Sith Atrocities in the EU

Originally posted by Q99
The first one? To gain immortality, killing thousands of fellow sith to do it.

I think that's the only force planet-kill he got, but he did try and kill the entire galaxy in the same way in order to get better immortality.

Because he was hungry.

I'm serious, that's the main reason. His boss pointed him at the planet because she wanted some people on it dead, but that was his primary motive.

Uh, you do realize you can oppress people without planet-killing, right?

Most of the time they took over civilizations and used armies.

But if it wasn't for Palpatine and the Clone Wars, he never would've been driven to the darkside and self-fulfilled that prophecy.

It was the battles of the war that drove him further and further to the dark side, convincing him that he needed more power and anger would give him more power. It was the fighting that made the anger that he killed Padme with.

Oh, fun-fact, his great grandson Cade Skywalker learned how to bring people back from fatal wounds with the force... and he could do it better with the Light than the Dark.

Karness Muur- one of the original-original Sith, created the Rakghoul plague.

One scratch from a rakghoul, and a person would become infected, physically change growing claws and teeth, and attack other people, their minds gone. It was a spreading plague that turned people into beasts. It killed over 60 million.

Muur could also turn non-force users directly into rakghouls with the force, and control them with his will.

No, more like how some religious people don't like being sacrificed or conquered or killed, or their fellow people turned into Rakghouls.

You're trying to boil this down to a minor religious conflict of the sort that exists between two minor sects. That isn't the case, the Sith do Bad Things. Concrete bad things that have nothing to do with minor religious differences.

Here, let me tell you the words of Darth Thanaton:

"Once, statues of great men stood before these cliffs. Those statues were monuments to warriors, alchemists, great philosophies who refined the sacred doctrines of the Sith. [b]A hundred thousand slaves gave their lives to carve those statues."

Also, learn of The Crucible, which was tasked with capturing refugees displaced from war in order for them to be used as a slave army that would fight for the Sith Empire.

In the words of one of the victims,
"Through the Great Sith War – Even during the golden age of the Sith – They've been here all along. Hiding, stealing. Stealing people! Tearing families apart. Children, parents separated – Forced to fight! Told their loved ones will suffer if they don't fight. But everyone suffers. Everyones!"
―Ralthar Sitan

Then there's the Odionate, the domain of the Sith Lord Odion during the New Sith Lords.

"Due to his nihilistic worldview, Odion paid little time and resources to the Odionate's economy and his subjects' welfare. Following the annexation of the Bactranate, Odion arranged for the "voluntary deaths" of several bankers and accountants since those occupations had become redundant within his domain. Under his rule, the population was pressed into slavery within his armies and factories churning war materiel."

Fun guy, eh?

Eh, some of them might do it for something so minor. Lots of subordinates were killed, but generally because they failed, made a mistake, caught their masters on a bad day...

Also, seeing their masters in a moment of weakness was a common cause of death.

They have problems well beyond killing subordinates for minor errors, mind you. [/B]

Yes, people can be oppressed without planetary annihilation, that's true. Stalin didn't have any superweapons that he used to obledierate cities, yet he's still considered to be an evil dictator, just like Hitler, because a person doesn't have to destroy entire planets to be evil, if they do other evil stuff.

However, planetary destruction by the Sith seems to be the most interesting and "epic" and "fantasy like".

The first one? Wait, so Vitate destroyed more than one planet?

Would Nathema have been destroyed if there was no Jedi opposition to the Sith?

WHOA! That's very interesting! The Sith lord tried to destroy an entire galaxy! That's very fantasy and epic-ish!

Too much of the story depending on the Sith always using the death star is boring.

Darth Nilhius destroyed an entire planet because he was hungry? Is this some kinda joke to me? No, what was the real reason that Darth nilhius destroyed that planet? Would it have happened if the Jedi didn't oppose the Sith?

Originally posted by Q99
Oooh, it reoccured in that era? That probably ups the kill-count- the 60 million I mentioned were just from earlier.

Yeah, Tatooine was where the quest chain would start. They were even letting you get infected as players, and you could actually infect other players, creating an epidemic if you so wished to. The game actually had ways to stop it spreading, but people, clever as they are, got around it.

YouTube video

Originally posted by PhoenixSam5

Darth Nilhius destroyed an entire planet because he was hungry? Is this some kinda joke to me? No, what was the real reason that Darth nilhius destroyed that planet? Would it have happened if the Jedi didn't oppose the Sith?

Taken from wiki page.

Darth Nihilus (pronounced /ˈnaɪ.ʌ-lɪʒ/) was a Human male who reigned as a Dark Lord of the Sith during the era of strife following the Jedi Civil War. Before becoming a Sith Lord, he lost everything during the Galactic Republic's war against the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders. He survived the activation of the Mass Shadow Generator superweapon during the war's final battle at the planet of Malachor V, which surrounded the planet with a destructive spacial phenomenon known as a mass shadow. Experiencing the shadow that obliterated almost everything on and around the planet made Nihilus crave Force energy. The affliction painfully ravaged his body while rendering him a wound in the Force. He was found by a seeker of these, the Sith Lord Darth Traya, who told him that she could teach him to feed his endless hunger. He accepted her offer of apprenticeship at the Trayus Academy on Malachor V, and, over time, he became one of three concurrent Dark Lords of the Sith.

so he wasn't hungry for a hotdog, he craves force energy.

Originally posted by SevenShackles
Taken from wiki page.

so he wasn't hungry for a hotdog, he craves force energy.

What planet (s) did darth nihlius destroy with the Force?

Didn't emperor vitate destroy a planet in order to save his life from the jedi?

Would Darth nihlius have destroyed that planet (s) if there was no opposition from the Jedi?

Originally posted by PhoenixSam5
Yes, people can be oppressed without planetary annihilation, that's true. Stalin didn't have any superweapons that he used to obledierate cities, yet he's still considered to be an evil dictator, just like Hitler, because a person doesn't have to destroy entire planets to be evil, if they do other evil stuff.

However, planetary destruction by the Sith seems to be the most interesting and "epic" and "fantasy like".

They can make even non-planetary destruction pretty epic at times 🙂 I mean, a sufficiently big galactic war causes more deaths than a planet being destroyed.

It's not like the Jedi- or the people of the galaxy- only count it if it's epic.

Would Nathema have been destroyed if there was no Jedi opposition to the Sith?

Yep.

Too much of the story depending on the Sith always using the death star is boring.

Agreed. But they only use it twice.

Darth Nilhius destroyed an entire planet because he was hungry? Is this some kinda joke to me? No, what was the real reason that Darth nilhius destroyed that planet? Would it have happened if the Jedi didn't oppose the Sith?

Darth Nihilus was a 'wound in the force'. This inflicted him with a terrible hunger that he sated by devouring life, something his Sith master taught him to do, although none other could do it on such a grand scale. His hunger grew and the amount he killed grew.

His Sith master created him to be a weapon against life, basically.

He wouldn't stop just because there aren't Jedi around- there were very few Jedi left at that point, one of the lower points of the order, and they were not his priority. The Sith at that time were not focused on Jedi repression or any such thing- in fact, they had been a Jedi army until their leader turned to the dark side and started turning them too. The Sith of the time generally desired control and power. The older Sith were just history books and sources of knowledge and power to them, not people they cared about what happened to. The Jedi only became aware that they'd turned Sith after these Sith attacked.

And if it wasn't for the Jedi Meetra Surik, one of the few survivors, Nihilus certainly would've done it again.

The Sith crave power, death and destruction regardless of the Jedi existing. They're not evil because the Jedi made them evil; they're evil because the dark side corrupts. Or they're just bad people to begin with.

Originally posted by Q99
They can make even non-planetary destruction pretty epic at times 🙂 I mean, a sufficiently big galactic war causes more deaths than a planet being destroyed.

It's not like the Jedi- or the people of the galaxy- only count it if it's epic.

Yep.

Agreed. But they only use it twice.

Darth Nihilus was a 'wound in the force'. This inflicted him with a terrible hunger that he sated by devouring life, something his Sith master taught him to do, although none other could do it on such a grand scale. His hunger grew and the amount he killed grew.

His Sith master created him to be a weapon against life, basically.

He wouldn't stop just because there aren't Jedi around- there were very few Jedi left at that point, one of the lower points of the order, and they were not his priority. The Sith at that time were not focused on Jedi repression or any such thing- in fact, they had been a Jedi army until their leader turned to the dark side and started turning them too. The Sith of the time generally desired control and power. The older Sith were just history books and sources of knowledge and power to them, not people they cared about what happened to. The Jedi only became aware that they'd turned Sith after these Sith attacked.

And if it wasn't for the Jedi Meetra Surik, one of the few survivors, Nihilus certainly would've done it again.

What does him being a "wound in the force" even mean, in the first place? Who inflicted him with a terrible hunger? Do you mean a hunger for tasty foods? And who's "they"?

His Sith master was chaotic evil, or not?

Which planet(s) did darth nihlius destroy?

How many planets did he destroy? I read somewhere that nihlius bombed a planet without using the Force, implying to me that he destroyed many different planets.

Originally posted by -Pr-
The Sith crave power, death and destruction regardless of the Jedi existing. They're not evil because the Jedi made them evil; they're evil because the dark side corrupts. Or they're just bad people to begin with.

Do all Sith desire political power, or not?

Out of the Sith that don't try to be dictators that rule the galaxy, what do they do? What's wrong with them just practicing the darkside? Not every darksider is involved with politics?

Anakin turning to the darkside to me, to save padme, doesn't automatically mean becoming a dictator and ruling an empire just to save one person. Turning to the darkside and/or becoming a sith doesn't automatically make you involved in grand politics.

Are there any instances of the Jedi allowing darksiders to do their own thing, as long as they don't bother/interfere with other people, in the history of the EU star wars universe?

Wait, so the Sith are some sorta political group, with the whole desiring power and whatnot?

Originally posted by PhoenixSam5
What does him being a "wound in the force" even mean, in the first place? Who inflicted him with a terrible hunger? Do you mean a hunger for tasty foods? And who's "they"?

His Sith master was chaotic evil, or not?

Which planet(s) did darth nihlius destroy?

How many planets did he destroy? I read somewhere that nihlius bombed a planet without using the Force, implying to me that he destroyed many different planets.

Didn't bother to read what I put on Darth Nihlius did you. I explains why he has the hunger for the most part.

Originally posted by SevenShackles
Didn't bother to read what I put on Darth Nihlius did you. I explains why he has the hunger for the most part.

Was darth nihlius politically motivated or not?

Wait, so Darth nihlius felt the desire to consume life with the force, or just to kill in general?

What does him being a "wound in the force" even mean, in the first place?

Ok, you know how when Alderaan was destroyed, Obi-wan felt a disturbance in the force, even though he was halfway across the galaxy?

Darth Nihilus- before he was Darth Nihilus- was right next to one of those (On Malachor V- Two great fleets were crashed into a populated planet from orbit during a war).

His reaction to feeling so much death was extreme, and in response to feeling so much death, he tried to fill it with life- his 'hunger,' and his master helped teach him how to do that and make it grow.

His Sith master was chaotic evil, or not?

Darth Traya. And she wanted to destroy the Force Itself because she blamed it for conflict in the galaxy. Which was, before you ask, probably not even possible and she was probably a bit crazy, but yes, she wanted to destroy the force itself.

Or at least so she claimed. She also lied a lot.

So yea, pretty evil.

Which planet(s) did darth nihlius destroy?

Katarr.

How many planets did he destroy? I read somewhere that nihlius bombed a planet without using the Force, implying to me that he destroyed many different planets.

There was probably some other planetary bombardment going on during that conflict, yea, but I don't know how much.

That might've simply been the incident I mentioned above on Malachor V. Or it might've been something another Sith ordered.

Originally posted by PhoenixSam5
Was darth nihlius politically motivated or not?

Wait, so Darth nihlius felt the desire to consume life with the force, or just to kill in general?

He was not politically motived, no, or at least not primarily politically motived. And to consume life with the force.

Do all Sith desire political power, or not?

Sith desire power, but not necessarily political.

Some want the power to live forever, or get revenge, or to prevent someone from dying, or to defeat some great threat (though, it should be noted, the two most significant cases of this I know, the threat was... other Sith), or simply... survive (often the case for the minor Sith in the Sith Empires- if you grow stronger, you survive and prosper. If you falter and get weak, you die and someone takes your place. Yet the stronger you get, the more that try and take you down and the more you need to stop them, and you end up in a continuous power grab until someone takes you down). Politics is sometimes an ends in itself, but other times it's just a means to an ends.

Out of the Sith that don't try to be dictators that rule the galaxy, what do they do? What's wrong with them just practicing the darkside? Not every darksider is involved with politics?

There are darksiders who don't get up to much, but most of those don't try to claim the title of sith. If you're just some paranoid darksider who wants to be left alone and doesn't do anything big, then you aren't Sith, generally speaking.

The original Jedi-who-became-Sith didn't just want to be left alone. They wanted power over life and death and they also wanted others to follow them- They weren't content for the Jedi to stay out of their way, they had to convince the Jedi their way was right and turn them to them. They wanted to not only have their abilities but acknowledged as the masters as life and death, and quite a few of them had a desire for conquest too.

The thing is, practicing the darkside means strong emotions, meaning generally you want something or hate something or so on, very strongly, and the Sith are ones who both experience that and have the power to grasp for even great goals. And if one doesn't have that, why become a Sith in the first place?

Thus generally the only time they stand still is when they view themselves as on top, or if they're serving a stronger sith who they think will give them what they desire (generally with the add on "... or until they get strong enough they no longer need the other Sith."😉.

Now, there are plenty don't accomplish their goals, but do spend effort working towards the intent.

Both 'just practice the dark side' and having the power to claim the title of Sith is technically possible, but it's vanishingly rare, because both the act of tapping into the darkside with your emotions and the sith philosophy strongly play against it.

And it should be noted that part of the reason the Sith use the master/apprentice system during the time of the movies is to actively prevent it. If the master gets lazy like that, the apprentice is supposed to off him and take his place. If the apprentice does, then the master will kill him/her and replace them with someone else.

Sidious's master did a fair amount of stuff, killing, arranging deaths, that sort of thing, but then he started to get complacent and Sidious killed him, and that's how it's supposed to work. Someone who, from the start only desired to just use the darkside without a grand goal would either have their master drill it out of them (Maul really hates the Jedi not because anything the Jedi did, but because Sidious made him hate the Jedi. He created a hatred in Maul for him to use), or they won't last long as an apprentice and be replaced.

Originally posted by PhoenixSam5
Do all Sith desire political power, or not?

Out of the Sith that don't try to be dictators that rule the galaxy, what do they do? What's wrong with them just practicing the darkside? Not every darksider is involved with politics?

Anakin turning to the darkside to me, to save padme, doesn't automatically mean becoming a dictator and ruling an empire just to save one person. Turning to the darkside and/or becoming a sith doesn't automatically make you involved in grand politics.

Are there any instances of the Jedi allowing darksiders to do their own thing, as long as they don't bother/interfere with other people, in the history of the EU star wars universe?

Wait, so the Sith are some sorta political group, with the whole desiring power and whatnot?

Why are you changing the subject? Your initial post had this question:

Originally posted by PhoenixSam5
What atrocities did the old Sith (from over a millenia ago), do, that made them evil? None of this is ever specified in the films, so I'm asking some of the EU experts to explain the Sith's evilness to me.

The answer, as I pointed out, is:

Originally posted by -Pr-
I honestly feel like i've gotten off topic, so i'll be brief.

The original question was why the Sith are considered the bad guys.

The answer is:

The Sith are considered the bad guys because of the Great Hyperspace War.

The Great Hyperspace War was started by the Sith when they invaded the Republic.

The Sith invaded the Republic because Naga Sadow had lied and convinced the other Sith that the Republic was out to get them.

For the most part, any record of the Jedi banishing members of their order had been lost. The invasion was one of pure aggression and a lust for power.

And we've already said (two of us at least) that the Jedi only interfered with the other Jedi practising the Dark Side when those doing it tried to coerce others in to doing it, and tried to achieve power.

The Jedi don't tend to care about people practising the Dark Side without hurting anyone. The problem is that the vast majority of the people practising the Dark Side are those same people that try to use it against others.

Originally posted by -Pr-

And we've already said (two of us at least) that the Jedi only interfered with the other Jedi practising the Dark Side when those doing it tried to coerce others in to doing it, and tried to achieve power.

The Jedi don't tend to care about people practising the Dark Side without hurting anyone. The problem is that the vast majority of the people practising the Dark Side are those same people that try to use it against others.

Yea, if someone is in the darkside, but just mutzing around on their own, a Jedi's far more likely to try and convince them to use the light, or just stay out of their way. People like that aren't Sith, though. Rarely even in name, and definitely not in practice.

Oh, one group that comes to mind is the Jensaarai. They were founded by someone who followed the dark side and believed in the Sith teachings of an old sith manual, but he died before he turned his students to the dark, the students continued teaching but instinctively shied from the darkside, basically making their own version of the techniques and philosophy that they felt was right and just. So they continued on, existing as an order sorta on the edge of light and dark, and were told the Jedi were cruel and evil oppressors. The Jedi met them much later, and even though they were operating under the assumption that the Jedi were evil and even though their teachings were based on an alteration of Sith teachings, the Jedi were, "Nah, it's not like that! We're cool! You cool? Then we're cool."

They made peace with the Jedi and continued to live on as their own separate sect. They even did the occasional exchange program, hosting Jedi students as guests and allowing their own to go out and train with the Jedi for awhile.

Because they weren't evil, the Jedi had no problem with them existing and training people, even though their tradition was kinda based on the Sith's.

Interesting; I'd never heard of them.

Originally posted by -Pr-
Interesting; I'd never heard of them.

Well, they were only really in one book, "I Jedi". They're one of a couple minor force sects that don't show up much.

I've heard about that book, though I've never read it. All my reading was PT era (more specifically the Clone Wars), so I'm trying to branch out.

Originally posted by -Pr-
I've heard about that book, though I've never read it. All my reading was PT era (more specifically the Clone Wars), so I'm trying to branch out.

It's a good one.

It stars Corran Horn, who was also a protagonist in the X-wing Rogue Squadron books, which are some of the most universally-liked SW books.

Honestly I probably need to re-read I Jedi, it's been awhile ^^

That name sounds familiar; I've probably come accross it in wikis at some point.

The next book on my list is the new Sith one that's out in April.

Link: http://www.amazon.ca/Book-Sith-Secrets-Dark-Side/dp/1452118159/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362513522&sr=8-1

Though I'm tempted to get the holocron edition.

Originally posted by -Pr-
That name sounds familiar; I've probably come accross it in wikis at some point.

Yea. Though in most of the novels he stars in he's a pilot, Corran's one of the big Jedi masters of Luke's order, alongside Mara Jade, Kyle Katarn, Kyp Durron, and a few others.

The next book on my list is the new Sith one that's out in April.

Though I'm tempted to get the holocron edition.

Ah yea. Not a novel-book, but one like Jedi Path. Not entirely sure about those, but the 'this is a book in-universe' thing is kinda fun.

Ah, that's probably why I know the name.

Yeah, I really like the in-universe stuff. Jedi Path is also on my list.