Jedi Civil War

The seeds of the Jedi Civil War were sown nearly twenty years before the conflict would come to pass. Beginning in 3976 BBY, the Mandalorians, a race of warriors that descended from the Taung of ancient Coruscant, embarked upon a second campaign of conquest after reforging themselves in the wake of the defeat of the Sith Lord Exar Kun during the Great Sith War. Taking worlds and ravaging colonies throughout the galaxy beyond the edge of Republic space, the many clans of Neo-Crusaders, under the leadership of Mandalore the Ultimate, carved out a territory greater than that ruled by the Hutts in the span of little more than a decade.

After hearing of what was happening beyond the Outer Rim Territories, the Galactic Senate initially declined to respond, choosing not to act in the defense of planets outside of the Republic's borders. Many senators, still weary of war after the devastation wrought by Kun and the Krath Holy Crusade, did not wish to subject their constituents to yet another conflict unless the Mandalorians threatened the Republic itself. Once he felt that his clans were sufficiently battle-hardened, Mandalore soon obliged them, taking up the secret offer of the Sith to challenge a worthy foe. Launching a three-pronged invasion in 3963 BBY. Mandalorian fleets poured into Republic space through invasion corridors blazed through adjacent sectors along the Outer Rim, sparking the Mandalorian Wars. In the opening battles of the conflict, particularly at the Battle of Serroco, forces of the Republic Navy were overwhelmed by superior numbers and tactics. Despite these unfortunate events, the Jedi Council refused the Republic's desperate pleas for aid, sensing that there was another, hidden threat that had yet to reveal itself. Though many of the youngest and brightest members of the Jedi Order were eager to combat the Mandalorians, the Jedi Masters would not allow it, preferring to keep private their own fears and plans for war.

The Battle of Cathar played a large part in changing the situation. During the Neo-Crusades that predated the invasion of the Republic, forces under the leadership of Cassus Fett, Mandalore's chief tactician, attacked the world of Cathar, enslaving and killing as many Cathar as possible. It was theorized later that this flagrant attack was one of many that were calculated to draw the Jedi into the conflict. The gamble paid off; after having revealed the truth about what really happened on Cathar, the young and charismatic Jedi Knight Revan—who became known as "The Revanchist"— defied the Council and began to rally younger members of the Jedi Order, including his friend Alek, who began calling himself "Malak" during the wars, to his cause. After lending their support to the battered Republic fleet, they soon proved to be more than capable commanders in the field, quickly rising through the ranks. Soon, they were given direct control over the entire Republic Navy. Revan used this newly-bestowed authority to spearhead the Republic war effort; under his inspired leadership, the all-but-defeated troops of the Republic recomposed themselves and began to push the Mandalorians back. Some time during the Mandalorian Wars, Revan visited both Malachor V and Korriban, slipping closer to the dark side and alerting the Sith Emperor of the Sith Empire to his existence.

After a series of bitterly-contested battles on Dxun and Althir, the war's climax was fast approaching. As the fighting reached a fever pitch, Revan began to devise a way to end the war before the Republic was too weakened by the conflict to face the threat that was to come. Working in secret, he built a new Sith academy over the crumbling ruins of the older complex on Malachor V, and used the dark side energies contained within to bind the most trusted of his Force-sensitive followers to his will. These beings became the building blocks of the order of the Sith assassins—a group that he kept secret even from Malak at the time.

In 3960 BBY, Revan forced a final confrontation with the Mandalorians above Malachor V. During the battle, Revan lured Mandalore into a direct confrontation, facing and overcoming the Mandalorian leader in single combat. However, Revan learned from the dying Mandalore that the Mandalorian Wars were arranged by the Sith, and that Mandalore had been manipulated. After ending the Mandalorian Wars with a resounding, if very costly victory thanks to the activation of the Mass Shadow Generator by one of his Jedi generals, Revan and Malak led the remainder of their forces into the Unknown Regions under the pretense of tracking down the remnants of the Mandalorian fleet. As time went by without any word from the Jedi who had won the war for them, the Republic feared that they and the soldiers under them had been lost in some great, unknown disaster in the depths of unexplored space.

Following Mandalore's directions to Rekkiad, Revan and Malak hid Mandalore's Mask in the tomb of the Sith Lord Dramath the Second, and they followed the trail to the planet Nathema and then to Dromund Kaas itself. However, they were led into a trap by the Sith Emperor, who broke the wills of the two Jedi Knights, making them his servants and anointing them as Dark Lords of the Sith. The Emperor then sent the pair back to the Republic as advance agents, tasking them with the mission of searching for the Star Forge, an ancient Rakatan superweapon, to accelerate his plans to exact revenge on the Jedi and the Republic.

Revan and Malak found a Rakatan Star Map in the ancient burial mounds on Dantooine, near the Jedi Enclave. After successfully passing the "trials" set for them by the guard droid that had been left behind by the so called "builders," they were given access to the Star Map. Moments before they went beyond the door that led to the dark side artifact, however, Malak warned Revan that stepping beyond this threshold would mean that they could never return to the Jedi Order. Despite this warning, Revan accessed the Star Map, along with Malak, and they later discovered Star Maps on Kashyyyk, Manaan, Korriban, and Tatooine. Having triangulated the Star Forge's location, the two traveled to the Rakata system, but they broke free of the Emperor's control and established their own empire.

Fueled by the dark side and drawing raw materials from the star over which it had been constructed, the space station was both an automated factory and battle dreadnaught, capable of manufacturing a virtually endless supply of ships, droids, and other materials of war rapidly and on an unprecedented scale. In the hands of Revan, the Star Forge would become the heart of a new Sith war effort. From the upper levels of the factory complex, which was hidden within the unmapped Rakata system, Revan founded his new empire, bringing with him all those who had sworn their service to his cause. Revan and Malak returned to Korriban and seized control of the tombworld, taking control of the Sith Academy there and making Korriban the public capital of their empire.

The teachings of the dark side began to filter down through the rank-and-file of the Republic military that had been placed under the direct command of Revan and Malak. Nearly all of those who had served under him swore their loyalty to Revan over that of the rest of the Republic and the Jedi Order; included among them were some of the top military leaders of the Army and Navy, such as General Derred, and Mon Halan. As they forsook their oaths and followed him beyond known space, Revan's corruption spread downward, forming the core of his new Sith Empire. In addition, Revan also commissioned the creation of HK-47 and other assassin droids like him to carry out politically-motivated assassinations all over the galaxy.

Located in the Deep Core, the shipyards at Foerost was one of the largest such facilities in use by the Republic Navy. Forty years prior, during the height of the Great Sith War, the yards had been raided by a combined force of Krath and Mandalorians, during which they stole approximately three hundred warships for use in an attack on Coruscant. When Revan and Malak, now called Darth Revan and Darth Malak, declared themselves to be the new Dark Lords of the Sith, one of their first overt acts was to execute a repeat of this raid; using codes given to them by Saul Karath, Sith bombers passed through the perimeter sensor nets without being detected and began ravaging the inner defenses. As the Republic attempted to mount a defense, many of their warships were boarded and seized by Sith troopers; these newly-commandeered vessels were quick to join with the fleet of Sith vessels that had arrived to ensure the success of the raid. Thusly armed, the forces under the two former Jedi began their assault on the unsuspecting galaxy.

Remembering their leadership during the Mandalorian Wars, large numbers of Republic officers and soldiers began to defect to the new Dark Lords of the Sith. Consequently, the two Sith Lords were able to rapidly carve out a new Sith Empire without needing to commit to much fighting. Battles were fought at Roche, Axxila, Gizer and Randon as Revan and Malak expanded their empire. Additional actions at Yag'Dhul secured a pocket of space around the Rimma Trade Route and Corellian Trade Spine crossroads and delivered the Tapani sector and the shipyards of Fondor to the Sith. Other pockets of Sith space emerged around the Allanteen system and Gamorr. In the Core Worlds, Corellia, Duro and Bellassa came under Sith control. Sith attempts to break out of these pockets throughout the war were unsuccessful, however, with the Republic keeping them contained with victories at Commenor, Denon, Devaron, Rhommamool and Foless. Despite this, the new Sith Empire eventually came to control a third of the settled galaxy.

Seeing the need for corporate assistance in providing necessary materiél for the war effort, Revan also entered into a partnership with Czerka Corporation, a galaxy-spanning conglomerate with such diverse interests as mining, slaving, and manufacturing items such as arms, armor, and droids. Offered a trade monopoly within Sith space, the corporation helped to sponsor the establishment and growth of the Dreshdae colony on Korriban as part of their supply network. The corporation continued to provide logistical support for the Sith Empire throughout the course of the war.

Pollard Seario was one such high-ranking corporate officer; he offered control of one of the corporation's hidden military research facilities, dubbed Czerka 431 to the Sith. Among the activities performed there included experiments on Juggernaut war droids, performed by scientist Joni Ree. Ree, hoping to help the Republic, provided the outpost's location, hoping to escape in the ensuing attack. The Republic sent a small force, which succeeded in destroying the base. Ree, along with three other soldiers, was then sent by the Republic to AB-343, which they had captured near the start of the war, in order to acquire any possible intelligence. Not wishing to reveal their alliance, the Sith sent an assassin to eliminate the team. The GenoHaradan bounty hunter guild also sent an assassin, as they believed that it was in their best interest for the alliance between Czerka and the Sith to remain unknown. The two assassins, upon finding their marks, proceeded to launch an attack.

In the year 3958 BBY, Admiral Saul Karath openly declared his intent to abandon the Republic he had once served. As a test of his loyalty, he was ordered by Darth Malak to bombard the strategically-placed Republic world of Telos IV. Given command of a fleet of Sith warships, Karath surrounded the planet and demanded that its government surrender. After being rebuffed by the local government, he ordered his fleet to commence a devastating orbital bombardment. The resulting attack was carried out with brutal efficiency, scourging the surface of the once-lush and prosperous world of all animal and plant life and causing the atmosphere to degrade into a miasma of toxic vapors that produced acid rain. While some citizens were able to escape on intra-system shuttles, millions were killed, and many more died soon after due to medical supply shortages and the after-effects of the bombardment. Karath's forces, meanwhile, departed the system, allowing the evacuation ships to survive unmolested so that the refugees contained therein would stand as testimony to what the Sith were capable of. A nearby Republic task force, with which the Commander Carth Onasi was serving, arrived in the system shortly afterward, but by then it was too late to do anything more than ensure the evacuees were able to reach safety.

The Sith were interested in capturing the Zabrak homeworld, Iridonia and destroying the Republic fleet based there, so they sent the former Jedi, Acaadi, to prepare the planet for an attack. He infiltrated a band of Mandalorians, who had been stranded on the planet following the Mandalorian Wars. Over the next few months, they came under Acaadi's leadership and he had them destroy a Republic military communications center on the planet, in preparation for the Sith attack. Afterward, Acaadi no longer needed the Mandalorians, so he rid himself of them by having some of them run into his old comrade, the Jedi Duqua Dar. Acaadi then killed the Mandalorians and rescued Dar from them, before proceeding to persuade him that the Jedi were holding him back and that he should leave the Order. They were overheard by a group of Jedi and spacers, who had been working with Dar, and Acaadi and Dar were forced to flee. They made their way to a secret hangar on the edge of the city of Wortan and Dar waited there along with some Sith commandos, while Acaadi and some commandos flew off in a shuttle to sabotage the flagship of the Republic fleet above Iridonia, Champion of Iridonia. The Jedi and spacers arrived and tried to persuade Dar that Acaadi had tricked him. They fought and killed the commandos, before learning of Acaadi's plan.

The Jedi flew to the Champion, to warn its commander, Admiral Rokon, of what Acaadi was going to do. Acaadi spoke into a security camera and revealed that he and his commandos were already sabotaging the ship and that it was too late. At that moment, about a dozen Sith ships arrived and engaged the Republic fleet. The Jedi confronted and defeated Acaadi and the commandos, ending the immediate threat to the Champion. However, a large number of Republic ships defected to the Sith during the course of the battle, and the Sith were ultimately able to secure Iridonia. A successful campaign by the Sith against Palanhi, a planet on a hyperlane to Coruscant followed, and a Republic offensive against Ithor ended in failure.

Following a vision that he had had of the planet Nyriaan, the Sith Lord Darth Glovoc decided to travel there, aboard his flagship, the Interdictor-class cruiser Dying Sun. The Sun arrived near Nyriaan and carried out a detailed scan of the area surrounding the planet. However, the ship's active sensors were detected by the Republic, which sent a strike force to attack the cruiser. With Glovoc concentrating all of his attention on Nyriaan, the Sith did not detect the approaching Republic ships until it was too late for them to escape. The resulting battle was very violent and the Sith succeeded in destroying three Republic cruisers and many Republic starfighters. However, the Republic forces inflicted heavy fire on the Dying Sun and fired many torpedos at it. The ship was crippled and eventually became caught in Nyriaan's gravity well. It broke up into several pieces, which then fell to the planet's surface. The Republic forces declared that they had been victorious in the battle and never investigated what the Dying Sun had been doing at Nyriaan, assuming that it had just been hiding there to avoid discovery.

Following the victory at Nyriaan, the Republic had a string of successes in the south-west of the galaxy. The Sith advance on New Cov from Allanteen Six was halted. Meanwhile, in hopes of denying the Republic its greatest source of scouts and explorers, Sith forces attacked neutral Rodia. However, the Jedi uncovered their plot and signaled the Republic fleet for help. Republic forces on the Rimward Corellian Run drove away the Sith fleet, and in the aftermath of the battle, Rodia officially joined the war on the Republic side. From Rodia, the Republic launched a campaign which resulted in victories at Mon Gazza and Lannik.

Two years later, the war continued, with the Republic barely holding itself together beneath the hammer blows of Darth Revan and Darth Malak's armadas. In the hopes of ushering in a new phase of the war, or at least to give them breathing space, the Jedi Council drafted a plan by which they could capture both Sith Lords, thus depriving the Sith of their greatest leader and tactician. A two-part plan was put into action; first, a group of Republic operatives aided by a pair of Jedi acquired data on the Sith Lord's fleet on Sernpidal. With this data, the Jedi and Republic, aided by the talents of a young Jedi Padawan named Bastila Shan, who had mastered the art of battle meditation at a young age, a small force of Republic warships engaged the fleet of Darths Revan and Malak. While the two sides fought, Shan, accompanied by a number of Jedi Knights, boarded Revan's flagship, overcoming his guards and cornering the Dark Lord on the bridge of his command ship. However, Malak became aware of what was happening and, in a bold maneuver, he ordered the ships under his command to fire upon the bridge of his mentor, intending to kill not only the Jedi boarding party, but his own friend in order to claim the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith for himself.

Unknown to the newly self-proclaimed Dark Lord, however, Revan was still very much alive. As the only other survivor of the attack unleashed by Malak, Shan used the Force to preserve the flicker of life that still remained within the unconscious Dark Lord. This act caused the formation of a near-physical bond, linked through the Force, between the two, an event that would have lasting repercussions though nobody knew it at the time. Hoping to save his life and, perhaps, bring about his redemption, Shan took Revan's body from the wreckage of the warship's command deck, escaping from the battle and bringing him to the Dantooine Jedi Enclave Council. The Jedi Masters there, Vandar Tokare, Vrook Lamar, Zhar Lestin, and Dorak, used their own mastery of the Force to not only heal Revan's wounded body and mind, but to gain access to and erase his remaining memories of having been the Dark Lord.

Though the ultimate objective of that mission had been successful, the result of their efforts ended up backfiring on both the Jedi and the Republic. Emboldened by his seizure of the Sith crown, Malak continued on the crusade began by his former mentor. Although he was far from Revan's equal in strategy or tactics, and was also unaware of Revan's many secret dealings and projects, such as the Sith assassins and the academy at Malachor V, the new Dark Lord did have numbers—and the Star Forge—on his side. Even as he shifted the scope of his military campaign from one of conquest and conversion to a series of massacres intended to demonstrate his resolve, Malak undertook an active side quest aimed at capturing or eliminating the Jedi Bastila Shan, whose battle meditation he both coveted and feared. The new Dark Lord reasoned that, if he could not have her and her talents at his side, then she had to die in order to secure the chances of success for his war to seize the galaxy.

As the Jedi worked on the severely-wounded Revan, planting within him the belief that he was a loyal soldier of the Republic serving under Shan's command, Malak prepared a trap of his own, which he sprung on the small Republic fleet led by the Endar Spire, a Hammerhead-class cruiser, over the Outer Rim ecumenopolis of Taris. In the skirmish that resulted, Shan, Revan, and Carth Onasi, along with a small number of Republic soldiers and crewers, escaped the doomed vessel, landing in different spots on the surface of Taris; Shan landed somewhere in the Lower City while the pod containing Onsai and Revan impacted upon a pedestrian walkway in the Upper City. While Shan was taken prisoner by the swoop gang known as the Black Vulkars, who intended to sell her into slavery, Onasi pulled an unconscious Revan from their pod and hid out in an abandoned apartment, where he remained in a coma for three days.

Even as the Endar Spire was being turned into free-floating hydrogen, space and ground forces under the command of Malak were taking control of Taris and instituting a planet-wide quarantine, circling the planet with a fleet of Sith warships whose auto-targeting laser cannons could obliterate any vessel that attempted to leave the surface. With little else to do, Carth, along with Revan's new identity, began to search Taris for clues as to what had happened to Shan, believing her to be the key to eventually stopping the Sith—if that was even possible. Eventually, working with members of the Hidden Beks gang and with help from the streetwise duo of Mission Vao and Zaalbar, the two Republic soldiers were able to gain an approximation of where Shan was being held and why—as the Vulkars' share of the victory prize for the Tarisian Season Opener swoop race. Seeing a chance to rescue her, Revan accepted Gadon Thek's offer to infiltrate the Black Vulkars' base in order to retake a prototype swoop engine accelerator that had been stolen from the Beks; in return, Thek, leader of the Beks, would let Revan enter the swoop race under the Bek banner. After winning the race with a surprising upset, ostensibly having never piloted swoop bikes before, Revan was accused by the Vulkars' leader, Brejik, of cheating; when Brejik refused to release the hitherto unconscious Shan, she used the Force to free herself. In the firefight that followed, Brejik and many of his Vulkars were dead, leaving Shan and Revan free to return to the apartment where Onasi, Vao and Zaalbar were hiding out.

The actions at the swoop race caused quite a stir among the criminal element on Taris, attracting the attention of the Mandalorian mercenary Canderous Ordo, who up to that point had been working as the personal enforcer for crime lord and Exchange boss Davik Kang alongside the recently-hired famed bounty hunter Calo Nord. Sensing an opportunity to further his own interests, since Kang had not been paying him the credits that had been promised, Ordo offered Revan a deal: in exchange for the party breaking into the Sith-controlled military base on Taris and stealing the codes necessary for a ship to leave unmolested by the Sith in orbit, he would offer them access to their ticket out, Kang's personal starship, the Dynamic-class freighter Ebon Hawk. With the aid of the custom-built astromech droid T3-M4, Revan, Shan, and Onasi were able to enter the base. After clearing it out and defeating the Sith Governor in charge, the trio met up with Ordo at Javyar's Cantina in the Lower City. The mercenary then took Revan to Kang's estate, ostensibly in order to recruit him into the Exchange, however it was instead a ruse to get them inside. Once Kang had left, the party set out to steal the Ebon Hawk. Around this time, a group of six Mandalorian mercenaries stranded on Taris attacked a Sith Marauder and a number of Sith troopers in a newly-established Sith outpost on the planet.

Meanwhile, in orbit, Malak was growing frustrated at the fruitless search for Shan. As a last-ditch measure, and in keeping with his personality, he ordered Admiral Saul Karath to begin a systematic bombardment of the planet. A somewhat hesitant Admiral Karath complied, noting that it would take several hours to reposition the fleet in order to conduct such an operation. This delay would prove to be costly, as it was during that time that Revan and Ordo succeeded in stealing Kang's prized freighter, eliminating the crime boss and, in appearance, Calo Nord as well, even as the Sith bombardment began. Flying amidst a deluge of turbolaser blasts that was fast turning the city-world into flaming rubble, the Ebon Hawk swooped by the apartment where the rest of Revan's companions were staying, picking them up and angling hard for the stars. As they made haste to ascend the planet's gravity well far enough to enter hyperspace, a sextet of Sith fighters began to give chase. Manning the freighter's dorsal gun turret, Revan was able to quickly dispatch the enemy starfighters, leaving the way clear for the ship to flee to Dantooine.

It was during his time on Taris that Revan began to experience odd flashes of his old memories; dreams at first, in which he witnessed snippets of the events which led up to his apparent death, these soon developed further. Upon first meeting Shan as his new self, Revan witnessed a vision of his capture, though he did not recognize its significance at the time. As soon as the Ebon Hawk landed at the Dantooine Enclave, Shan left the ship to speak with the Council there to report on what had happened upon and to the city-world—including what Revan had reported seeing. Nor was this the last sending, for soon after this both of them shared yet another memory, a vision in the form of a dream depicting Revan and Malak within a nearby set of ruins, who were seeking out "the secrets of the Star Forge".

Recognizing the significance of these visions, for it was what they had intended when wiping the memories of the captured and comatose Revan, the Dantooine Enclave Council debated whether or not to retrain the former Knight in the ways of the Jedi. Vrook was cautious, for he believed that there was a distinct possibility of Revan returning to his dark ways; however, after discussing the matter in private, it was decided by the Council to induct the amnesiac warrior back into their ranks. Over the following several weeks Revan went through intense remedial Jedi training, working with Shan under the supervision of Jedi Master Zhar Lestin. After proving his knowledge of the Jedi Code, constructing a new lightsaber, and seeking out and redeeming the fallen Cathar Jedi Juhani, Revan proved to Lestin that he was ready to become a Padawan; thus proven, he, Shan, and Onasi were sent out to investigate the ruins from the vision that the two Jedi had shared. What they found within confirmed what the Jedi Order had previously thought, that Revan and Malak, after falling to the dark side, had sought out and found the Star Forge by means of a series of Star Maps. Armed with this knowledge, they sent Revan, Shan, Onasi, Vao, Zaalbar, Ordo, and the redeemed Juhani out into the larger galaxy to discover where, precisely, the Star Forge was located—and to destroy it.

As the party sought the Star Maps on Tatooine, Kashyyyk, Manaan and Korriban, word of Shan's escape from Taris reached Darth Malak, relayed by Calo Nord, who had narrowly escaped that world's destruction himself. Malak and Admiral Karath promptly hired the man to track the Jedi down, capturing her if at all possible while doing whatever was necessary to deal with her companions. It was also at this time that the first hints of a certain other being's survival came to the Dark Lord's attention as well, though this fact was kept in strictest confidence. Throughout their quest, the party led by Revan ran into Sith agents, including detachments of Dark Jedi. After uncovering the first Star Map, hidden within the lair of a krayt dragon in the Eastern Dune Sea of Tatooine, Nord caught up with them. Aided by a quartet of Rodian and Aqualish thugs, he attempted to carry out his contract; the two Jedi and Onasi proved too much for them, however, and Nord, along with his hirelings, were slain. With nothing left to be done on the desert world, the crew of the Ebon Hawk departed for Kashyyyk. While on Tatooine the party was largely responsible for alleviating the threat posed by the Sand People to Czerka's mining and the citizens of Anchorhead, in addition to rescuing Mission Vao's brother Griff and a number of Jawas.

The Star Maps themselves seemed to be emanating their own dark side aura, as they affected the environment in their vicinity; on Tatooine, the dark side energies attracted one of the largest krayt ever seen by that time, while on Kashyyyk, it was theorized by the reclusive former Jedi Jolee Bindo, who joined Revan's party, that the ancient Rakatan monument was responsible for the dangerous nature of the Shadowlands, as the lower levels of the Wroshyr forests were dubbed. As Revan and his companions continued on their journey, they became caught up in the affairs of the locals; on Kashyyyk itself, Revan, with the help of Bindo and Zaalbar, thwarted the slave trade in Wookiees conducted by Czerka Corporation,

On Manaan, where strict neutrality laws were enforced by the native Selkath under pain of kolto-export sanctions, Revan, Shan, and Onasi were forced to deal with a sort of shadow war waged by the Republic and Sith Empire's presence on the aquatic world. After raiding the local Sith Embassy in order to recover an encrypted data module for Roland Wann, the chief Republic diplomat, Revan was provided with the means to access the Hrakert Rift and Hrakert Station, the secret Republic installation constructed there, where Wann believed that Manaan's relic was located. Once on the ocean floor, Revan cleared out the station, destroying its kolto-harvesting machinery in order to placate the Progenitor and gain access to the map. All was not as it seemed, however, because shortly thereafter he met up once again with Malak's Shadow Hand Darth Bandon, who had been sent after Shan by Malak once word of Calo Nord's death had reached the Dark Lord. In the duel that followed, Bandon and the pair of Dark Jedi accompanying him were killed.

Even as Revan and his companions followed their mission, Malak himself was preparing to attack the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine. Though the dark side clouded their perception of future events, the Dantooine Council did have sufficient warning to successfully evacuate most of the important relics, holocrons, and other material stored there, as well as to retreat themselves. However, the Sith assault came too quickly for a general retreat; the Enclave itself was pulverized by an orbital strike even as Sith troops descended to the surface to subjugate that world. Many Jedi were killed in the onslaught; throughout the Sith occupation that followed, many civilians were rounded up, most of whom never returned. This sent shockwaves throughout the Order, further weakening it and the Republic; it would not be until well after the war that the Sith themselves would abandon the planet.

Leaving the world of Manaan behind, the Ebon Hawk set course for the Sith tombworld of Korriban, where they knew the last Star Map was to be found. However, the ship was intercepted en route by the Sith Interdictor-class cruiser Leviathan, the flagship of Saul Karath; after being yanked from hyperspace by the ship's gravity well projector, the freighter was snagged by the capital ship's tractor beam. Even as they were being slowly dragged into the ship's main hangar, however, Onasi, Shan, and Revan busied themselves formulating a plan for escape; they soon decided that it would be best for another member of the party to use their own talents to either avoid or escape confinement, then liberate the rest of the crew from their holding cells. Admiral Karath interrogated Revan, Shan and Onasi personally, informing them of the destruction of the Dantooine Enclave as he attempted to learn what mission the Jedi Council had sent them on; however, despite his torturing of Shan, the Sith fleet commander was unable to learn anything, and left the prisoners as they were tortured into unconsciousness. During this, the Ebon Hawk crewmember succeeded in getting away from their guards. With the help of a Rodian captive, they were able to access the detention level computer system and unlock the holding cells and force cages that held the rest of the group.

Now reunited, the crew planned the next phase of the breakout. While Revan, Shan and Onasi made their way to the ship's bridge in order to deactivate the tractor beam and open the hangar, Ordo led the rest of the crew in retaking the Ebon Hawk in order to prepare it for departure as quickly as possible. Carving their way through the Sith troops and Dark Jedi that swarmed the vessel's command deck, the lead party eventually had to don space suits and enter the bridge proper through an exterior accessway via an airlock on the ship's hull. Confronting Admiral Karath on the bridge deck, the party was offered a chance to surrender; the offer was rejected, however, prompting a furious fire-and-lightsaber fight that resulted in the Admiral's death. With his dying breaths, however, the onetime Republic officer told Onasi of his companion's true nature, but with little time to spare before Malak's imminent arrival, there was no chance to explain the situation. Making a break for it, the three fled back through the command deck and to the hangar level. Despite their haste, the trio was intercepted by the Dark Lord just meters away from where the Ebon Hawk was berthed. As surprised as he was amused at the events that had transpired since his betrayal, Malak gleefully filled Revan in on the details of who he was—and what he had been made into.

Shan confirmed what the Dark Lord was saying, elaborating on her role in the trap that had been set, and the part she had played in saving Revan's life. Believing that she had his best interests at heart and had indeed been attempting to bring about his redemption, Revan forgave Shan; this incensed Malak, who condemned his former Master's attitude as weak and declaring that he had been right to take the mantle of Dark Lord from him. The two fought amongst the blast tunnels on the hangar level, with Revan driving Malak back, but the Dark Lord fought back hard. Catching up with the duelists, Shan, with Onasi watching helplessly, intervened, throwing her lightsaber at the Sith Lord as she interposed herself into the fight and urged the pair to flee to the Ebon Hawk and find the Star Forge. Onasi and Revan did so; as the freighter escaped into hyperspace, the party came to grips with what had been revealed. Distrustful at first in the wake of this revelation, Onasi relented when the rest of the crew sided with Revan. With Shan captured, the party had little choice but to press on to Korriban and uncover the final Map.

A barren world that radiated with the dark side, Korriban's only features at that time were the small spaceport located at the Dreshdae settlement and operated by the ubiquitous Czerka Corporation. Also evident was the nearby Sith Academy. Since the planet was well within Sith Space, the Sith Empire held jurisdiction; this meant that, in essence, the Sith there could do as they pleased with little or no fear of retribution. The party was not without direction, though; as had happened on all the other worlds visited thus far by Revan, he was given a vision of his old memories, which showed that that world's Star Map was located within what appeared to be a tomb. Conversations with various denizens of Dreshdae offered yet more clues, and it soon became clear that in order to get to the final map and find the Star Forge, the party had to infiltrate the Academy. Eventually, after securing a medallion from the corpse of a violent Sith student, Revan was admitted into the Academy by Yuthura Ban, the Twi'lek apprentice of Uthar Wynn, the Academy's headmaster. As it happened, Ban and Wynn knew full well what the Star Map was and its true significance; though the party now had access to the Valley of the Dark Lords, this was only a step in the right direction. Through the two Sith Masters, Revan was able to learn all he needed to "become a Sith in full" and gain access to the Map, which was located within the tomb of the ancient Sith Lord Naga Sadow. After finding the ancient structure and finally uncovering the hyperspace coordinates for the Lehon system and the Rakatan homeworld, Revan confronted the two Sith, ultimately killing Wynn and redeeming Ban. With the Academy's leadership taken out of the picture, the other Sith turned on Revan and his companions, bringing about a violent melee that virtually wiped out the entire faculty and student body.

After clearing out the Sith Academy, the party left Korriban behind, bound for the hitherto unknown homeworld of the Rakata, where the Star Forge was located in orbit above the system's primary star. Elsewhere, the Republic Navy had driven the Sith off Iridonia and defeated them at Basilisk and the Chazwa system.

The crew of the Ebon Hawk had barely come out of hyperspace in the Lehon system before they were assaulted by a small, half-dozen strong vanguard of Sith fighters. After eliminating the half-squadron of enemy ships, the freighter inadvertently flew through the disruptor field that served as the station's primary defense mechanism. With their hyperdrive damaged and running on only one sublight engine, Onasi was forced to make an emergency landing on one of Lehon's smaller islands—the very same island that held the Temple of the Ancients. After several run-ins with the native Rakata, including violent encounters with members of the tribe of The One and peaceful contact with the Elder Rakata, Revan was able to piece together what had transpired during his—and Malak's—last visit to the hitherto forgotten world. With the help of the Elders, he, accompanied by Jolee Bindo and Juhani, entered the Temple of the Ancients in order to shut down the disruptor field so that the incoming Republic fleet, summoned by Onasi prior to their crash, would not suffer a similar fate. Atop the Temple they were confronted by Shan—who was now the Sith apprentice of Darth Malak.

The fallen Shan attacked the trio; however, after being forced back, she attempted to persuade Revan to follow her lead, joining her in embracing the dark side in order to reclaim the title of Dark Lord from Malak; she claimed that the Jedi had brainwashed Revan and used her battle meditation for their own ends and were jealous of the power that they both held. Revan, in turn, entreated her to give up the dark side, citing the fact that he had done the same. Incensed, Shan retreated to her shuttle and fled to the Star Forge. As the trio returned to the repaired Ebon Hawk, they discussed what had transpired; Revan declared his intention to save Shan, and so the party left the planet, joining with the battle already in progress. Under the command of Admiral Forn Dodonna, a force of Hammerhead-class capital ships and Republic blockade runners, supported by A-wing military fighters and assault fighters, engaged the Interdictor-class cruisers and fighters of the Sith armada under the command of Admiral Varko.

Supported by Jedi under the leadership of surviving Dantooine Council member Vandar Tokare, the Ebon Hawk docked on the station itself; as a number of the Jedi Knights who boarded alongside them secured an escape route, Revan and two of his companions pressed into the interior of the vast complex, engaging Sith troops, assault droids and Dark Jedi at every turn. As the two fleets squared off in the space beyond the Star Forge, Revan eventually penetrated the outer defenses, finding and confronting Shan once again. Still in the thrall of the dark side, Shan dueled with Revan; even though she was re-energized by the Star Forge's dark side energies after each round of combat, she could not overcome him. Professing his own love for her and encouraging her to draw upon their bond within the Force, Revan was able to redeem Shan, convincing her to use her battle meditation to aid the Republic fleet to atone for her betrayal. With this key reversal, the momentum of the engagement shifted; gaps began to open within the Sith battle lines, openings which were exploited by the Republic's starfighters and capital ships.

As Shan used her powers to turn the tide of the engagement, Revan went on to confront Malak atop the highest levels of the station. After striking down two Jedi he had captured, the Dark Lord activated a number of ancient droid-producing machines; sealing the room, he fled further into the factory complex. Eventually working his way through the onslaught of combat droids and deactivating the factory, Revan pressed on, defeating Malak in a lightsaber duel, during which the Dark Lord attempted to siphon off the remaining Force-energy of several Jedi that had been killed when he attacked the Dantooine enclave. Revan, however, was able to use his own power to prevent further instances of this siphoning. After defeating his former apprentice in blade-to-blade combat, he and Shan, along with Onasi and the others, boarded the Ebon Hawk and escaped the station's destruction. With the Star Forge destroyed, the will of the remaining Sith forces in orbit was broken and they were defeated in detail; as a result of this action, the destructive war that had claimed so many lives—on both sides—finally came to an end.

Though the forces under the defeated Malak were routed in the wake of the Star Forge's destruction, the Sith were by no means completely dead; many of the remnants fought amongst themselves for what few scraps of power remained. Also, other empires began to take from the weakened and leaderless Sith, seeing they were too preoccupied with fighting themselves to stand united against real foes. With these events the Sith Empire began to be reconquered by the Republic and anybody else wanting territory. The Sith, helpless to reverse these events began fall into a rapid decline. As well, the Jedi Order was but a shadow of its former self; some estimated that barely a hundred had survived the war and still remained true to the Jedi Code. The war had devastated planets throughout the galaxy, from the farthest reaches of the Outer Rim through to the fringes of the Core Worlds, leaving countless billions dead and many more homeless. These refugees wandered the galaxy, many ending up on Nar Shaddaa, becoming prey for criminals, pirates and slavers; veterans of both sides, deprived of an army or cause to fight with or for, found work as freelance pilots, mercenaries, raiders, or petty thugs.

Not long after the end of the Jedi Civil War, the Galactic Senate elected a new Supreme Chancellor, Tol Cressa, who on a platform of reconstruction and rehabilitation began to issue directives for such works as the Telosian Restoration Project, an effort undertaken by a herd of Ithorians led by the Force Adept Chodo Habat to restore the surface of Telos IV. Over the years that followed the vast Citadel Station, and beneath it the many Restoration Zones necessary for the project, took shape. Under Ithorian care, Telos began to show signs of recovery, however the situation began to change as Czerka Corporation gradually took over the project with an eye toward profit. Eventually, the Republic began to overextend itself with their recovery efforts; the Navy was still woefully understrength, and many strategic yet remote worlds became less and less secure for the simple reason that the men and matériel necessary to guard and protect them did not exist. On worlds like Dantooine, which had weathered the occupation by the Sith badly, and Onderon, which had escaped the wrath of the Sith for reasons unknown, the situation began to deteriorate. Criminal elements like that represented by the Exchange, as well as the Hutts, became more pervasive than ever, and without adequate pan-galactic law enforcement they soon began to build mini-empires of their own; this contributed to a further weakening of the galaxy's infrastructure.

After the war's end, Revan, through the Force, began to recover more and more of his lost memories despite what the Jedi had done to wipe them away. Even as the Republic attempted to stamp out the last vestiges of the Sith Empire, sending a task force to Korriban approximately one year after war's end that found only empty ruins strewn with the remains of dead Sith, the former Dark Lord remembered a threat that he had encountered in the Unknown Regions: The True Sith Empire. Leaving behind his wife, Shan, along with those who had served alongside him at war's end, and all of his possessions, Revan departed known space in order to face this threat in his own way. The exiled Jedi Master Kreia, who had taught Revan for a time when he was still a Padawan, had gone in search of both him and what had driven him to leave the Republic behind and wage a war against it; eventually she too found Malachor V and, corrupted by its dark energies, began to form the Sith Triumvirate.

In the years after the close of the Jedi Civil War, the weakened Order became weaker still due to the actions of hidden fragments of the beaten Sith Empire. Though disorganized and lacking strong leadership, the remnants of Revan's Sith assassins began to prey upon stray Jedi, using their unique power to detect and draw upon the Force within another being. When Kreia fell to the dark side and became Darth Traya, the Lord of Betrayal, she found and revitalized this forgotten Sith cult; along with her apprentices Darth Sion, the "Lord of Pain" and Darth Nihilus, the "Lord of Hunger", she began to undermine the Republic from within, precipitating a number of incidents that would later be known as the First Jedi Purge. Some of her actions were unwittingly abetted by Atris, one of the last surviving members of the Jedi Council; such incidents included the devastation of the Miraluka world Katarr, which resulted when Nihilus used his powers to destroy all life on that world, including the Jedi who had gathered there. Atris' plan to draw out the hidden threat by leaking the time and place of the Jedi gathering had backfired, with the result that many of the most powerful of the surviving Jedi Masters were lost to Nihilus' hunger.

Five years after the end of the war, an exiled former Jedi Knight, cast out of the Order in the wake of her involvement in the Mandalorian Wars, returned to known space. Thrust into the midst of the Sith Triumvirate's actions when they learned of her existence through Atris' leaking of her status onto the HoloNet and other coreward databases, this so-called "Jedi Exile" was forced to contend not only with the legacy of the Mandalorian conflict that she had helped to end, but also the Jedi Civil War that she had chosen not to participate in. Despite the fact that so many people seemed to want to kill her, the Exile and those who followed her proved to be the injunction against failure that the Republic so desperately needed in order to survive. Her actions on Dantooine, Nar Shaddaa, Onderon and Telos served to strengthen the bonds of the Republic, as well as blunting a resurgence of the Sith. Through her the Jedi Order, having been almost made extinct due to the machinations of Darth Traya and the other Sith Lords, was reborn. Eventually, however, she too departed for the Unknown Regions, in pursuit of Revan and the fight he led against the true threat that still lingered in the dark, unexplored regions of the galaxy.

Fought throughout the galaxy on many different fronts that saw pain and death visited upon hundreds of worlds, the Jedi Civil War was, up to that point, the most destructive conflict in the history of the galaxy. The legacy of that conflict would be felt well beyond the Galactic Civil War some four thousand years later, even as many different offshoots and factions of the Sith Order attempted to gain control of the galaxy—or simply to become powerful in their own realm—in their own way. Also, not until the Great Galactic War, around three hundred years later, and the New Sith Wars, some two to three thousand years after the end of the Jedi Civil War, would forces of the dark side again seek galactic conflict on such a scale.

Eventually, through Palpatine, the Sith would indeed succeed in conquering the Republic from within, remaking it into an Empire, ruled by the Sith, and dedicated to propagating the continued existence and dominion of the dark side. Before he defeated the Brotherhood of Darkness, Darth Bane sought out the wisdom of his ancient predecessor, the Sith Lord Darth Revan, and even as late as 137 ABY Darth Krayt would seek the same ancient advice on the dark side of the Force, though from those who flourished before and, in the case of Darth Nihilus, rose to prominence in the aftermath of the Jedi Civil War.

Formed from the survivors of Revan's forces at the end of the Mandalorian Wars, along with their warships, the new Sith Empire that was created grew exponentially. This was due in large part to the discovery and use of the Star Forge, but also through an influx of volunteers from conquered worlds and elsewhere. The core of the new Sith military, made up of those who had given their allegiance to the Jedi who had come to help them against the Mandalorians, rather than those who had stayed behind, included some of the best and brightest of the Republic's war leaders. Generals such as Derred and Mon Halan, and admirals such as Saul Karath, translated Revan's strategic plans for conquest into winning battlefield tactics, using their knowledge of Republic ships and workings to win a string of devastating victories early on.

In the wake of the betrayal and capture of Revan by Malak and the Jedi, the Sith Empire continued to assault the Republic without mercy. Malak preferred to abandon his former Master's overall vision in favor of outright slaughter and the utter destruction of all who would oppose him. At the same time, however, Malak and, at his behest, a large part of the Sith military and a number of their Dark Jedi, became focused upon the capture or assassination of Bastila Shan, whose mastery of battle meditation had thus far proven to be one of the few things that held the advancing might of the Sith in check. Even as the reprogrammed Revan undertook the task the Jedi Council had set for him—that of locating the Star Forge—the hunt continued. Eventually, however, at the Battle of Rakata Prime, the redeemed Revan, fighting alongside his companions and the Republic Navy under Admiral Forn Dodonna, prevailed in a duel with his old apprentice. In the wake of the Star Forge's destruction, Revan's old Sith Empire quickly splintered, with leaders and minions alike hurrying to lay hands upon the few scraps of power that remained. By the time Republic forces arrived on Korriban approximately one year after the war's end, all that remained was howling emptiness and the tattered corpses of dead Sith. By the time of the first Jedi Purge, many scattered remnants, lurking on other worlds, had been reformed by the Sith Triumvirate.

Still reeling from the Great Sith War even forty years after that pan-galactic conflagration that saw the fall and death of so many of their number, the Jedi Order was hesitant to commit to the Mandalorian Wars. Instead, led by Revan, a large number of younger Knights, and even some Masters took it upon themselves to leave the Order behind, joining up with Republic forces battling the Mandalorians on the Outer Rim. Even while this was happening, the Jedi High Council were attempting to determine the nature of the threat that lay behind the Mandalorian invasion, though they did not, in the end, commit the whole Order to the fighting. This hesitancy would come back to haunt them when, three years after the end of that war, Revan and Malak returned to known space at the head of their old fleet, augmented by vast numbers of Star Forge-produced ships, fighters, and war droids.

As the war unfolded, however, Darth Revan's Sith assassins, working from the shadows, kidnapped and either killed Jedi or tortured them until they gave in to the dark side and joined with Revan, and later Malak's, Sith Empire. Jedi were dispatched by the Council in the hope of finding some way to thwart the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Sith, however many did not return, likely hunted down and killed by the assassins Revan had created. In the wake of the Dark Lord's capture, reprogramming and Jedi retraining, the Council sent Revan out to find the Star Forge and, once pinpointed, to lead Republic forces in destroying it. As the war ended the trials of the Jedi were far from over as, by the end of the battle that saw the destruction of the Star Forge, barely a hundred Jedi remained. These numbers would be whittled down even further as the Sith destroyed themselves, as Revan's assassins were still active; later, the disaster that befell the Conclave on Katarr and the continuing purge by the Sith Triumvirate would all but eliminate the Order. However, the return of the Exile would breathe new life into the shattered Order, and those she would train in the ways of the Force would take up the mantle of Jedi.

Like the Jedi Order, the Republic was ill-prepared to face the onslaught of Revan's new Sith Empire. On top of the massive casualties, loss of infrastructure, and crippling blows to its military borne during the Mandalorian Wars, the Republic still had not yet recovered from the Great Sith War waged by Exar Kun and the Krath. Faced with an enemy that had formerly boasted its finest in military technology and leadership, augmented by the hitherto unknown power of the Star Forge, all the Republic could do was fight as best it could though victories were almost nonexistent. Things began to change slightly when Bastila Shan began to use her mastery of battle meditation to aid the Fleet, helping them to hold off the Sith just enough to prevent their total dominance; through her aid, the Republic military was even able to secure a small number of victories.

As the war reached its midpoint, with Revan presumed dead and Malak now focusing on a war of destruction rather than simply a war of conquest, the situation seemed to become more and more dire. Even as the reprogrammed and retrained Revan attempted to reacquire his knowledge of the Star Forge, the Republic was barely holding on; reports of battlefleets lost in far-off engagements peculated in and around the Dantooine Jedi Enclave regularly. After the war's final battle, it seemed that the Republic had weathered its greatest storm, however, all was not as it appeared to be. Despite the well-funded campaign to foster the reclamation and rebuilding of worlds devastated by the Jedi Civil War, five years later the Republic faced imminent collapse not from war, but from the simple inability to support itself. Corporate interests, criminal organizations, secessionist movements and, even, the actions of the hidden remnants of the Sith served to weaken the galactic government from within. However, thanks largely to the return of an exiled Jedi Knight, many of these activities on a number of key worlds were halted, and the Republic once again began to reassert itself as the dominant power in the galaxy.

A highly-gifted and charismatic Jedi Knight, Revan was sometimes considered one of the most powerful Force-users of his day. An enigmatic figure when it suited him to be so, he sought out the teachings of many contemporary Jedi Masters, including Zhar Lestin, Dorak, and the woman who would become known as Kreia. When the Mandalorians began their Neo-Crusade, Revan made it his business to monitor the events unfolding on the edge of the Outer Rim, eventually earning the ire of the Jedi Council for his willingness to investigate on his own. Even before the Mandalorians directly attacked the Republic, he was urging the Jedi to intervene, however it would not be until war was declared that his message gained notoriety. Known as "the Revanchist", he gathered followers to him and set off to war; soon after becoming involved, the tide of the conflict changed, with the Republic beginning to halt the advance of the Mandalorians and, eventually, pushing them back.

By the end of the war that followed, having embraced the dark side in order, as believed by some, to prevent a greater evil from conquering the galaxy, the newly-crowned Dark Lord of the Sith launched upon his campaign of conversion that incorporated his incredible abilities as a tactician and strategist. Aside from engaging in open warfare that, for reasons unknown to everyone else, attempted to preserve both military and civilian infrastructure whenever possible, the Sith Lord engaged in political assassination. His assassins and assassin droids targeted politicians that he saw as destabilizing influences on the Republic, some of the more powerful of which he confronted and killed himself. After the trap which nearly killed him, Revan's memories of being a Sith Lord were scrubbed from his mind as he was being healed at the Dantooine academy; the result of which was a man who believed himself to be a loyal agent of the Republic. Over the course of the next year, however, Revan began to regain fragments of his lost memory and identity, fragments which aided the search for the Star Forge. After a confrontation with his old apprentice, in which he was informed of his true name and nature, Revan nonetheless chose to remain on the path of the light. His part in ending the Jedi Civil War, both in defeating Malak and redeeming the fallen Shan, secured his redemption. When his full memories returned, however, Revan departed known space for reasons that he would not disclose, apparently never to be seen again.

Formerly known as the Jedi Knight Alek, Darth Malak apprenticed himself to his old friend Revan not long before the pair began their campaign to enlist Jedi into fighting the Mandalorians on the Outer Rim. Though a powerful Jedi in his own right, he did not have the same skill in strategy or tactics, as well as the wisdom or charisma of his counterpart. Nonetheless, during the Mandalorian Wars he was as crucial to the success of the Jedi involvement as many others, and when Revan fell to the dark side, he was one of the first to join him on that path, diving headfirst into the teachings of the Sith. By the Jedi Civil War Malak was as ruthless and brutal as his Master, if not more so, and nursed an ambition to eventually supplant his mentor and friend as Dark Lord, an ambition he acted upon even as the Jedi attempted to capture Revan. Malak ordered his ship to fire on the bridge of the flagship, killing everyone there save for Bastila Shan and, barely, Revan.

With the title of Dark Lord of the Sith his at last, Malak continued to prosecute the war his mentor had started, though without the latter's abilities as a commander and war leader. While Revan preferred subtlety, cunning, and the use of appropriate force to win his victories, Malak resorted to simple brute force, a strategic and tactical shift made possible by the increasing productivity of the Star Forge. Even as he spurred his armies on to commit greater atrocities, Malak soon became obsessed with finding and, preferably, capturing Bastila Shan, whose battle meditation had thus far been one of the few bright spots for the Republic during the war. Eventually getting his wish in the end of the battle that saw the death of Saul Karath, his foremost admiral, Malak took the captured Shan to Lehon where, using a combination of torture and seductive teachings, bound her to him as his apprentice. Not long after, however, the redeemed Revan arrived on that world, bringing along with him the Republic fleet. In the massive battle that resulted, Shan was redeemed and Malak, confronted by his former Master, was slain in an epic duel.

A decorated officer of the Republic Fleet prior to the start of the Mandalorian Wars, Admiral Saul Karath was one of the first senior commanders to confront the Mandalorians in open warfare, at the Battle of Serroco that saw the massed Republic fleet overwhelmed and the planet's famed Stereb cities turned into radiation-filled craters. When the Jedi Knights Revan and Malak, along with their followers, joined the war effort, Karath eventually became one of their subordinates. Serving throughout the rest of the war, the admiral lent his considerable talents to battling and eventually defeating the Mandalorians. When his superiors fell to the dark side after the conflict's conclusion at Malachor V, and later when they began to reorganize the Republic forces under their command into their Sith Empire, Karath joined them, eventually becoming the supreme commander of the Sith fleet.

As a final test of his pledge of loyalty to the Sith, Karath was ordered by Malak to take his fleet to Telos IV and demand its surrender and, if he was rebuffed, to destroy the planet utterly. Such was the case and, following his orders, Karath and his fleet bombarded the planet ceaselessly until it had been turned into a scarred and scourged rock coated in an acidic, toxic atmosphere. His worth proven to those with whom he would join, Karath soon became, in the words of his former protégé, "half the reason the Sith have done so well in the war." Some time later, he was tasked by Malak with the destruction of the Outer Rim world of Taris in an unsuccessful bid to prevent the escape of Bastila Shan from the planet. He eventually met his end after capturing the Ebon Hawk, the transport used by Revan and his party while seeking the location of the Star Forge; confronted on the bridge of his flagship by Revan, Shan and Carth Onasi, he revealed the identity of Revan to the latter just before dying.

An apprentice during the outbreak of the Mandalorian Wars, Bastila Shan was still in training at the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine when Revan and Malak went off to war, her skills in battle meditation not having been revealed. As she matured within the Force, she maintained faith in the choice of the Jedi Council to not get involved in the conflict. By the time of the outbreak of the Jedi Civil War, however, she had attained the rank of Knight, becoming more and more skilled with the art of battle meditation. During this time she began to actively participate in the Republic's struggle against their former allies and comrades, using her talents to stave off the Sith just enough to ensure they did not achieve total dominance. As the situation became dire, she was tapped to lead a small Jedi strike team on a mission to infiltrate the flagship of Revan, even as a small force of Republic capital ships drew the Sith into battle. Despite the betrayal of Darth Malak, Shan was able to use the Force to preserve the flicker of life within Revan, taking his comatose form from the heavily-damaged warship and fleeing to Dantooine.

The bond created by this act allowed Shan to perceive the thoughts and feelings of the reprogrammed Revan, thus she was assigned to accompany him during the later quest to track down the Star Forge. She was captured, however, during the otherwise successful attempt by the crew of the Ebon Hawk to escape the Sith Interdictor ship Leviathan, the flagship of Admiral Karath. Seduced to the dark side over a period of one week, she became the apprentice to Darth Malak, who wished to graft her battle meditation to the endless fleets brought forth by the Star Forge. She confronted Revan twice after this, once at the Temple of the Ancients on Lehon itself, and again on the Star Forge; Revan, however, was able to draw upon their Force-bond and the love they held for each other to bring her back to the light. As an act of redemption, Shan focused her battle meditation once again, this time to enable the outnumbered Republic fleet to achieve its objectives—the destruction of the Star Forge. In the aftermath of the war, however, she began to realize that Revan had remembered something from his time as the Dark Lord, the bond between them allowing her to catch glimpses of what he recalled. Shortly before his departure into the Unknown Regions, Shan, concerned that Revan may not return, implored the astromech droid T3-M4 to find someone capable of helping him, which the droid did, in the form of the Jedi Exile.

A native of Telos IV, Carth Onasi was serving in the Republic Navy when the Mandalorian Wars erupted, earning the rank of lieutenant in the wake of the Battle of Serroco. A protégé of Admiral Karath, he fought with distinction during the conflict, earning many decorations throughout the course of the war. One of the few soldiers who remained loyal to the Republic after Malachor V, Onasi was shocked when Karath proposed that he "think about his own survival," though he did not immediately realize that his mentor was trying to recruit him into the Sith. Onasi took this betrayal hard, but what happened during the Battle of Foreost, and particularly the bombing of his homeworld that saw the death of his wife, Morgana and the disappearance of his son, Dustil, inspired a very strong desire for vengeance against Revan's Sith, and Karath in particular, within him.

Stationed aboard the Endar Spire with Shan and, unknown to him, Revan, Onasi, now a commander, eventually ended up on Taris after the warship was destroyed. After escaping that world, he and the rest of those aboard the Ebon Hawk fled to Dantooine, where in time he would be sent along with Revan, Shan, and the others to seek out the location of the Star Forge. Serving as the freighter's pilot, he also participated in the successful escape of the ship and crew from his former mentor's vessel after having gotten the chance to face Karath in battle. Though the revelation that the one with whom he traveled was in fact Revan disturbed him, it nonetheless did not dispel his belief in the mission or of Revan's intentions. It was Shan who sent out the call for Republic reinforcements in the Lehon system to destroy the Star Forge, and it was he who advised Forn Dodonna and Vandar Tokare as to the situation in the unfolding battle. Following the war's conclusion, he was promoted to the rank of admiral and, acting on orders from Revan before the latter's departure from known space, took charge of the Republic's recovery efforts. Five years later, he participated in the Battle of Telos IV, as the commander of the reinforcement fleet dispatched to thwart Darth Nihilus's attack on Citadel Station.

A respected Jedi Master who was seated both on the Dantooine Enclave Council and the Jedi High Council, Vandar Tokare was one of the foremost leaders of the Jedi Order at the time of the Mandalorian Wars. Like the large majority of the rest of the contemporary Masters, he advised caution while appraising the threat that the Mandalorians posed to the Republic. Either unable or unwilling to reveal his and the rest of the Council's fears about the unfolding war or their plans for intervention in the conflict he, like the rest of the Jedi Council, did not support Revan and his followers' desire to enter the war on behalf of the Republic.

During the Jedi Civil War that followed, Tokare oversaw the Jedi Order's attempts to aid the struggling Republic against the Sith under Revan and Malak. Giving his approval to the attempt to capture Revan, he also presided over the Council's decision to use the memories of the comatose Revan against the Sith. Later, when Revan, unaware of who he was, was brought before the Dantooine Council by Bastila Shan, Tokare kept the other Masters present, Dorak, Vrook Lamar, and Zhar Lestin, in check lest they accidentally let slip certain information; at the time Revan was, in fact, the only one present who did not know the true extent of what the Council had done. Tokare concluded for the Council present that Revan was to be retrained as a Jedi, and it was also he who set the crew of the Ebon Hawk out into the galaxy in order to track down the Star Forge. Escaping along with the other Masters the attack launched on Dantooine by Darth Malak, he returned to command the Jedi contingent that participated in the Battle of Rakata Prime. Around five years later, he would perish along with many other Jedi at the Conclave on Katarr, when Darth Nihilus used his power to destroy all life on the planet in order to feed his hunger.

According to Chris Avellone, the retroactively applied name "Jedi Civil War" came from Obsidian Entertainment, and it was approved by LucasArts and Lucasfilm on the first pass, citing that the war was fought primarily between the Republic and a Sith Empire that was, at its core, made up of forces formerly of the Republic. Additionally, it could be seen as another galactic civil war in which Jedi, both light and dark, played vital roles on both sides. According to the reference article The History of the Mandalorians, written by Abel G. Peña and appearing in Star Wars Insider 80, the Jedi Civil War was known to the Mandalorians as the "War of the Star Forge".

Many of the details of the latter part of the Jedi Civil War are determined by player choices within the video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Even though the player can seek out the Star Maps in any order they like, journeying from planet to planet at will, it is assumed for sake of clarity that the party visited Tatooine, Kashyyyk, Manaan, and Korriban, in that order, before journeying to Lehon. While the canon version of the story features a redeemed Revan who becomes the savior of the galaxy, there is also an alternate, dark-side ending in which Revan can choose to reclaim the title of Dark Lord of the Sith after slaying Malak.

Drew Karpyshyn, in his article Heritage of the Sith which appeared in Star Wars Insider 88, stated that "Revan and Malak began a 20-year campaign to end the 'tyranny' of the Jedi Council once and for all." Though Karpyshyn was in fact the lead writer working for BioWare on the story for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, this account does not seem to mesh with the timeline given in the game's sequel, as well as the Knights of the Old Republic series of comic books, published by Dark Horse Comics. Information presented in Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force also suggests that this could either be an error on Karpyshyn's part, or that the Heritage article was written from an IU perspective, taken from the point of view of the Sith themselves.

The 2007 Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force states that 3961 BBY was when Revan became a Sith and the Jedi Civil War was fought. However, the 2012 Star Wars: The Old Republic Encyclopedia states that Revan became a Sith in 3960 BBY and started the Jedi Civil War in 3959 BBY.