First Great Schism

Origins

For over ten millennia, a society of Force-wielders called the Je’daii Order had lived in relative peace on the Deep Core world of Tython, when some of them relocated in order to step outside the growing sphere of influence of the fledgling Galactic Republic and founded the Jedi Order. They made their new home on Ossus in the Outer Rim.

Already at this point, the Jedi Order had grown doctrinaire in its practices and, according to some, too rigid to allow growth. Such an opinion was held by the Kashi Mer Jedi Knight Xendor who was exiled from his homeworld for embracing the darker aspects of the Force and wished to study Bogan more. He had grown vocal in his criticism of what he perceived as the Jedi Order's increasingly exclusionary ways about using the Force, and petitioned the leaders of the Jedi Order to be allowed to depart Ossus in order to create a new academy. There, he hoped to teach and study alternative traditions of the Force, such as Dai Bendu, the Palawa, the Way of the Dark and the Protectorate of the Hidden, to name just a few. The leaders of the Jedi Order refused Xendor's request, but he exited in defiance despite their decision. He found a supporter in a young Jedi named Arden Lyn who shared his views and was dissatisfied with the Jedi Order embracing the philosophy of the Caamasi people.

A new academy

Xendor and Lyn departed Ossus to establish their new academy on Lettow. They were not the only ones to defy the dictates of the Jedi Order; increasingly larger groups left Ossus to join Xendor's new group and study mysteries of the Force that had been forbidden to them under the Jedi Order. Eventually, Xendor's followers came to be known as the Legions of Lettow.

The newcomers to Xendor's academy pledged their allegiance to him and to the protection of their new order. They swore to defend their right to pursue knowledge of the Force without the oversight of the Jedi hierarchs, deeming them unfit to dictate which avenues were correct and which were forbidden. Members of the Legion embraced the dark side of the Force, rejected the idea of order and structure and celebrated their freedom by giving in their passions and emotions and touching the power of the dark side.

Open war

Sources are divided on which side started the war. According to Jedi recordings and some historians, it was the rageful Xendor and his army who attacked the Jedi Order, while others, including Arden Lynn say it was the Jedi who declared war against the Legions and raised an army first.

One of the first battles was fought on the Jedi capital world Ossus. Claiming to wish to end the conflict early and prevent it from spilling into the Republic, Xendor led the Legions in an attack on Ossus. Their attack failed, and the war continued unabated.

Lyn claimed, millennia later, that Xendor tried to alert the young Republic to the threat he believed the Jedi posed to them: that they would guise themselves as protectors and guardians while they secretly schemed for power. In this, too, Xendor failed, and the Legions failed to gain any traction in the Republic against their Jedi enemies.

The conflict spread across a number of worlds as it intensified. War spread to Chandrila, Brentaal, the Republic capital Coruscant, and Metellos as well, before a significant battle on Columus. At Columus, Xendor engaged the Jedi Awdrysta Pina, known by his nickname Green Blade, and was slain in single combat.

Lyn would later muse that both she and Xendor had admired Pina as a free thinker, one who preferred to travel to unknown places in search of mysteries of the Force unknown to the Jedi Order. Ultimately, however, Pina believed that the order and structure were the foundations of civilization, so he stood with the Jedi rather than with Xendor.

The Jedi forces commanded by Pina held a unique advantage over the Legions which even Lyn was forced to admit: their dedication to order allowed them to subsume their individuality into a larger collective and fight as one—not unlike the Force ability known as battle-meld. Xendor's followers refused to embrace any such tactic, believing it insectile and an affront to individuality.

Extermination of the Legions

Victory over Xendor, however, was not sufficient for the Jedi to declare victory in the war. Instead, forces under Pina were sent to Lettow to attempt to exterminate the last of Xendor's followers. A fierce battle was fought, allowing just enough time for the last survivors of the Legions to flee beyond the boundaries of Republic space.

Lyn was eventually cornered by Pina on Irkalla, after fleeing into regions of space unknown to all but Xendor. The two engaged in a duel in which she was disarmed. Unwilling to concede defeat, she channeled her strongest emotions—rage and sorrow, love for Xendor, and despair over what she believed had been unfairly taken from them—through the Kashi Mer talisman, destroying Pina's sword and mortally wounding him in the process.

In his dying breaths, he drew on his own unique Force talent, Morichro, to defeat Lyn. The spell, in essence, placed her into a deep stasis. She would not be resuscitated until the era of the Great Jedi Purge, over 24,000 years later.

Aftermath

The Jedi Order withdrew to Ossus in the Great Schism's aftermath. Thereafter, few in the Core Worlds gave the Jedi much thought, though unbeknownst to them, the Jedi acted as the Republic's secret defenders on the Rim, working quietly to check the ambitions of the Hutts towards vulnerable colonies in the Slice, and keeping the militaristic states of the Tion Cluster divided. They did not declare themselves to the Republic again until the Tionese War, nearly 500 years later.

Behind the scenes

In the comic book Tales of the Jedi - The Golden Age of the Sith #0, published on July 31, 1996, it's mentioned that "The First Great Schism" started "a hundred years of bloodshed" that produced the Dark Jedi Exiles who founded the Sith Empire. In Tales of the Jedi – The Golden Age of the Sith #2, the Dark Lord of the Sith Marka Ragnos says that the ancestors of the Dark Lords of the Sith were exiled as a result of "The Great Schism", implying that thanks to his ancestors being exiled at the end of the "First Great Schism", he's unaware that there was a "Second Great Schism".

The Emperor's Pawns, a collection of biographies written by Abel G. Peña and published in Star Wars Gamer #5 (2001), revealed that Xendor and his lover Arden Lyn started the First Great Schism ~25,000 BBY. The lore about the First Great Schism from Tales of the Jedi – The Golden Age of the Sith #0 and the date from The Emperor's Pawns were restated by the timeline in the beginning of and Naga Sadow's entry in The New Essential Guide to Characters (2002).

The New Essential Chronology (2005) revealed that the Jedi Exiles lived around ~7000 BBY, along with the fact that the prior century of conflict is the same event as the Hundred-Year Darkness (said to be a separate event in the timeline in the beginning of The New Essential Guide to Characters) and to have followed the "Second Great Schism" while the First Great Schism was retconned into being a separate event. When asked about this retcon, Dan Wallace, author of The New Essential Chronology, said it was because Lucasfilm internal dating documents indicated that the Jedi Exiles made contact with the Sith species ~ 7000 BBY.

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