Duel near the Kesh Sith Temple

The Sith Empire vessel, the Omen, met its end in a crash on the Wild Space world of Keshtah in 5000 BBY. This occurred following a battle against a Jedi fighter near Phaegon III. A contingent of Tapani Human crew, miners, and soldiers, led by Captain Yaru Korsin, a slave owned by Sith Lord Naga Sadow, were aboard. Accompanying them were 57 Red Sith, a substantial force of Massassi warriors, and a Houk named Gloyd. With the assistance of Adari Vaal, a geologist considered a heretic by the native Keshiri for challenging their creation myths, the newcomers established themselves as the ruling class over the Keshiri inhabiting Keshtah, a southern continent of Kesh. The Sith presented themselves as the Protectors, ancient deities in Keshiri lore believed to have battled the evil Destructors in a "great battle."

Soon after his arrival, Yaru Korsin murdered his estranged half-brother Devore Korsin, disposing of the body by throwing it off a cliff. Seelah Korsin, Devore's widow, eventually learned of her husband's fate from Adari and vowed to avenge him against Yaru, who had become the Grand Lord of the Tribe by 4975 BBY. Seelah later wed her brother-in-law Yaru, solidifying an alliance between the ship's crew and the miners. As Grand Consort, Seelah implemented eugenic policies with the goal of "purifying" the Tribe and creating a superior generation of Human specimens. However, Seelah secretly plotted to overthrow her husband, grooming her eldest son Jariad Korsin to be the instrument of Yaru's demise and his successor as Grand Lord. In 4985 BBY, Seelah orchestrated the purge of the Red Sith, ensuring the Tribe's descendants remained purely Human. The Massassi had succumbed to an unknown disease shortly after landing on Kesh. By 4975 BBY, Gloyd, a close confidant of Yaru, was the only non-Human member of the Tribe. Eventually, Yaru and Seelah had a daughter named Nida Korsin. Seelah, however, despised her younger child, viewing her as merely a "genealogical detail." In a supposed display of Sith trust towards the Keshiri natives, young Nida Korsin was placed in the care of various Keshiri nursemaids and tutors in different villages, preventing her from receiving extensive training in the dark side of the Force. Despite Seelah's schemes, Yaru found a way to circumvent them. With Gloyd's help, the Grand Lord faked the deaths of several loyal subordinates who secretly tutored Korsin at night. During the day, Nida, who became a skilled uvak rider, served as an aerial ambassador to the Keshiri, allowing her to gain their friendship and establish a network of informants. Yaru was secretly preparing Nida to be his successor, right under her mother's nose.

Meanwhile, Adari Vaal came to the realization that the Sith were not the Skyborn they claimed to be. Her resentment towards the Sith was fueled by the loss of her elder son Finn Vaal in a construction accident at the Kesh Sith Temple, the deaths of thousands of Keshiri during a mass Cyanogen silicate poisoning incident, and a new law prohibiting the native Keshiri from owning uvaks, winged reptilian beasts of burden that were considered a status symbol in Keshiri society. She, along with other like-minded Keshiri, including members of the Neshtovar, the former priestly elite of Keshtah, formed an underground resistance movement with the aim of overthrowing and expelling the Sith. Their strategy involved stealing the Tribe's uvaks, giving them an advantage over their Sith adversaries.

In 4975 BBY, Grand Lord Yaru Korsin ordered the construction of new structures on Tahv's Circle Eternal, a large plaza that predated the arrival of the Lost Tribe. These included a new capitol building, intended to be the official residence of the Grand Lord and Grand Consort. This construction project was designed to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Tribe's arrival on Kesh. Unable to repair the Omen and return to the stars, the Tribe planned to relocate from their mountain temple to Tahv, which had become the Sith capital on Kesh. A small group of Sith and Keshiri had already begun finalizing matters on the mountain. The Omen was sealed within an underground chamber for protection from the elements and vandals. Seelah also oversaw the relocation of the Tribe's med center to Tahv.

The Founding celebrations were attended by numerous Keshiri subjects and their Sith overlords. Among those present were Korsin's wife Seelah and his Keshiri friend Adari Vaal, the Daughter of the Skyborn. Unbeknownst to Yaru, both women were plotting his downfall. Seelah enlisted the support of her son Jariad and several pro-Devore supporters among the ship's crew for her planned coup d'état. Their opposition to the Grand Lord stemmed from rumors that he was withholding information about their stranded situation. During the public celebrations, Seelah secretly assured her son Jariad, who had become a High Lord, that vengeance was imminent. Following the Founding Celebrations, High Lord Jariad staged a mock duel with his friends from the Sith Sabers, a ceremonial honor guard specializing in lightsaber displays.

Unbeknownst to onlookers, Seelah and Jariad had orchestrated this staged fight as the initial phase of their plan – a diversion to mislead Grand Lord Korsin. In front of his step-father, Jariad easily defeated his opponents in combat. As part of their scheme, the Sith Sabers deliberately appeared incompetent, allowing Jariad to obtain permission from Yaru to move the Sabers to the Northern Reaches for a training exercise. Grand Lord Korsin granted his stepson permission to relocate the Sith Sabers to the Northern Reaches. Meanwhile, Adari Vaal excused herself from Korsin's company, claiming she had "unfinished business" in town. In reality, she was meeting with other members of the Keshiri resistance, who were preparing to launch their first operation: stealing uvaks from the Tribe.

Later, Yaru, Seelah, and Adari Vaal gathered at the mountain temple. Unbeknownst to Yaru, Jariad and his Sith Sabers were concealed within the temple, ready to execute their assassination attempt. After witnessing the departure of the Sith woman Orlenda with a group of Keshiri servants and their supply cart, Seelah met her husband at the far end of the temple's plaza, positioned between the dwellings and the Omen's shrine. As planned, the Grand Lord arrived with his entourage, consisting of the Houk Gloyd and four bodyguards. After exchanging greetings, Seelah signaled Jariad and his Sabers to begin their attack. Immediately, several Sith Sabers descended onto the plaza from the temple's living quarters, doorways, upper windows, rooftops, and ramparts of the Omen's shrine.

They quickly surrounded Yaru and his entourage, who were outnumbered four to one. In response, Korsin and Gloyd's bodyguards formed a defensive circle facing outward. When Jariad arrived with his lightsaber, Yaru scolded his step-son for abusing his hobby privileges and ordered him and his companions to return to Tahv. Jariad retorted that, unlike his step-sister Nida, he did not need hobbies and that enough time had been wasted. Addressing his father, Jariad announced that it was time for his reckoning and that he was initiating a leadership transition within the Tribe. Korsin pretended not to take his step-son's threat seriously and ordered him to return to Tahv. Gloyd then insulted Jariad, stating that he would not trust him to oversee the uvak stables.

Enraged, Jariad declared that he was the "future" of the Tribe, being the "youngest of those born on high." Believing that his offworld birth gave him a unique right to lead the Tribe, since all Sith after him were "Kesh-born." Korsin angrily told his son that he was not special and that he had seen his like before. Seelah then joined the conversation, confronting Korsin about his role in the death of her first husband Devore. She demanded that Yaru tell her son about how his father had died at his hands. Seelah was joined by several of her loyal retainers, who were armed with weapons. Before Korsin could respond, Jariad signaled his Sabers to close in on his father. He intended for his minions to absorb the initial blows before he moved in for the kill.

Before Jariad's Sabers could attack, the Keshiri stable hands stole the uvaks stationed at the mountain temple. The theft of the uvaks provided a sufficient diversion for Yaru and his entourage to break the encirclement and retreat to more defensible ground. Jariad and his Sabers pursued their quarry through the temple complex. During the ensuing conflict, Korsin and Gloyd were separated. Jariad and his followers dealt with Korsin and his bodyguards, while Seelah and her loyal aides pursued Houk into another section of the complex. However, Gloyd fought back fiercely against his pursuers, even throwing one of her aides through a skylight. The unfortunate individual fell to their death over the surrounding mountainside. Despite their numerical advantage, Jariad's Sith Sabers proved ineffective against Yaru's bodyguards, who fought valiantly and inflicted numerous wounds on their attackers.

The poor combat performance of Jariad's Sabers reflected their lack of formal training. Despite his mother's objections, Jariad had insisted on being their sole mentor but had only begun serious combat training in the past few weeks after Seelah had decided to strike. The theft of the uvaks leveled the playing field between the Sith factions, as neither side had the means to escape. While Jariad had not anticipated this development, Korsin was energized by the uvak disappearance. Jariad's Sabers gradually pushed Korsin and his remaining two Sabers to the reinforced slope beside Omen's temple. Jariad himself engaged in a lightsaber duel against his stepfather, who was standing in the same location where Devore had fallen decades earlier. The younger Korsin furiously slashed his step-father several times, inflicting several wounds on Yaru.

At that moment, Nida Korsin, accompanied by her Skyborn Rangers and several pro-Korsin partisans, arrived at the mountain temple to rescue her father and his entourage. Nida and her Rangers had spent the morning thwarting the Keshiri resistance's plot to steal the Tribe's uvaks from Tahv. While Nida's force was small, they compensated with their fighting prowess. Although the Skyborn Rangers appeared to be merely a group of hobby riders, they were, in reality, an elite group of trained Sith warriors secretly prepared to defend Grand Lord Yaru from any threats to his rule. Nida leapt from her uvak to the ground and impaled one of Jariad's Sabers with her lightsaber. She then killed two more Sabers with her lightsaber and threw a third into the temple wall. Nida's forces were able to seize the cliff side with minimal resistance.

Faced with an unforeseen threat, Jariad retreated from his stepfather and joined his Sabers in their fight. Meanwhile, Gloyd retreated into Seelah's chamber, where he made a final stand by detonating his proton detonator. The resulting explosion killed Gloyd and his pursuers and destroyed the entire room. Seelah survived the explosion, but both her legs below the femur were crushed by falling debris, permanently crippling the former Grand Consort. Back on the mountainside, Nida parried with her step-brother Jariad, inflicting several wounds on him. Yaru Korsin, still alive but grievously wounded, attempted to throw his wounded step-son over the cliff with the Force but failed due to his weakened state. Instead, his daughter Nida threw Jariad off the cliff. Thus, Devore's son met the same fate as his father.

Seelah and Jariad Korsin's attempted coup d'état was one of two threats to Yaru Korsin's reign. The other, the Keshiri uprising, was also defeated by his loyal daughter Nida, and the Keshiri rebels fled into exile, eventually ending up in Alanciar, another continent home to another Keshiri civilization unknown to the Sith. Despite his victory, Yaru Korsin succumbed to his wounds and died shortly after the battle. Before his death, Yaru commended his legacy to Nida, a change ratified by the three surviving High Lords, officially making her the new Grand Lord. In his final hours, he also delivered a testament recorded in a holocron, affirming Nida as his successor and outlining the structure of the Tribe. Yaru also decreed that the spouses and household laborers of future Grand Lords should be executed following the death of the reigning Grand Lord. Additionally, he ordered that his estranged wife Seelah be banished to the mountain temple for the rest of her life. His Testament became the Tribe's guiding document for the next two millennia.

Finally, Yaru bequeathed his daughter another gift: a map of a previously unknown continent far across the sea, discovered through examination of the last visual data taken by the Omen twenty-five years prior. Knowing that the continent was inhabited, Korsin was sworn to keep its existence a secret, only to be revealed when the people truly needed to know. This continent turned out to be Alanciar, home to a highly developed and militarized Keshiri civilization that came to regard Adari Vaal as its founder. In 3000 BBY, the Caretaker Varner Hilts discovered this map and used it to reunite the Tribe, ending the centuries of infighting known as the Time of the Rot.

As punishment for her role in instigating the coup d'état, Seelah Korsin was banished to the mountain temple. Under the orders of the new Grand Lord Nida Korsin, the other Sith were ordered to evacuate the mountain to honor Yaru's passing. As long as Nida lived, no Sith or Keshiri were permitted to visit the mountain. To enforce this, the path leading to the Temple was barricaded with massive boulders. Seelah survived on daily rations of fruits and vegetables transported by uvak in hejarbo-shoot crates. Nida went on to rule as Grand Lord for the next seventy-nine years, a record as of 3000 BBY. While she produced an heir named Donellan, he died before his mother. In response, Nida instituted a meritocratic succession system where future Grand Lords were elected from the Circle of Lords.

The Duel near the Kesh Sith Temple is the central narrative of John Jackson Miller's e-book Lost Tribe of the Sith: Savior, released on October 27, 2010. The events of that skirmish are recounted from the perspectives of Grand Lord Yaru Korsin and his estranged wife, High Lady Seelah Korsin. According to Miller's production notes on his website at Faraway Press, Miller intended to use the animosity between Yaru and Seelah, culminating in this skirmish, to explain the Lost Tribe of Sith's tradition of executing the dead spouse of a deceased Grand Lord, an element that first appeared in the Fate of the Jedi series.