A pair of crossguard lightsabers were wielded long ago by Darth Atrius during an era when the Sith were numerous and mighty. Following the Battle of Yavin, the smuggler known as Sana Starros located the lightsabers and she then sold one to a Hradreek crime lord on Hradreek, and the other to the forces of the Galactic Empire. Both were subsequently obliterated by Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in the year 0 ABY amidst the Galactic Civil War.
Thousands of years prior to the Battle of Yavin, back in the era when the Sith order flourished with power and numbers, the Sith Lord Darth Atrius forged two crossguard lightsabers. Atrius employed these lightsabers to defeat numerous adversaries and secure many victories. As time went on, Atrius's intense anger seeped into the lightsabers, causing anyone who held them to succumb to a violent rage. With Atrius's demise, the lightsabers vanished.
A brief period after the Battle of Yavin, the Galactic Empire engaged Sana Starros, a smuggler, to find the lightsabers. She located and recovered the lightsabers; however, a crime boss on Hradreek had also hired her for the same purpose. Attempting to deceive both parties, she provided one lightsaber to each, hoping they wouldn't notice the missing second weapon. Initially, she gave one to the Empire, who were fooled by her deception. Subsequently, she gave the second lightsaber to the crime lord, but he discovered her deceit.
The crime boss activated the blade and started questioning the smuggler about the location of the other lightsaber, he fell into a frenzy and killed all of his men. Simultaneously, an Imperial officer presented the lightsaber to Darth Vader, who intended to give the lightsabers to his Master, Darth Sidious. Upon learning about the missing lightsaber, Vader choked the officer and went to retrieve the other one. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker, a rebel pilot, entered the room where the crime boss had slaughtered his crew and discovered the lightsaber on the floor, he used the weapon to slaughter a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers who discovered him with the corpses.
After using it, Luke was horrified on the amount of rage he showed and deactivated the lightsaber. In order to avoid further Imperial forces, Skywalker stole a nearby podracer and threatened a podracer with it. Although Luke crashed it shortly after evading the Empire, Skywalker decided that the lightsaber was too dangerous to be kept in one piece, and used his lightsaber to destroy Atrius' blade. Meanwhile, Vader encountered a group of thugs whom Starros had hired to deter the Imperials, he used the weapon in conjunction with his own lightsaber to eliminate all of the thugs. He then tracked Starros to a warehouse where she had set an ambush for him, Starros detonated the roof of the warehouse, crushing Vader and allowing her to escape. When Vader escaped the rubble he observed Skywalker leaving. Deciding the saber was too unpredictable Vader crushed the weapon.