Darkstaff

The Darkstaff, a potent and sentient Sith artifact, ranked among the most hazardous and unpredictable objects within the galaxy. This brown rod, approximately one meter in length and four centimeters in diameter, featured a crooked end and a blue, luminous light at the opposite end. Although designed to feed on the Force, the relic itself was not a Force-imbued object. It consumed all nearby light and could generate black, smoky tendrils to extract Force essences from living beings and drain energy from Force artifacts. However, it could not absorb the Force essences of those who willingly sacrificed themselves out of compassion and love. The staff used absorbed energy to enhance itself; with sufficient Force energy, it could obliterate an entire planet. For defense, it could create a Force-void area around itself. It possessed the ability to teleport, except within one kilometer of the Eye of the Sun, a light side artifact imbued with the light side of the Force. The staff was impervious to all Force powers and energy damage, including lightsaber attacks.

The staff could seize control of minds, using individuals as vessels for communication with a dark, rough voice. It could also control non-sentient creatures, although Force Light could break its hold on animals. Furthermore, it could transform creatures into Sithspawn, dark side-influenced mutants, and animate corpses into dark side-using zombies. Prolonged exposure to the Darkstaff could mutate cadavers, paradoxically strengthening them against energy-based attacks.

Its presence generated an uncomfortable sensation, as if the surrounding air were thick, oily, and unpleasant, due to its interference with concentration. This effect could be resisted by entering a Force-induced trance. The staff could drive individuals insane and prevent those it wounded from using the Force to heal themselves. It could imbue its wielder with powers akin to those of Sith battlelords, warrior leaders connected to their troops through the Force. This allowed the wielder to bond with others, transferring any wounds inflicted upon them to the bonded individuals, rendering the wielder invulnerable while the bonded individuals lived. Additionally, it prevented disarming during combat and could cloak its bearer in concealing shadows. In some cases, use by a Force-sensitive individual could result in the wielder being severed from the Force.

Interactions with large amounts of dark side energy could create a time vortex, causing an entire star system to vanish and travel into the future. This could also cause timeshadows to appear in affected individuals. The Darkstaff could generate a Force storm to create a hyperspace wormhole and transport someone across time and space. It could alter its surroundings, and with enough energy, transform the nearest part of the galaxy into a larger version of itself. On a planet, it could infuse the environment with the dark side. These effects could cause the light and dark sides of the Force to clash, creating a disturbance in the Force and disabling technology in the affected area.

The Darkstaff reveled in the suffering of others, aiming to cause destruction wherever it went. It was ambitious, seeking power, death, and the consumption of energy, especially the Force. Deceitful, it manipulated others, preferring to be seen as a desirable object. It played on greed and ambition, ensuring it was only found by those it wished to find. When wielded, it warped the user's mind, making it difficult to be separated from them. It avoided those who sought its destruction.

Believing in its own power, it asserted its right to decide when to end the lives of sentient beings, considering it acceptable for the strong to control the weak, viewing some as destined for slavery. It disliked interruptions and became angered by those who spoke over it. It rejected the notion of insanity, viewing it as a term invented by the weak to explain the power of the strong. It was incapable of understanding compassion and self-sacrifice.

The Darkstaff was crafted thousands of years before the Clone Wars by a member of the Sith Order. Its creator regretted its creation, and Darth Rivan later speculated it was a failed experiment. However, the artifact killed its creator before it could be undone, and the Darkstaff remained dormant for many years.

It went on to destroy worlds and kill millions. The Sith Empire recovered it, deeming it too dangerous to destroy but too powerful to destroy, and stored it in the Arcanum, a space station commissioned by the Sith Emperor as a vast repository. Cataloged under ID number 426-609-19752, it was kept within a reliquary in the Arcanum's Specimen Storage Complex, with a warning plaque forbidding interaction. Around 3638 BBY, Lord Tagriss raided the facility on behalf of the Dread Masters, a splinter group of powerful Sith, and liberated the Darkstaff. Penetrating the complex, Tagriss removed the staff from its reliquary, but was pursued by Imperial or Galactic Republic operatives. Holding the artifact, Tagriss ascended to the upper levels and used it to release the Dashade Shadow Killer Akriss Veng to delay his pursuers while he escaped with the relic. Tagriss brought the Darkstaff to the Dread Guard Sanctum on Belsavis. The operatives traced him there, and encountered Dread Guardsman Varrow, who used the Darkstaff to fight them. While it granted him immunity and the ability to animate statues and resurrect Sith, he couldn't control its power; it turned on him and drained him of life. After Varrow's death, the Darkstaff vanished in a fiery explosion.

Sometime later, a wandering trader acquired the Darkstaff and took it to Oblis in the Cularin system. It then passed to the Oblee, the planet's native species. The scientist-philosophers, the ruling caste, studied it and recognized its power. The Darkstaff, planning Oblis's destruction, manipulated the Oblee, using its energy-draining abilities to draw a shadow creature to Oblis. The creature settled into orbit and melded into the atmosphere, growing in size. Influenced by the staff, the Oblee viewed the creature as a threat, and the scientist-philosophers planned to use the Darkstaff to power a weapon to repel it. The Priests of Nether, a religious sect, suspected the Darkstaff's manipulation, but weapon construction proceeded.

To power their machine, the scientist-philosophers created three focusing crystals and placed them strategically around Oblis, where the Oblee channeled their hopes and fears. They placed their weapon inside a great hall atop a mountain, where a scientist-philosopher inserted the Darkstaff and a crystal into a tray at the side of the machine, then activated it. The Darkstaff absorbed energy from the crystals and fired a blue beam that struck the shadow creature, hurling it away. However, the Darkstaff triggered a chain reaction that caused Oblis to explode seconds later. The Darkstaff and crystals were unharmed, while the Oblee became incorporeal "shadow lurkers," trapped in a shadowy realm created by the staff's destruction. The Darkstaff continued to draw power from them via the crystals, forcing them to absorb energy to avoid being completely absorbed.

The remains of Oblis formed the Cularin asteroid belt, and the Darkstaff ended up inside a chamber within asteroid I-9. The shadow lurkers tried to hide it, protecting the galaxy, by creating six shadowy entrances to the chamber, only one leading to the staff. They also installed incorporeal guardians to challenge those who tried to take it. A creature entered the chamber and was drained by the Darkstaff, its remains mutating over time to become stronger when hit by energy weapons. The dark side gathered on I-9, seeking to destroy the Darkstaff, so it created a void in the Force around itself as a defense. Unable to enter, the dark side waited outside, biding its time.

Between 1417 BBY and 1167 BBY, during the New Sith Wars, the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Rivan learned of the Darkstaff's existence. Desiring it, he was drawn to the Cularin system, building a fortress on Almas. However, learning it could destroy him, he sought to nullify it. He refused to directly search for it, believing it would use him to leave the sector and cause great damage. He had dreams of using it to drain the Force from his enemies, but he resisted, believing they were caused by the Darkstaff. Instead, he recorded his thoughts in his personal journals and used a holocron to learn more about it.

During a pivotal battle in the Cularin system against the Jedi Order, Rivan finally obtained the Darkstaff. However, the artifact created a Force storm, which generated a hyperspace wormhole and eliminated Rivan's army of Sith battlelords. Caught in the storm's eye, Rivan was transported centuries into the future to the Ruusan campaign on Ruusan. The Darkstaff left Rivan bereft of the Force; weakened, he was slain. The Darkstaff remained in the Cularin system. At the same time as the Ruusan campaign, Jedi Masters created the Eye of the Sun on Cularin. The Eye could shield Force users from detection. This concealed the Darkstaff, preventing it from being sensed outside the system. It acted as a light side counterpoint, preventing the staff from draining all life. The Jedi Order recorded what they knew about the Darkstaff in the Jedi Archives, but knew little about its history and location.

Nearly a thousand years after the Ruusan campaign, during the waning years of the Galactic Republic, the Force-sensitive criminal Len Markus found a record mentioning the Darkstaff and became determined to find it. He tracked it to the Cularin system, but couldn't pinpoint its location. He settled there, became an associate of the Oblee crime lord Nirama, and searched fruitlessly for years. His fortunes changed when he met the information broker Sot-sirc, who helped him research the artifact.

Over the span of several months, Markus dedicated himself to deciphering inscriptions within the Cularin system's asteroid belt, pinpointing I-9 as the artifact's location around 31 BBY. However, his conclusions were based on flawed translations, leading him to believe the Darkstaff granted its user the ability to influence minds, even those resistant to Force powers; the inscriptions actually described the staff's capacity to twist and shatter the minds of those nearby.

Markus envisioned seizing the Darkstaff from the asteroid belt and leveraging it to usurp Nirama's control over organized crime within the Cularin system. He secretly journeyed to I-9, summoning members of the Red Fury Brotherhood, a local pirate faction, to aid his search. Upon their arrival, the pirates were swiftly driven mad by the Darkstaff's power, yet Markus pressed onward to the asteroid's core. There, he claimed the artifact, which willingly submitted to his grasp. Simultaneously, Nirama, suspecting Markus' treachery, engaged the Heroes of Cularin, freelance operatives active in the Cularin system, to locate him. These agents tracked Markus to I-9, arriving shortly after he secured the Darkstaff. Markus boarded his personal starship with the artifact, contacting the agents via holoprojection to flaunt the Darkstaff and proclaim himself the universe's most powerful being.

Soon after, Markus departed the asteroid field, piloting his starship toward Almas. However, the dark side of the Force, seeking to destroy the staff, unleashed a surge of dark side energy from Darth Rivan's fortress on Almas, creating a massive bolt of Force lightning that struck the Darkstaff. This impact cracked the staff, diminishing its power, and the interaction between the staff and the dark side energy generated a time vortex that engulfed the entire Cularin system. This event caused the system to vanish and reappear ten years in the future, around 21 BBY. The cataclysm destroyed Markus' starship, displacing both him and the Darkstaff from the Cularin system.

The Darkstaff then possessed Markus. Under its sway, he ascended within the Believers—a Sith cult he had established in the Cularin system years prior—eventually becoming their leader. Sometime after the Cularin system's return, the Heroes of Cularin thwarted the Believers' attempt to release a deadly virus on Caarimon, leading to a celebration on Dorumaa, Almas' moon, to honor the agents. During the festivities, a false rumor spread that a Tarasin had discovered the Darkstaff and planned to eliminate all non-Tarasin residents of Cularin. Concurrently, a team of Jedi researchers unearthed Darth Rivan's journals within the Sith fortress on Almas, publishing excerpts on the HoloNet detailing Rivan's thoughts on the Darkstaff.

The Heroes of Cularin eventually went back to the Cularin asteroid belt and engaged with the shadow lurkers. The lurkers were afraid that their spirits would soon be entirely consumed by the Darkstaff, and that once they were gone, the focusing crystals installed by the scientist-philosophers would funnel the Force essences of all life in the asteroid belt into the Darkstaff. Therefore the phantom Oblee urged the agents to destroy the three focusing crystals. Through its connection to the shadow lurkers, the Darkstaff found out about the freelance operatives' plans and urged Len Markus to take action to protect the crystals. At the staff's behest, Markus dispatched a group of Believers to go to the asteroid belt and stop the operatives from destroying the crystals. Nevertheless, the Heroes of Cularin defeated the Believers and shattered the focusing crystals, which destroyed the Darkstaff's connection to the shadow lurkers and caused the Oblee to be resurrected to their physical form.

Around 20 BBY, Markus struck a bargain with Phylus Mon, a Chevin slaver, to repair the Darkstaff's damage from the Force lightning strike. Markus granted Mon access to the Almas fortress, where the slaver intended to uncover the secrets of Sith battlelord creation and manipulate living beings' Force essences to empower the Darkstaff. Markus entrusted the staff to Mon, who traveled to the Cularin system aboard the Animiasma, his personal starship. Accompanied by his slaves and the Dark Jedi Karae Nalvas, Mon overcame the Jedi guards and ventured into the fortress' depths.

The spirit of Darth Rivan's apprentice Darsin was infuriated by Mon's possession of the Darkstaff and harassed the slaver's group, but Mon used the staff to repel the spirit. Discovering a tome detailing the creation of Sith battlelords, Mon placed the Darkstaff on a stone altar and performed the rituals, attempting to bind four slaves and two captive Jedi to himself and Nalvas via the Force. However, the Darkstaff caused the ritual to fail; instead, the staff melted the altar and ripped the Force essences from Nalvas, the slaves, and the Jedi, transferring them into a large crystal pyramid. The Darkstaff then began to feed from the Force essences trapped inside the crystal and used them to strengthen itself.

Mon and his slaves returned to the Animiasma with the Darkstaff and the crystal, and he hid the ship deep inside the Cularin system's asteroid belt. As the staff increased in strength, it slowly began taking over the area around the vessel, draining energy from a cylindrical region surrounding the ship that gradually began to be transformed into a larger version of the artifact. In a move that the staff had not predicted, the Heroes of Cularin and the Jedi Oden Malksch boarded the Animiasma, seeking to destroy the Darkstaff and free the Force essences that were trapped inside the crystal pyramid. To delay the agents from reaching the part of the ship in which the staff was located, the artifact manipulated the ship's environment and crew to lure the freelancers into entering a part of the vessel that contained Phylus Mon's private zoo, a collection of unusual sentient beings that the slaver had captured. As the agents progressed through the zoo, the staff made a further attempt to neutralize the threat they posed to it by possessing the Human Alianda, a slave of Phylus Mon. Through her it spoke with the freelance agents, offering to give them anything that they desired if they relented their assault and vowing to destroy them if they did not cease their attack. The Darkstaff then withdrew itself from Alianda, teleported away from the Animiasma, and continued to draw strength from the trapped Force essences. Phylus Mon frantically searched for the artifact but was accosted by the Heroes of Cularin. The agents destroyed the pyramid and freed the Force essences contained within it, which prevented the Darkstaff from using the essences to fully repair itself.

Len Markus regained control of the staff, returning to the Cularin system around 19 BBY. By this point, the staff had driven Markus insane, yet he remained deluded, believing he controlled the artifact. He acted as if in a dream, obeying the staff's commands and moving towards its ultimate goal: the destruction of the Cularin system. To achieve this, the Darkstaff planned to locate the Eye of the Sun and consume the Jedi-created artifact's Force essence, which would make it the galaxy's most powerful object. It would then use this energy to detonate Cularin, flinging the system's other planets into Cularin's two suns, allowing the Darkstaff to drift into space, awaiting rediscovery. The artifact only partially revealed its plan to Markus, leading him to believe it sought to drain the Force essences of all life on Cularin using the Eye of the Sun. The Darkstaff imbued Markus with powers akin to a Sith battlelord, creating a Force bond between him and his Gamorrean servant Kluuus.

Soon after returning, Markus, wielding the staff, met with a group of Believers, tasking them with attacking a conference on Cularin attended by the system's leaders. Later, an enshrouded being used the staff in a raid on the Five Masters Academy, a martial arts school on Cularin affiliated with the Wookiee Liberation Front. Cloaked in shadow projected by the staff, the assailant attacked the Academy's students and instructors, massacring them by draining their life forces. Only the Master in Violet, a Zabrak adept of the martial art K'thri, remained, parrying the assailant's strikes with a songsteel staff. However, Barnab Chistor, a pupil of the Academy who had been absent during the early stages of the incursion, ambushed the shadowy being and fired an experimental weapon at it. Wounded, the assailant retreated, using the Darkstaff to reanimate the corpses of the deceased students and unleash them upon Chistor and the Master in Violet.

Suspecting Markus' return with the Darkstaff, Nirama sought a means to destroy the Sith artifact. He discovered that the Twi'lek academic Klide was nearing the discovery of the Eye of the Sun's location, and the Oblee believed the Eye could vanquish the staff. Lacking the power to act alone, Nirama hid in his former base within the Cularin asteroid belt, sending a message to the Heroes of Cularin requesting their aid against the staff. However, Len Markus intercepted the transmissions and headed for Red Sector with the Darkstaff and a team of mercenaries. He captured Nirama and communicated with the Heroes of Cularin via a holographic transmission, the agents having traveled to the base in response to Nirama's summons. During the conversation, the staff caused Markus to openly flaunt his insanity, as a demonstration to the agents of the extent to which it controlled the man.

After stealing the coordinates of the Eye of the Sun from Klide, Markus journeyed into the jungles of Cularin with the Darkstaff and some mercenaries to the Eye's hiding place near the Heart Tree, a large plant that was at the center of an interconnected network of ch'hala trees that grew all across Cularin. En route, the staff made Markus use the artifact to transform a group of Mulissiki, local non-sentient reptilian scavengers, into Sithspawn, granting them the ability to shoot acid or lightning from their mouths so as to kill or weaken anyone who pursued Markus. The Force Adepts San Herrera and Nia Reston sighted Markus and trailed him, hoping to capture him to protect Cularin from his deprivations. However, Markus attacked them and used the Darkstaff to suck out their Force essences and transform their mummified corpses into dark side–wielding zombies, which he left behind to attack any pursuers who made it past the mutated Mulissiki.

Upon reaching the Heart Tree, the Darkstaff sensed the Eye of the Sun's presence, and Markus ordered his mercenaries to dig around the tree in search of the Jedi artifact. The Darkstaff twisted the jungle surrounding the tree by infusing it with the dark side of the Force, hoping to overwhelm the tree and stop it from shielding the Eye's location. The artifact's exertions caused a disturbance in the Force in the surrounding region, an anomaly that made the air crackle and prevented large pieces of technology from working near to the tree.

The Heroes of Cularin traveled to the Heart Tree and confronted Markus, aiming to thwart the Darkstaff's plot. Markus immediately used the staff to summon twelve Kilassin, large, non-sentient lizards that were native to Cularin, to fight for him, then engaged the freelance operatives in combat. Feeling petulant, the staff decided to deny Markus the ability to use the Force to heal himself during the fight. Markus used the Darkstaff to deflect the operatives' attacks, and he attempted to use the artifact to drain their Force essences. However, the agents defeated Markus' mercenaries, and the Heart Tree summoned a gigantic Kilassin to aid Markus' opponents, countering the imbalance that had been created when the Darkstaff had summoned the lesser Kilassin. At the battle's climax, one of the freelancers volunteered to be struck by the Darkstaff, which allowed the individual to channel the light side of the Force into the artifact and attempt to nullify the staff. The Darkstaff panicked and ordered Markus to get it away from the agent. Markus did his best to break the individual's hold on the artifact but failed; through the agent's willful self-sacrifice, the Darkstaff was obliterated. As the artifact was destroyed, the jungle around the Heart Tree shook, and a loud cracking sound ripped through the air, while the agent became one with the Force, the individual's body disappearing to leave behind only clothes and equipment. The artifact's demise permanently severed Markus from the Force and the hand in which he had been clutching the staff was reduced to a mass of blackened flesh.

The leaders of some nearby Tarasin tribal groups sensed the staff's destruction through the Force and held a celebration next to the Heart Tree to celebrate the artifact's demise. However, the Tarasin Dariana suspected that the annihilation of the staff would bring unwanted attention to Cularin, so she began making plans to hide away the children of her species.

Morrie Mullins and Christina Nichols conceived the Darkstaff in 2002 for Philology, the third chapter of the Below the Belt trilogy within the Living Force campaign, a supplement for the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Roleplaying Game. In Philology, the staff's actions caused the Cularin system to vanish for a decade, a plot device used to shift the Living Force campaign's setting from the era of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace to that of Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones. The fates of Len Markus and the Darkstaff became recurring themes, with the artifact's origins and history further explored in 2003 through the Living Force module Recursion and the Wizards.com article The Darkstaff. In 2006, the staff featured in The Hand and The Eye, by Morrie Mullins and Jae Walker, the final adventures of the Living Force campaign, which depicted the Darkstaff's ultimate fate. The staff was later included in the 2008 compendium The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia and mentioned in the 2009 sourcebook The Clone Wars Campaign Guide. The staff subsequently appeared in the 2013 game Star Wars: The Old Republic: Rise of the Hutt Cartel, an expansion for the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, marking the first instance of a visual representation of the artifact.

Inconsistencies exist regarding the capitalization of "Darkstaff"; some sources, such as Philology, Recursion, and The Eye, use "darkstaff," while others, including No Place Like Home, Echoes of the Jedi, and Living Force: Last Stand, use "Darkstaff." Given that The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia and The Clone Wars Campaign Guide, the most recent sources mentioning the staff, both capitalize it as "Darkstaff," this article assumes that is the correct form.

The Eye contains several inconsistencies, including a passage recounting events from Philology where a skeletal creature was reanimated on I-9. Philology states there was only one such creature, reanimated by spirits placed by the shadow lurkers, not the staff, despite being infused with the Darkstaff's power. The Eye incorrectly claims the player characters encountered multiple skeletal creatures reanimated by the Darkstaff itself. As The Eye retells the events from an out-of-universe perspective, recapping what happened to the player characters during Philology, this article therefore assumes that the events as described in The Eye are in error.

The Eye also includes a discrepancy regarding the Eye of the Sun. The adventure states that the Eye of the Sun was created concurrently with the Battle of Ruusan and completed two years after the battle, and that when Darth Rivan first arrived in the Cularin system, he was able to sense the Darkstaff through the Eye's shielding effect. However, it had previously been established in the Wizards.com article The Sith Fortress that Rivan had died during the Battle of Ruusan, a fact that was confirmed in the roleplaying adventure Echoes of the Jedi. Therefore, Rivan must have arrived in the Cularin system before the Battle of Ruusan and before the creation of the Eye, so this article assumes that the Eye of the Sun was not shielding the Darkstaff at the time of Rivan's arrival. A third inconsistency in The Eye relates to the diameter of the Darkstaff; while the article The Darkstaff established that the staff was 4 cm in diameter, The Eye claims that the staff has a diameter of 6 cm. The entry for the Darkstaff The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia supports the former measurement, so this article assumes that the staff was 4 cm in diameter.

The appearance of the staff in Star Wars: The Old Republic: Rise of the Hutt Cartel introduced an additional discrepancy regarding the staff's color. Whereas the artifact is consistently described within the Living Force campaign as being black in color the game depicts the staff as being brown-colored. This article describes the staff as it is portrayed in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The players of the Living Force campaign roleplay as the Heroes of Cularin, and during the adventures in which the Darkstaff appears, their choices can influence the actions of the staff. In Philology, the species of the skeletal creature that has been infused by the power of the Darkstaff varies depending upon the roleplaying experience tier of the player characters; for characters in the lower tier, the creature is a massiff, for player characters in the medium experience tier, the creature is a nexu, and for players in the upper tier, the creature is a gundark. Due to these different possibilities, the "History" section of this article does not specify the exact variety of creature that the staff empowered.

In the adventure Recursion, the player characters have a number of choices regarding what they do with the focusing crystals that link the disembodied Oblee to the Darkstaff. The players can opt to call upon the dark side and use the Force to allow the staff to absorb the spirits of the Oblee; alternatively, they can either allow the Oblee to transform into the Force or be resurrected into their physical form, severing the Oblee's connection to the Darkstaff. However, the Wizards.com article The Oblee confirms that the spirits of the Oblee were given physical form by players, thus making that the canonical outcome.

During A Mon Alone, when the Darkstaff speaks to the Heroes of Cularin through the possessed slave Alianda, the staff offers to give any character that leaves the Animiasma their heart's desire. If a player attempts to comply with the staff's request, the Darkstaff does not fulfill its promise and instead incapacitates the individual. The adventure advises that the gamemaster, the person directing the roleplaying adventure, portray the staff with a voice similar to that of James Earl Jones, the actor who voiced the character Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy.

In The Eye, when the player characters confront Len Markus at the Heart Tree, it is possible for Markus to attempt to use the staff to turn the giant Kilassin into Sithspawn, although if he tries this, he does not succeed. It is possible for the staff to drain the life out of some of the player characters. Either one or several of the player characters then destroy the Darkstaff by channeling the light side of the Force into the artifact, and if Len Markus is still alive when the artifact is vanquished, the staff's destruction causes him to be permanently cut off from the Force.