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Copyright 2024 IV Republic Reigns: Star Wars fan fiction is a work of non-profit fan-made fiction. Star Wars, its characters, creatures, locations, and all other elements there of are the exclusive property of Lucasfilm Ltd. and The Walt Disney Company. This story derives solely from existing works and is not endorsed by or affiliated with Lucasfilm Ltd. or The Walt Disney Company. All original elements, including original characters, stories, and images within this work are the sole property of ME (IV) unless otherwise stated. No copyright infringement is intended. This story may be freely distributed with this disclaimer preserved in its entirety.
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The Skyriver Galaxy had many rules yet perhaps none more influential than the dark Banite Rule of Two...in an era of unprecedented republican and Jedi prosperity 200 years after the New Sith wars their last waning hidden vessels' unlit chronology stood as this.
Darth Bane was born as Dessel on the Outer Rim world Apatros as a poor cortosis miner. However, after showing exceptional connection to the Force, he was trained in the dark side traditions under various Sith Masters before embracing the title of Darth. Appalled at the constant in-fighting diluting the Sith Order's dominion during the New Sith Wars (1000 BBY), Bane devised the sacred Rule of Two - only two Sith Lords could exist in one span--A master to personify power and an apprentice to covet its magnific allure.
After studying long-forgotten Sith techniques from relics on Dxun, Darth Bane sought to reconstitute the Sith in secret. On the Mid Rim world of Ruusan, he unleashed a mighty Force ability known as the Thought Bomb that seemingly swabbed out the strained Brotherhood of Darkness, as well as the Jedi Army of Light. Wiping out all Force Sapients with one move on the planet. Though suspected dead, Bane escaped with his new apprentice - the female prodigy Darth Zannah - to rebuild the Sith Order over the next decade.
When Bane and Zannah eventually dueled for supremacy, Zannah proved stronger by embracing her Sith sorcery fully, striking him from history in a battle for his new secret apprentice Cognus. After taking Darth Cognus, an Iktotchi female, as her own apprentice, Zannah engineered intricate plots to infiltrate the budding Republic expansion. they monitored for Jedi complacency. Over a century, the secrecy of the Rule of Two preserved the Sith, until Cognus took her own apprentice upon defeating her master Zannah --the conjurer Darth Millennial....he fractured the sacred rule of Bane and was cast out for starting his own dark cult.
Leaving Cognus in shadowy search of a new apprentice amongst the stars, a Hidden yet dark presence felt throughout the inner and outer rims of the galaxy. This unbroken chain of master and apprentice ensured that when the Sith finally revealed themselves again, their power would no longer be diluted as in eras past. Such was Darth Bane's cunning vision to resurrect Sith's domination over the Galaxy even if no one lived to know of their existence...
Yet still in the year 800 BBY the Galactic Republic's hem was fraying. For centuries, Coruscant dazzled the Cosmos' core with shining riches, sophisticated arts, and the Coalition's united protection. Yet few Mid and Inner Rim systems grasped that their eden teetered on the backbone of unrestrained imperialism.
The diversities between Coruscant's luminescent cityscape and Dantooine's rustic open plains could not be more stark. Where the Core World basked in gleaming monumental skyscrapers and hummed with ultra-modern industry, the ramshackle settlers' hamlets occupied only sparse clearings in Dantooine's rolling green hills. Yet this untamed frontier increasingly fell under the Republic's covetous gaze - its bountiful resources of cortosis and indigenous population ripe for exploitation by intergalactic corporate prospectors.
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On lavish Core pleasure worlds, Republic mega-corporations endlessly vied over untapped Outer Rim resources to fuel relentless progress. Desperate colonists seeking new lives were lured to stake remote claims, only to be abandoned when profits flowed elsewhere. Dantoine was such a planet to be colonized in the age of Revan (3,450 BBY) and then un-colonized leaving the Native Dantari and Human population split between settlers and a sect of lost Mandalorians at odds with each other with no true connection until now.
The Senate rotunda's aborted sessions perpetually failed to pass relief for those developing distant systems. But Republic forces quickly mustered to guard mega-corporate stakeholds from local insurrections. Cultural erasure and forced labor camps became commonplace as correcting measures.
On blasted badland worlds, local warlords leveraged brutal control where Republic law couldn't reach. Open slavery, spice running, and angular ship designs belied the Core's roundly brushed sensibilities. Refugee settlements swelled, filled with myriad species fleeing corporate interests commandeering their homeworlds. Violent displacement was the Outer Rim's shared heritage as much as anarchy itself.
The Jedi Order stood neutral from many far-off disputes, its lofty Coruscanti masters as politically impartial from the Rim's suffering as the Core elites in this expansive time of galactic-wide peace. Though they had not seen or heard of even the mention of true Sith, the Jedi order's fear of their dark counterparts fueled their laxed grip on the republic's expansion: too few Jedi, too many worlds teaming with force sensitives needing guidance.
The zealous Padawans turned Knights they eventually dispatched to address flare-ups often simply reinforced the Republic's ever-reaching aims. The differentiated worlds they strived to unite barely registered as more than resource drains requiring development. Using the Republic's help to bulge their ranks, starships included.
Even the mightiest regimes find limits at their farthest extremes. As the Hyperspace Expansion Bill opened more Outer Rim sectors, the Jedi's growing ranks remained thinly spread to manage unrest. The lonely young Force adepts discovered in those depths became ever more vital to enforce balance. Such was the crux on which the Order's relationship with the Rim would pivot in coming years.
On the fringe Expansion World of Dantooine, tensions simmered in the pastoral grasslands. This Outer Rim territory had avoided aggressive development thanks to stubborn, self-reliant settlers fighting to preserve their frontier independence. But corporate contractors had slowly gained ground, raising mega-farms and factories beside nearly-dust ruins left by the ancient Rakata Empire (20,000 BBY) and Jedi temple alike (around 3,000 BBY), forgotten relics of an era scathed by Darth Revan and Malak's wrath.
Wary native Dantari tribes felt increasingly cornered as Republic land permissions and policing favored the lucrative corporate facilities. Acts of sabotage had sparked against the mega-agricultural venture known to poison irrigation networks vital for tribal villages. Responding to pressures, the Jedi Order dispatched several Knights to protect the Republic's interests, while appraising Dantooine's natural Force-weilding child prodigies for training back on Coruscant.
Jedi Knights Torrin Kubanne and Sansa Jubarri worked closely alongside the new development efforts. Torrin's hardline beliefs originated from his human noble family's homeworld of Naboo, an upbringing steeped in doctrine -- the Jedi existed to preserve the Republic's rule above all. His through-line of prestigious lineage groomed him for unquestioning allegiance.
By contrast, Sansa's Tholothian upbringing bore witness to the expansionist corruption festering in the Outer Rim, Tholoth under the Republic's grip. Being sent off to train at the Jedi temple after living in occupation, no longer could she blindly reinforce the inequality and indigenous oppression she had glimpsed firsthand. Their clashing perspectives reflected the Jedi Order's own simmering spiritual crisis of the time.
The duo, while operating loosely together, found themselves as Order liaison to ruthless Trandoshan Republican Commander De'busk, whose authoritarian corporate credited militias crushed dissent across many Expansion Worlds focused yet on Dantooine as his main base of rim operations. Even the coordinated Jedi oversight couldn't reverse the tide toward complete annexation by reptilian menace, claiming its ancient landscape as his own.
While the shroud of the Sith had dissipated from view for centuries, Darth Cognus remained ever-vigilant, safeguarding Bane's legacy. Any who had caught wind of her existence long ago met their demise. The ancient Masters' enduring doctrine echoed - "For the Sith to regain their power, they must remain hidden until the time is ripe." Cognus bided her time, allowing the galaxy's supposed prosperity to bloom unabated as she silently strengthened her own inscrutable agenda...till she found a young Kel Dor named Filo...