger, a rage at the cruel world, and the malice of the Left-Handed God, for taking some of the only beings he knew from him. He received no answer from his god, nor from the universe. But he received an answer nonetheless, one that many years later, the Emperor would contend was an answer from the only real god: himself. To his shock and terror, the whisperkit's dry remains twitched, twitched again, and then his pet scrabbled to its delicate, rotting feet, a horrible purr emanating from it as it stared at its friend and master.

In joy, the Emperor rushed back to his cave, the risen whisperkit in tow, to show his father the miracle that surely only the Left-Handed God could have wrought. His father did not share his son’s joy; instead, the man, stricken with terror, beat the child, and dashed the whisperkit from the mouth of the cave to crumble against the rocks below. Death was a natural part of life to be rejoiced, the Emperor was told in frightful yells between savage strikes, and to deny the will of the Left-Handed God was devilry. The dynamic was changed forever after, between them; his father grew at once more distant and more controlling, while he feared his easily lost temper, chafed under ever-increasing abuse and restriction, and yet, above all... feared the memory of that miracle even more, and resolved to one day understand the mystery.

Five years later, a climbing accident claimed the life of one sibling, while the oldest had since left the dwindling family to join one of the feared tribes of sinful Outsiders. The example of the latter had emboldened the Emperor, who frequently slept outside of the cave during days-long scavenging quests, using a lantern he had found to read copiously as ever, while the former proved the last straw: there was nothing for him back at the cave. And so one night, he did not return.

Surely the whisperings of the Force played a role in that decision, for no sooner had young Ku'ar struck out for his own, did the ship of a Jedi Knight land on Indix. Their paths crossing before the Emperor could even finish his trek to his intended destination of the tribe his sibling had likewise left for, the Jedi Knight, Jon Dod, took the Emperor under his wing. Recognising the Emperor's sensitivity to the Force, Dod began preliminary instruction of the child in its use, as they both looked for a ship to salvage and fly from the world. Their search bore fruit after a week, by which time the Emperor, a voracious learner, was already learning to tap into the great energy, and the two left Indix.

A thousand tales could be told of the years of adventures of the Emperor and Jon Dod, but that is for another time. Let it be said that, in this era in which the role of a Jedi was not so clearly defined, the Emperor flitted from the Jedi Academy of Dantooine to reading Politics at the Shey Tapani University on Procopia, before interning at an investment bank on Muunilinst, concurrent with his personal if informal tutelage under Knight come Jedi Watchman Dod. It was on Muunilinst that the Emperor's mind flourished, his exposure to Muun science stimulating his obsession with what he called the art of rationality, and immortality. His mind too polluted with thoughts of self-aggrandisement and an impersonal, empirical view of the Force, the Emperor was denied entrance to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant upon the conclusion of his internship, and so remained somewhat apart from the bulk of the centralised Jedi Order, instead becoming an independent Knight who accompanied his former Master on Jedi survey teams. As such, the Emperor was free to stray far from Jedi orthodoxy, never wavering in his view that the Jedi arts were merely a tool to further understanding of the Force within the framework of his own scientific formulations. The greatest schism between his conceptions and Jedi ideology was on the application of the Force: where Jedi saw the will of the Force, and balance, Ku'ar saw only waste, and backwards primitivism that reminded him all too painfully of the occult beliefs with which he had been raised. Why were not Jedi placed in every hospital, plying their powers to heal the sick? Why was research not being undertaken to restore ravaged worlds, create new life, and put a stopper in death?

And so ultimately, the Emperor began using his survey expeditions as excuses to seek out and learn other traditions, from the Zeison Sha to the Baran Do. He did not find anything quite agreeable, but in his extensive travels and ravenous inquest into the vagaries of history, he did come to encounter tales of a marauding race beyond the frontier, whose wizardry even the most hardened spacers feared. Tracking snippets of rumours to Malachor V, the Emperor traveled thence to Korriban, guided by the secret maps entombed within the Trayus Academy, leading his expedition team to the Valley of the Sleeping Kings, where the indigenous Sith led the newcomer to the Great Temple, built in reverence to the primitives' Dark Pantheon. To the astonishment of a man who had long ago dismissed the religion of his youth in favour of materialistic empiricism, he discovered a shrine through which communion could be established with the greatest of the Sith deities: The Left-Handed God, Typhojem, known to the Rakata as Darth Nemesis. The Emperor was inexorably drawn to the promised power, and tarried on Korriban while his team fled the wrath of the tribal Sith, learning the unique black magic of the Sith species that, to him, held more potential than any other lens through which to view the Force he had encountered theretofore.

As hoarded and recondite lore was steadily dispensed, the Emperor grew in power until he saw fit to don the mantle of Darth, signifying his allegiance to a particular thread of Sith ideology that traced its way back to the Rakatan Emperors, or Darithas, who had triumphed over death. Through the dialect of the Sith tongue he had become familiar with through the tribes that made the Valley their home, the Emperor became "the Emperor" - by happenstance, evoking two Basic words that described the tools the man would go on to use to chase his dreams of immortality and utopia thereafter. And so, unifying three disparate tribes in the region under his Lordship, the new Sith Lord - the first who had donned the mantle of Sith'ari who was not of Sith blood, save, perhaps, for the Rakatan Soa - led his subjects to the equatorial city of Golg, where the most respected tribes made camp in the ruins of an ancient settlement heralding from Adas' time. In return for the Sith Pantheon's bestowed power, the Emperor provided relevant knowledge of the inner workings of the Jedi and Republic, and, the ability to see the potential of the long-fallen Infinite Sith Empire's interwoven remnants.

The Emperor forged an alliance with the powerful Graushes, taking as an apprentice a priest who he inducted into the Cult of Darth - in the Golgic dialect, Dathka - and mutual worship of the Pantheon. the Emperor pioneered necromancy, combining his innate talent from youth with the secrets of Wyyrmuk the Undying, yet contrary to his dreams of personal immortality, he only accomplished the revival of corpses to a mockery of half-life. Graush would go on to codify this into an alchemical plague that allowed for the creation of armies of undead, using this to great effect in an ensuing Civil War that saw Graush despoil rival nations and become King of two-thirds of Korriban, reigning for nigh half a century. A reclusive scholar, the Emperor was happy to cede the realm of local politics to his apprentice, leaving Korriban to pursue grander designs.

the Emperor returned to Malachor V, where he met with the newest servant of the Pantheon, Darth Cruor. The two Sith plotted the realisation of the Pantheon's design: to corrupt and repurpose the entire Jedi Order as a dark side hammer by which the Pantheon could shatter the spine of the galaxy. And so, the Pantheon directed the Emperor and Cruor to instigate schism. Returning to the Jedi, the Emperor worked from within the confines of Jedi orthodoxy for years, rising to the rank of Jedi Master. An infamously unconventional teacher, the Emperor's lessons drew many, and gave form to a pulpit by which the Emperor could preach dissent. Starting a sixteenth Alsakan Conflict as a cover, the Emperor handed the Taung technology and knowledge to escape their loosening prison around Roon and struck up a bargain with the Hutts. Starting a civil war to seize control of Korriban and then Sith Space, the Emperor reached out to his Jedi comrades and those he had spurned to leave him behind. Some, yes, he had done so out of concern that they would prevent his studies, but others... They had been potential rivals.

With his connection, he handed those comrades knowledge that he and Graush gained from the civil war on Korriban, including how to create zombie hordes. Ajunta Pall, and dozens more beside, were tempted to the dark side, yet the Emperor's efforts to spread newfound teachings of alchemy to the Council failed, and the Heresiarch Jedi - who thought of themselves, much as the Emperor did, as the True Jedi - were banished, their quest for vengeance beginning the Hundred-Year Darkness. The Taung were unleashed, just as the Hutts started their raids across the Rim, with Corellia neutral in the Alsakan and Coruscant conflict, reports and blame were initially displaced, and the Jedi conflict generally welcomed as poised to weaken the Alsakan from within. With two thirds of the Republic thus not involved in the efforts of stopping the Dark Jedi assembling strength, they did so at the expense of Alsakan and spread the war wider. Having secured Tionese cruisers at Abhean the Alasakani attempted to fend the Dark Jedi off, but were constantly undone by the Emperor's backhanding of knowledge, even though the Sith Lord played no directly observable role in the conflict he orchestrated.

When Graush began to make designs to steal the knowledge that the imprisoned essence of Typhojem had bequeathed to the Emperor, however, the Emperor solicited the aid of the the Emperor'eem, his own cadre of assassins, to end the reign of the Sith King. For one year, the Emperor held dominance as the self-proclaimed Lich-King of Golg, and all would grow to fear his visage: a bronze mask, recovered from the shores of the Sacred Sea, that had been furnished by the archaic Darth Gorog.

Yet the wrath of Graush's heir Hakagram was soon visited upon him, and while succeeding in stealing the blessing of agelessness from Graush's Heart, he knew that evidently such did not equate to the true invulnerability he desired. Marshaling tribes from the East, the Emperor waged war against Hakagram, yet ultimately, all of his power flowed from the secrets of the Pantheon, and when Hakagram's forces captured the Dreshdae necropolis and the Valley of the Sleeping Kings, destroying the Temple's shrines in the process, no longer could the Emperor hold psychic communion with the imprisoned Pantheon, and knowledge of the forward base at Naos and the rapidly fracturing Sith Kingdom's Taung allies was lost. At last, outside the great Pyramid he had built for a Palace, the Emperor met Hakagram Graush in one-on-one combat, as their armies watched with baited breath. For all of his ancient knowledge and cleverly gotten power, the Emperor's lack of mastery of the sword proved to be his undoing, and his left arm he lost to Hakagram's cleaver. Trading ancient knowledge for his life, the Emperor departed Korriban for the last time until he would return as Sith Emperor, leaving Hakagram to unify all of the nations of Korriban and eventually Ziost as well, to become supreme ruler of the Sith people in the Emperor's stead... but only temporarily, for soon the Dark Jedi would come to Korriban, guided by the Trayus, to rest in defeat, and claim Lordship of the Sith for themselves.

His defeat at Hakagram's hands reminding him all too greatly of his inadequate grasping at immortality, and remaining vulnerability, the Emperor descended upon the Nilrebmah system to subjugate all its worlds. His efforts represented more than just satiation of personal ambition and experimentation in assuring true immortality, but rather, alongside the workings of the Sith sorceress Vahl on Ambria, an attempt by the Pantheon to elevate two of their servants to godhood in an effort to ensure there would be at least two Sith deities in the physical plane. Conceived in haste born of opportunity, the attempts met varying success, with Vahl's ritual cleansing Ambria of life, but resulting in her own destruction as well. the Emperor attempted to replicate the success of ancient Sith deity Yuuzhan'tar, seeking to move Nilrebmah XIII from its orbit and tether his essence to it upon consuming its population, and while the process completed, empowering his spirit to terrible and deific heights, his body was annihilated and his spirit trapped inside the monolith he had raised to accomplish his ritual.

After the Hundred-Year Darkness ended in failure, the Emperor's disappearance was noted and many Jedi correctly suspected him to have pulled the strings of the war, especially since they found a manuscript in the archives of the Exiles which partially described the experiment of the Emperor on Nilrebmah and his "success." A success, of course, only in part, for while the Emperor had his precious immortality, his spirit was trapped through the millennia, yet not altogether prevented from interacting with the physical realm. He used a technique which Vectivus would long after rediscover, the art of Force Phantom, to project the seeming of his being far from Nilrebmah to enact the purpose of the Pantheon. To these ends, the Emperor raised Naga Sadow as a Darth, bequeathing secret knowledge. Yet Sadow's unchecked ambition exceeded the Emperor's own plans, and Sadow broke away from both the tutelage of the Emperor and his formal Sith Master Simus, to become Dark Lord and begin the Great Hyperspace War.

One year before the Conclave on Deneba, the monolith was discovered by Sli'Lon Tahar, a Jedi Master searching for proof of the Sith survival after said war. Tahar didn't have the time to reveal its position as the Krath attacked the conclave. Two years after his discovery, Tahar was killed by the Sith Lord Ulic Qel-Droma in the Battle of Foerost. Before dying, he had the time to reveal the existence of the monolith to adventurers who had come from the future, but also unintentionally to Qel-Droma himself. Later, the mysterious adventurers found on Ossus information on the Sith Lord, seconded by a Jedi archivist and his apprentice, Dace Vinagar. They also read fragments of the manuscript discovered after the Second Great Schism, and determined the location of the monolith in the Nilrebmah system. Fifteen days later, they explored the system with the assistance of Vinagar, only to be attacked on Nilrebmah XIII by dark side creatures. Darth the Emperor, sensing the presence of Vinagar, lured him in the depth of the planet. The Jedi apprentice finally betrayed his comrades and tried to kill them, then followed the call of the Sith Lord.

the Emperor slowed the adventurers by reanimating the skeletons of the civilisation he had destroyed, gaining time for Dace Vinagar to come inside the monolith. He then empowered the apprentice with his own Force abilities, allowing him to unleash dark side beasts on his pursuers. Those beasts gave Vinagar just enough time to finish an old ritual and activate the monolith, liberating the spirit of Darth the Emperor. Cursing the wraith when his body started to consume itself, Vinagar let his rage amplify the power of the ritual and was finally transformed in a giant Hydra moved by pure energy. The entire planet started to collapse, as it moved toward Nilrebmah XII, and the hydra was shot down by a Krath starship commanded by Ulic Qel-Droma who had raided the tomb of the Emperor. At the moment where the two planets collided, the adventurers entered hyperspace, only to find themselves in capacity to return in their era. What they didn't know is that the spirit of the Emperor had given them this opportunity himself, and followed them through the timestream to emerge in 4 ABY, when, according to prophecies his new apprentice Darth Apollyon had excavated on Arkania and given to him, the Pantheon would be restored to power.

The Sith Pantheon's plans escalated following the Battle of Endor, seeking to seize the opportunity provided by the weakened and fractured galaxy. Their armies freed from carbonite by the Nightsister Silri and bolstered by the Shadow stormtroopers of Cronal and Super Star Destroyers stolen from Byss, a substantial military was rapidly forming under the command of Darth the Emperor. Nilrebmah having been destroyed, the Emperor consumed the life of and tethered his spirit to his homeworld of Indix, and having attached planetary hyperdrives that enabled him to move his magnificence freely, settled in the Mobus system. The Infinite Sith Empire was taking shape again as a cohesive regime deep in the Unknown Regions, the Emperor gathering all evil and uniting the bulk of the Rhandite remnant with the Rakatan Archipelago through the efforts of Raspir, the court magician of Adas who had been recently freed by the Rakatan Elder Ruthic on Tulpaa.

Yet the Pantheon refused to act in haste, knowing that the True Sith were still vulnerable if they were to be detected by the Empire of the Hand or Remsi Republic, and so were forced to act in terrible sloth, only attacking the galaxy through proxies. But this was a game the Pantheon were accustomed to playing, and it brought great pleasure to the profane deities to watch once more as their vassals and unwitting servants ravaged the galaxy, inciting the Ssi Ruuvi to storm forth, and seeking to cripple the New Republic through Cronal's campaigns. Yet equally important was the restoration of a Sith Order in the greater galaxy, and the Infinite Sith, seeing the shatterpoints in the galaxy's future, sought to accomplish this efficaciously through the corruption of but a handful of individuals, and so XoXaan of the Shadow Council tempted A'Sharad Hett to Sith study, and then did the spirit of Marka Ragnos tutor the one who would become Darth Vassago. Cruor, adopting the name Darth Dispicable, joined Vassago, and gathering all manner of Dark Jedi and adepts once in service to the Galactic Empire to them on Korriban, created the New Sith Order.

After Darth Krayt's rule over the galaxy macerated it further, and after his defeat in 138 ABY, the Dark Pantheon perceived that their time had come for the Infinite Sith to return, and the time of orchestrating proxy wars was over. Yet their efforts to create vassals and engineer such conflicts had left a great many disparate elements that must be unified or annihilated before attempt on the galaxy was made in full, and to this end the Emperor, accompanied by avatars possessed by Typhojem and Mnggal-Mnggal (or, in the Rakatan tongue, Darth Venomis), lured the Acolytes of Darkness to Mobus in 145 ABY, hoping to end the Shadow War between disparate Sith and Jedi groups in the Unknown Regions. By the cunning of Darth Insipid, however, the Emperor was ensnared by a Rakatan mind trap disguised as Darth Gorog's holocron, which Insipid had retrieved from Shadow in 40 ABY, and the avatars of Nemesis and Venomis, mere creations of the Force reliant on the Emperor's power siphoned from Mobus, floundered. The engagement in the Mobus system ended with the Acolytes withdrawing, but not destroyed as the Pantheon had desired, and after they joined with the Dominion of Darkness, they reforged the New Sith Order which had since fallen following Vassago's presumed death, and so the organisation the Infinite Sith had wrought in an effort to strengthen their hand over a century prior became, alongside the Galactic Federation Triumvirate, a new enemy.

Yet in truth, the Emperor never shared the Pantheon's goals of galactic destruction; how could he, when he desired eternal life above all else? He had vivified the Sith deities at Mobus in anticipation that the Acolytes would destroy them; he had underestimated Insipid, however, and so shared in their fate. Five years of psychic imprisonment only saw the two Sith share their secret agendas, however, and a friendship was struck; when finally liberated by Darth Apollyon, the Emperor and Insipid brought their power to bear on the Sith Imperium forged by Darth Malkuth and Darth Mystique, reclaiming titles they believed to be deservedly theirs. Allying with the deranged Darth Haretisch, the two Sith Lords forged a powerful but uneasy Sith Triumvirate, to helm a Sith Empire that would swiftly rise as a secondary power to rival the Galactic Federation. Now, the time of the Emperor is at hand.

### **Personality and traits**

A callous, cynical and amoral rationalist, this high-functioning sociopath ultimately hopes to remake the universe in his image, ridding the galaxy of death and forging a utilitarian utopia. To that aim he brings a ruthless, diamond-like clarity of cunning, a cold and pervasively unfeeling personality with shallow emotions, and a ferocious power of mind obsessed with survival and infamous for its ability to exploit even the smallest circumstances or weakest powers to their zenith.

Most of his superficial personality is borrowed from holofilms, plays and books, a chameleon's fluidity that obscures a deep and abiding melancholy. He has no caring for social conventions, enjoying violating taboos and covertly revelling in eccentricity, and indeed has little caring for anything at all, beyond his grandiose goals of godhood, amusing himself across his immortal existence, and the occasional romance.