A Sith wayfinder was a type of pyramidal wayfinder created by the Sith to guide the way to Exegol. By the time of the First Order-Resistance War, at least two such artifacts existed. One, belonging to Sith Lord Darth Vader after the Eye of Webbish Bog gifted it to him, was located on Mustafar in the possession of the Alazmec of Winsit and under the protection of the Eye. The other, which belonged to the deposed Galactic Emperor Darth Sidious, was located in the wreckage of the second Death Star on the oceanic moon of Kef Bir in the Endor system.
Sith wayfinders were shaped like Sith holocrons, but were four-sided pyramid rather than three-sided tetrahedral like the holocron and made from Kathol resin as well as Cybotaro waxen glass. The wayfinders were also the technological ancestors of the holocrons. Like other wayfinders and Luke Skywalker's compass, Sith wayfinders acted as hyperspatial lodestones, allowing safe passage through the Unknown Regions to Exegol, the hidden world of the Sith.
The astrogational systems of starships could be adapted to accept the binary signals emitted by the wayfinders and interpret them as hyperspace jump coordinates. Kylo Ren adapted his TIE whisper in this way to locate Exegol, and Rey later did the same to Luke Skywalker's X-wing for the same purpose.
Two wayfinders were created by the ancient Sith, pointing the way to their secret redoubt of Exegol via the Red Honeycomb Zone in the Unknown Regions. Each wayfinder was entrusted to a Sith Lord, a title which, under Darth Bane's Rule of Two, was limited to a Sith Master and a Sith apprentice.
As the last Dark Lords of the Sith, Darth Sidious and Darth Vader were each holders of the Sith wayfinders that revealed the path to Exegol. Vader received his wayfinder from the Eye of Webbish Bog after it tested him. Sidious, who ruled the Galactic Empire as Emperor Palpatine, stored his wayfinder in a secret chamber adjacent to his throne room on the DS-2 Death Star II Mobile Battle Station at the time of the Battle of Endor. Vader's wayfinder was located within Vader's castle on the volcanic world of Mustafar, and he entrusted the Eye with guarding the device. After their deaths and the end of the Galactic Civil War, both wayfinders remained hidden for decades.
The Lords of the Sith of the Imperial Era, Darth Sidious and Darth Vader each possessed a wayfinder that pointed the way to Exegol.
During the rise of the New Republic, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker searched for the Emperor's wayfinder. He chronicled his efforts to find it in the Sacred Jedi texts, while tracking down fleeting rumors of Exegol during his explorations of the galaxy. The Jedi texts contained pages of information about wayfinders, particularly in the red-covered Rammahgon, which had been annotated by Skywalker. Troves of Sith artifacts and Jedi artifacts were hoarded by the Emperor and stored in his various vaults across the galaxy. Skywalker did not want these artifacts to fall into the possession of treasure hunters, and was especially fearful someone would acquire a Sith wayfinder before he could find it. Skywalker never finished his quest, despite the aid of Landonis Balthazar Calrissian, which ultimately ended on the desert planet Pasaana.
During the war between the First Order and the Resistance, Vader's wayfinder was found by his grandson, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, in the ruins of his castle. Before his death, Vader had entrusted his wayfinder to the Eye of Webbish Bog. In accordance with Vader's wishes, the guardian was to surrender the artifact to whomever defeated its protectors. It therefore deemed Ren worthy of claiming his inheritance after killing a group of Sith cultists. Attaching the device to his TIE/wi modified interceptor, the master of the Knights of Ren charted a safe course through the chaotic space of the Unknown Regions, discovering Exegol at the end of his journey.
The Sith wayfinders were sought by Rey, the granddaughter of Darth Sidious, and Kylo Ren, the grandson of Darth Vader.
The Jedi apprentice Rey learned about the Sith wayfinders while studying the Jedi texts with the help of the historian Captain Beaumont Kin. Knowing that Ren used one of the wayfinders to locate Exegol, Rey sought to acquire the one that belonged to the Emperor. She therefore embarked on a journey to finish what Skywalker began, traveling to Pasaana, which, in turn, ultimately led her to the Death Star ruins on the oceanic moon of Kef Bir. She found the Emperor's wayfinder while exploring the wreckage, only to lose it to Ren. The dark warrior noted that only two Sith wayfinders existed, with one belonging to him as Vader's grandson, while the other, which he had also taken, was Rey's inheritance as the Emperor's granddaughter.
Ren crushed the wayfinder in his grasp to prevent Rey from confronting her grandfather and destroying the Sith without him, destroying it and sending Rey into a rage, which resulted in a final lightsaber duel between the two halves of the Force dyad. Despite Ren's efforts to prevent Rey from finding Exegol without him, the scavenger was still able to accomplish her goal by utilizing the last remaining Sith wayfinder, which she acquired after taking possession of Ren's personal starfighter. With it, she was able to lead the Resistance fleet to Exegol where they fought against the reborn Emperor's Sith fleet.
The wayfinders appeared in the 2019 saga film Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker. Several versions of the prop were used during production, including variants containing liquid to create the strange effect within the wayfinder.
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