Darth Ruin

Phanius, a Force-sensitive male Umbaran, was a Master within the peacekeeping Jedi Order around the beginning of the Draggulch Period, an era that started around 2000 BBY during the time of the Old Republic. Up until this point, Phanius had cultivated a controversial reputation during his career as a Jedi. While he was highly esteemed for his intellect and captivating personality, the Jedi Master unsettled many of his colleagues—even facing condemnation from the Jedi Council—by displaying solipsistic tendencies; the Umbaran had started to view his own mind, and thus himself, as the only true reality. Upon realizing that the Order would not accept his views, Phanius chose to abandon the Jedi way, driven to discover alternative teachings that would enable him to fully embrace his individualistic ideology. Having given up his position among the Jedi, he was formally recognized as one of "The Lost"—Jedi Masters who voluntarily left the Order due to disagreements in ideology.

During his search for knowledge, Phanius eventually acquired a holocron—a crystalline device for storing data—from a Jedi temple. This particular device contained teachings from the millennia-old Sith Order, a cult that followed the ways of the dark side of the Force. By this time, Phanius himself had fallen to the corrupting influence of the dark side, though his former Jedi allies were completely unaware of his transformation. Armed with his newfound knowledge of the dark side, the former Jedi Master set out to recruit more followers to the ways of the Sith, promising revenge against the Jedi Order for rejecting his beliefs.

Seeking to revive the Sith Order, Phanius sought out various Sith clans that had survived throughout the galaxy, disproving the widespread belief that the dark side cult had been eradicated for centuries prior to this time. Operating without the Jedi Order's knowledge, he successfully infiltrated and united these clans, laying the foundation for what would eventually become a new empire of the Sith. In the process, Phanius abandoned his former identity—determined to dismantle his mental barriers in pursuit of egocentric self-interest—and declared himself a Dark Lord of the Sith under the new name of Darth Ruin. With his new title, the Dark Lord persuaded fifty more Jedi to abandon the Order and support his cause, resulting in the Fourth Great Schism.

The culmination of Darth Ruin's schemes led to the rise of the New Sith, a resurgent Sith faction that engaged the Jedi Order and the Republic in a galactic conflict known as the New Sith Wars. During his reign over the Sith, Darth Ruin enlisted a squire named Eradicus. The Dark Lord held his disciples in contempt, viewing them as insignificant in the context of his individualistic obsession. This attitude led Ruin to sacrifice many of his Sith followers seemingly without reason, provoking their anger and eventually driving them to plot against him. Despite the murderous intentions of his disgruntled subordinates, Lord Ruin never considered the possibility that they would cause his downfall. This unwavering confidence led to a premature end to the reign of the new Dark Lord, resulting in his assassination.

The actions of Darth Ruin, who was now deceased, ushered in a new era of expansion and reclamation for the Sith. Even after his death, the New Sith Wars continued for a thousand years. During this period, numerous Dark Lords rose to power, leading destructive campaigns against the Jedi and the Republic, pushing the latter to the edge of collapse. Among these prominent figures was Darth Rivan, a Sith Lord who once possessed a scripture containing a passage in the Sith language—called the "creed of ruin"—that echoed Ruin's solipsistic philosophy. Despite a series of significant victories achieved by Ruin's successors, the treachery that originally led to his death continued to plague the Sith ranks, with many subsequent Dark Lords meeting the same fate.

At some point during the Republic Dark Age that began in 1100 BBY, the Sith ultimately turned against each other in a bloody period of civil war, fracturing the empire that Ruin had established. The remaining Sith were later reorganized into the Brotherhood of Darkness, only to meet their final demise at the conclusion of the New Sith Wars in 1000 BBY. A sole survivor of the Brotherhood—Darth Bane—went on to create a new Sith doctrine to avoid the pitfalls that destroyed Ruin and his successors, which Bane discussed in a historical compilation called the Book of Sith. The Jedi Order expressed a bleak view of Ruin's legacy in a guidebook titled The Jedi Path, stating that his revival of the Sith nearly resulted in the end of galactic civilization.

In 40 ABY, an encyclopedic compendium about the Force—compiled by Jedi historian Tionne Solusar—briefly examined details regarding Ruin's previous life as a Jedi Master, as well as his reasons for leaving the Order and establishing the New Sith.

Master Phanius, a pale blue-skinned member of the Umbaran species, was among the most charismatic and talented Jedi of his time. However, the Jedi Master sparked controversy with his intellectual pursuits, particularly his growing interest in the philosophy of solipsism. Phanius, an ambitious and abstract thinker, believed that his own perceptions superseded everything else, meaning that—from his perspective—he was essentially the only thing that truly existed. This self-centered mindset led Phanius to resent the Jedi Order for not accepting his vision; he came to see the Jedi teachings as an obstacle that would prevent the Umbaran from fully realizing that he was, in fact, "everything". Determined to eliminate these restrictions, Phanius fell to the dark side and pursued the alternative path of the Sith, taking on the identity of Darth Ruin as a Dark Lord. Throughout his campaign to revive the Sith, Ruin became increasingly consumed by his individualistic obsession, developing a complete sense of detachment from his Sith disciples. Many of Ruin's followers fell victim to his merciless impulses, making him a widely despised leader and, ultimately, a target for assassination. Nevertheless, the Dark Lord maintained an unwavering confidence in his monomaniacal pursuit, leaving him completely oblivious to the treachery that would lead to his death.

Darth Ruin was first mentioned as an unnamed Jedi Knight-turned-Sith in the novelization of The Phantom Menace, written by Terry Brooks and published in 1999. The book states that Ruin founded the Sith "almost two thousand years ago," which contradicts the Tales of the Jedi comics. In 2000, this discrepancy was explained in The Essential Chronology, which established the still-unidentified Ruin as the creator of a subsequent faction—the New Sith. The character was officially named Darth Ruin by author Abel G. Peña in Vader: The Ultimate Guide, a limited edition magazine released in 2005. Peña chose the name Ruin—derived from the Latin word "ruīna", meaning "fall"—as a fitting representation of the character's fall to the dark side, as well as the destructive chaos that followed his death. Several other Darth titles were considered, including Reaper, Fatalis, Necro, Mortalis, Eradicus, Execute, and Solopsis. While developing Ruin's backstory, Peña imagined him as an intelligent, wise, and evil individual, similar to Dooku from the Star Wars prequel films, and Darth Traya from the video game Knights of the Old Republic II. In 2006, Peña further expanded Ruin's history in an article titled Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties, confirming that he was an Umbaran and had previously been a Jedi Master named Phanius.