When the Sith ship Omen crash-landed on Kesh two thousand years ago, the crew encountered native barbarism and superstition. Now a violent millennium has reduced the Lost Tribe of the Sith to a similar state. While Sith teachings are remembered, honored, and violently practiced, knowledge of the Lost Tribe's true origins has all but vanished.
With a dark age imperiling the Sith, the future rests in the hands of the unlikeliest of people: Caretaker Hilts, the official keeper of lore. Mild-mannered by Sith standards, the aged Hilts hopes to use the wisdom of the ancients to reunite his people. But the truth he uncovers becomes anything but the Tribe's salvation. Rather, he may have set loose forces leading to its destruction -- and his own.
Pantheon is set in 3000 BBY, over two thousand years after the ancestors of the Lost Tribe of Sith landed on Kesh. This novella is told from the point-of-view of Varner Hilts, an elderly Sith who is the caretaker of the Tribe's historical records and lore. His assistant and close friend was Jaye Vuhld, a talented Keshiri mathematician. Together, they ran the Tribe's archives at the Kesh capitol building in the capital city of Tahv. Since the death of Grand Lord Lillia Venn during the "Night of the Upside-Down Meteor," the Lost Tribe had been bereft of any cohesive leadership. The Tribe had been locked into a vicious civil war which had lasted over nine-hundred years and devastated much of the continent of Keshtah Minor.
During the story, Iliana Merko, the leader of a breakaway faction known as Sisters of Seelah, visited Hilts and attempted to coerce him into giving her faction a favorable report during the upcoming Testament Day. The Sisters of Seelah revered Seelah Korsin, the estranged wife of the Tribe's founder Yaru Korsin, as the "true" founder of the Tribe. Hilts succeeded in buying time by claiming that the holocron containing Yaru Korsin's Testament would only activate on Testament Day. The Sisters' presence attracted the attention of several rival Sith factions including the Golden Destiny, Force 57, and the Korsinite League. Hilts and Jaye narrowly managed to avert violence by claiming that Testament Day was on that very day; pointing out that Kesh's calendar was eight days behind the Galactic Standard Calendar.
While this ploy worked, Iliana and the Sisters of Seelah did not gain any advantages from Yaru Korsin's Testament which sanctioned the banishing of Seelah and designated their daughter Nida Korsin as the new "Grand Lord." However, Hilts mistakenly discovered that Korsin's Testament was recorded over an older recording which revealed the Tribe's "true history." Instead of being "great conquerors," the assembled Sith learned that their ancestors were merely lowly slaves and miners of the ancient Sith Lord Naga Sadow. The Tribe did not come willingly to Kesh but had instead become stranded during a mission to deliver Lignan crystals to Sadow's forces during the Great Hyperspace War. This revelation horrified the various Sith attendees. In an attempt to hide their "inglorious past", Iliana destroys the holocron with her lightsaber.
Despite efforts by the Sith to hide their true origins, word of the recent Pantheon reaches the masses. This sparks a series of violent riots and mass killings known as the "Great Crisis" which results in the razing of several cities across Keshtah Minor. In the midst of this great crisis which threatens the existence of the Lost Tribe, Hilts and Jaye resolve among themselves to find the "true power" behind Yaru Korsin's throne which is located in the Omen, the ancient Sith starship which brought the ancestors of the Lost Tribe to Kesh. The Omen is buried beneath a mountainside Sith temple