By 3000 BBY, Iliana Merko had become the leader of the Sisters of Seelah. She attempted to coerce the Caretaker Varner Hilts into manipulating the Testament of Yaru Korsin to give a sympathetic view of Seelah Korsin. However, their attempt to manipulate history failed when Hilts revealed that the actual reading of the Talisman was carried out by a holocron recording of Korsin himself. The presence of the Sisters of Seelah at the Circle Eternal in Tahv attracted the attention of several rival Sith factions including Force 57 and the Korsinite League. After Hilts' Keshiri assistant Jaye Vuhld estimated that the Keshiri calendar was eight days behind the Galactic Standard Calendar, Hilts convened the reading of Yaru Korsin's Testament eight days prior to the official date.
While the Sisters gained no benefits from the Testament, Hilts discovered a secret recording beneath Korsin's holocron. This recording turned out to be instructions from the ancient Sith Lord Naga Sadow to his subordinate Yaru Korsin. It eventually transpired that the Tribe's ancestors were not "great conquerors" but were rather slaves of Naga Sadow who had become stranded on Kesh during the Great Hyperspace War. All the Sith factions including the Sisters of Seelah were upset to learn about their Tribe's "inglorious history." Iliana attempted to justify her ancestor's actions by claiming she wanted to purify the Tribe from the Red Sith. She also destroyed the holocron in a desperate attempt to hide the Tribe's true history. This revelation about the Tribe's history sparked a series of violent riots and killings known as the Great Crisis which led to the razing of several cities across Keshtah Minor, the continent that was the Tribe's domain.
The Sisters of Seelah took part in the fighting but eventually fell apart due to internal infighting. Iliana survived the fighting and fled to the Kesh Sith Temple in an attempt to escape the other Sith factions. There, she managed to find statues of Seelah Korsin and the skeletal remains of Seelah herself. Unable to comprehend the "inglorious history" of the Tribe and the fact that her role model had died alone, she destroyed Seelah's skull. Later, she encountered Varner Hilts and Jaye Vuhld, who convinced her to join their quest to find Korsin's "secrets" that could save the Lost Tribe. They discovered that Korsin was aware of the existence of a second continent known as Alanciar, or Keshtah Major. Using this new information, Hilts was able to unite the various Sith factions who then elected him as their new Grand Lord. Iliana subsequently became his wife and Grand Consort.