Darth Nul, originally known as Raniah, was a female Sith Lord belonging to the reconstituted Sith Empire. By the time the third Galactic War occurred, all records of her existence had been wiped from history. She collaborated with the Sith Emperor to create the Children of the Emperor.
Centuries before the [Great Galactic War](/article/great_galactic_war], the one who would become Nul was born with the name "Raniah", and she rose to the rank of Jedi Master. Despite holding such a high position, her convictions, particularly her belief that anyone capable of sensing the Force should be trained in its use, caused unease among her fellow Jedi.
Raniah possessed the capability to locate other Force-sensitives through a mysterious method involving mental connections. While this earned her praise from various Jedi Knights, Padawans, and even a member of the Jedi Council, it also aroused suspicion among other Jedi. Ultimately, the Jedi Council decided to expel Raniah and her followers to prevent her potentially dangerous ideas from spreading.
After being exiled, Raniah and her followers sought refuge on an uninhabited planet located in Wild Space. In this sanctuary, the former Jedi Master and her disciples were free to explore their own Force philosophy. Raniah instructed her followers in the art of creating Force bonds. By establishing mental links with other Force-sensitives throughout the galaxy, they recruited new followers and invited them to their Wild Space haven. However, Raniah made the unfortunate mistake of contacting the Sith Emperor Vitiate through the Force. Finding herself unable to resist the Emperor's immense mental dominance, she and her followers were hunted down, captured, and enslaved.
Now under the Emperor's control, Raniah was transformed into the Sith Lord Darth Nul. She became responsible for devising terrible mind-control methods used to subdue and punish those who opposed the Sith.
Darth Nul played a crucial role in assisting the Emperor in the creation of the first Children of the Emperor. Her duties included finding suitable subjects and indoctrinating them into absolute servitude to the Emperor. Nul's innovations and designs were essential to the process of creating a Child, and her success in this endeavor, combined with the Emperor's power, led to her being called "the Mother" of the Children.
Darth Nul maintained a temple on the isolated planet of Elom, situated in the Outer Rim. At some point, the Jedi Order recovered a relic crafted by Darth Nul and secured it within a vault inside the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine. Darth Malgus speculated that Darth Nul, being as cunning as she was, likely had multiple locations besides the Temple on Elom where she kept her inventions.
Eventually, Darth Nul's usefulness to the Emperor reached its end, and he erased her existence from the records of the Sith Empire.
The Sith Lord Lana Beniko suggested that the erasure of Nul from history was a deliberate act, carried out either by the Dark Council or by the Emperor himself, with the latter being the confirmed truth.
The Emperor was able to create more Children, and he used them to infiltrate both the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order. These Children served as his eyes and ears within the enemy ranks for many years, with some even achieving prominent positions within the Republic Military and the Jedi Council. During the Galactic War, the Children were exposed to the galaxy after the defeat of the First Son. They were then left to fend for themselves, with some choosing to sever their ties to both the Emperor and the Sith.
In 3626 BBY, during the third Galactic War, the renegade Sith Lord Darth Malgus somehow learned about Darth Nul, her role as "the Mother" of the Children, and her unique inventions, which he desired for his own purposes. Malgus initiated his plan by looting Nul's relic from the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine. He then traveled to Nul's Temple on Elom in an attempt to find a holocron that could be used to identify "unworthy" Force-sensitive children. Although Malgus was ultimately defeated by members of the Eternal Alliance and the Jedi Order, he secretly left the holocron for the Jedi Padawan Sa'har Kateen to find. Kateen later gave the holocron to Heta Kol, the leader of the Hidden Chain, a splinter group of Mandalorians. Kol quickly understood that she could use the holocron to build an army of Force-sensitive soldiers.
After Malgus was captured, the Jedi Gnost-Dural, Tau Idair, and Arn Peralun began exploring the galaxy to uncover the identity of Darth Nul. Meanwhile, the archaeologist Talos Drellik was enlisted to study Nul's temples and designs due to his vast knowledge of Sith lore. Talos's extensive research revealed that Nul's devices, including the "Regnant" device and the various traps encountered by the strike team, bore striking and intriguing similarities to the Phobis devices used to create the Dread Masters, as well as the Ravager, a device employed by the Sith Emperor to extract secrets from his victims' minds through torture.
Around 3624 BBY, Jedi Knight Tau Idair finally discovered Darth Nul's lightsaber within Nul's secret archive. The weapon revealed to the Jedi and the Eternal Alliance that Darth Nul had once been a Jedi before her transformation into a Sith. Shortly after, Sana-Rae and Arcann of the Eternal Alliance located the ruins of Raniah's camp in Wild Space. There, they found a holorecord documenting the capture of Raniah and her followers by the Sith, which revealed the fate of Master Raniah and her transformation into Darth Nul. Around 3623 BBY, the Eternal Alliance eventually recovered Darth Nul's holocron from the Hidden Chain, destroying the machine created by the Mandalorians to harness the holocron's power in the process.
Darth Nul had a profound connection to the Force. As a Jedi, she cultivated her natural talent for Force empathy to an unprecedented degree within the Jedi Order. Through her mastery of this skill, she gained the ability to create Force bonds with any Force-sensitive individual, even across vast distances. This allowed her to actively read a person's deepest thoughts and feel their emotions. Furthermore, she could awaken Force sensitivity in individuals who were unaware of their connection to the Force. Later, as a Sith, she deepened her exploration of the Force and directed her skills toward darker purposes. She became a master of mind manipulation and developed some of the most insidious mind-control techniques known.