The Sith armada represented a collection of starships that the Lost Tribe of Sith seized for their own purposes. This Tribe descended from Sith survivors whose warship, the Omen, crash-landed on the isolated planet of Kesh around 5000 BBY. Their ultimate goal involved conquering the vulnerable galaxy and resurrecting the Sith Empire. In 41 ABY, Ship, a Sith Meditation Sphere, made its way to Kesh. The Tribe began employing Ship to assault other vessels, initially to scavenge components for repairing the Omen, then later to capture entire ships to enlarge their fleet. By 43.5 ABY, their armada had grown to encompass over two dozen vessels. Lady Rhea and her Sith apprentice, Vestara Khai, served within this armada aboard the Eternal Crusader, a starship utilized by the Sith strike team dispatched to retrieve Ship and assassinate Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker in 43 ABY. Nevertheless, the Jedi decimated the strike team, leaving Khai as the sole survivor.
Subsequently, Lord Viun Gaalan commanded a squadron of shuttles to Dathomir to recover Khai and a group of Nightsisters whom she had assisted in capturing. However, following intervention by the Jedi, Khai was taken prisoner. As the Jedi ascended into orbit, they were unexpectedly confronted by a group of eleven ChaseMaster frigates led by High Lord Sarasu Taalon, who proposed an alliance to eliminate Abeloth, a formidable dark side entity. The Sith's true intention, however, was to subjugate Abeloth and force her to serve them. During the mission that followed, one ship engaged in an unlawful raid, resulting in its capture and the death sentence for its crew. Another ship was destroyed after colliding with debris from the destroyed Sinkhole Station. Ultimately, the Sith's mission failed, as Skywalker defeated Abeloth. The entire flotilla was then ordered back to Kesh, while the Skywalkers, Taalon, Khai, and Khai's father remained on Abeloth's planet to investigate Abeloth further.
In the meantime, the Sith armada continued its growth through constant piracy of other ships, and the Sith prepared their fleet for battle. A portion of the fleet engaged a wing of Jedi StealthX fighters in battle above the moon Pydyr, but the Sith were forced to retreat. Shortly thereafter, a Sith flotilla engaged the Jedi over the planet Nam Chorios, but they suffered another defeat. A segment of the armada later defected to Abeloth's side. The Sith Tribe then infiltrated the capital planet Coruscant after the New Jedi Order had abandoned it. A small force also attempted to ambush the Jedi academy on Ossus, but most of the Jedi forces, aided by the Hapes Consortium, managed to escape. Soon afterward, the Sith suffered a devastating blow with the destruction of their forces on Coruscant.
The Sith armada represented a fleet employed by the Lost Tribe of Sith—a group of Sith marooned on the distant planet of Kesh. The vessels that made up the fleet were diverse, ranging from large bulk freighters to warships and even a Sith Meditation Sphere. The Sith collaborated to acquire vessels, often coordinating multiple starships in their attacks. Once the Tribe captured a vessel, they would tow it back to their homeworld of Kesh for repairs, renaming, and integration into the armada.
The initial vessel in the armada was Ship, the Sith Meditation Sphere. Initially, it served as the armada's leader, guiding the Tribe to new targets and providing their only means of off-planet transportation. After the Tribe acquired enough components, they successfully repaired the Omen, the dreadnaught on which the Tribe's ancestors had crashed onto Kesh over five millennia prior. With the Omen restored, the Tribe began capturing entire vessels instead of just scavenging them for parts, leading to rapid fleet expansion. By 43.5 ABY, the armada consisted of more than two dozen vessels.
One of the first vessels to be seized was the Eternal Crusader, a warship larger and more powerful than the Omen. It operated under the command of Lady Olaris Rhea and played a role in the capture of additional vessels. Other capital ships within the armada included several Corporate Sector Authority frigates, two EE-104 Fisheye stealth vessels, and at least twenty-seven ChaseMaster frigates, including the Black Wave, commanded by High Lord Sarasu Taalon; the Starstalker, commanded by Captain Vyn Holpur; and the Winged Dagger, initially commanded by Captain Syndor, then Leeha Faal, and subsequently Syndor again after Faal's death. The armada also utilized several Corporate Sector gunships, and among the starfighters were at least six Javelins and a full wing of Skipray twelve-jays. By 44 ABY, the Sith had spread throughout the galaxy, refining their piracy tactics and assembling a war fleet of hundreds of vessels.
During the Great Hyperspace War in 5,000 BBY, the Omen, a Sith starship, crash-landed on the remote planet Kesh while attempting to transport Lignan crystals to Sith Lord Naga Sadow. The crash survivors eventually established the Lost Tribe of Sith.
In 41 ABY, Ship, a Sith Meditation Sphere, arrived on Kesh and contacted the Tribe, revealing that the Sith had been driven from the galaxy and that only a small group remained. The Tribe resolved to restore the Sith Empire, and Ship offered to assist them in repairing the Omen by scavenging parts from other vessels. Ship transported the Sith, marking the first time in approximately 5,000 years that members of the Tribe had ventured beyond the planet's atmosphere and back into space. Ship requested five Sith to join it in an attack on a Damorian s18 light freighter en route from the planet Eriadu. High Lord Sarasu Taalon, Lady Olaris Rhea, Rhea's apprentice Vestara Khai, Lord Ivaar Workan, and Sith Saber Ruku Myal were selected for the mission. Ship fired upon the freighter, forcing it to crash on an uninhabited planet. The Sith then slaughtered the ship's crew and scavenged its parts to begin repairing the Omen.
With Ship's assistance, the Sith constructed a basic spaceport for their emerging armada. Meanwhile, the Tribe intensified their attacks on other vessels, ensuring no survivors remained to reveal the location of their homeworld. Eventually, the Omen was fully repaired, becoming the first vessel to serve alongside Ship in the armada. The Tribe continued their attacks, now capturing vessels and incorporating them into the fleet. This new lifestyle necessitated changes in the spacefaring Tribe members' clothing and weaponry to enhance their effectiveness. By 43.5 ABY, the armada had grown to include more than two dozen starships.
In 43.5 ABY, Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker touched the Codex, an Aing-Tii relic, which amplified his presence and broadcast his name to the Tribe through the Force. Ship alerted the Tribe to the threat Skywalker posed, and the Tribe's Grand Lord, Darish Vol, convened an emergency meeting in the Circle Chambers within Kesh's capital city of Tahv. Vol and Rhea selected a strike team from the armada, led by Rhea, to hunt down Skywalker. However, before they could depart, Ship abruptly left the planet to pursue the call through the Force. The strike team was then tasked with locating and retrieving Ship before eliminating Skywalker.
The strike team tracked Ship to a planet in the Maw, where they encountered a powerful being named Abeloth. They eventually recovered Ship, although many team members were killed by the planet's lethal plants. Abeloth managed to trap them there long enough to deplete their supplies and damage all of the shuttles aboard the Eternal Crusader, as well as ground the Eternal Crusader itself. The Sith then traveled aboard Ship to Sinkhole Station, a space station in the Maw where Abeloth had located Skywalker and his son, Ben. They ambushed the Jedi, but in the ensuing skirmish, the entire Sith team was killed, except for Khai. Khai escaped in a dilapidated SoroSuub StarTripper yacht, She's a Chancer, eventually landing on the planet Dathomir and sending a hypercomm message to the Sith on Kesh to request retrieval.
As the Sith organized a group of ships to travel to Dathomir to rescue Khai, Khai encountered the Nightsisters—a group of dark side-using Witches—and decided that they could be of use to the Sith, reporting their existence to the Tribe. Lord Viun Gaalan led a group of shuttles to Dathomir, where they captured the Nightsisters. However, before Gaalan could retrieve Khai, the Skywalkers—who had tracked Khai to Dathomir—intervened along with the Force-sensitive Dyon Stadd, and Gaalan was forced to flee without Khai. Taking Khai captive, the Jedi left Dathomir, but as they entered orbit they were ambushed by a group of eleven capital class ChaseMaster frigates under the command of High Lord Sarasu Taalon. Taalon lied to them that members of the Sith Tribe had been suffering from the same psychosis as several Jedi back on the planet Coruscant recently, and that he wished to form an alliance with the Jedi in order to eliminate Abeloth, who was causing the psychosis. In reality, the proposed alliance was simply a ploy by the Sith; their actual intention was to force Abeloth to cooperate with them.
Skywalker agreed to the alliance, and suggested that they contact his friend, Lando Calrissian, to assist them in navigating the Maw with his Colossus I Beta Series asteroid tug, the Rockhound. The Sith agreed, and the fleet of ships waited in orbit over Klatooine, and while there, Taalon transferred command of the frigate Winged Dagger from Captain Syndor to his personal assistant, Leeha Faal. Eventually, however, the Sith and Jedi decided they could wait no longer, and left the planet, to wait for Calrissian just outside the Maw. Taalon convinced Skywalker to allow him to leave two frigates behind—the Starstalker, captained by Vyn Holpur, and the Winged Dagger—under the premise that they would await Calrissian's arrival. In reality, however, Taalon had given orders to Faal which she passed on to Holpur, commanding him to retrieve samples of wintrium from the sacred Fountain of the Ancients on Klatooine.
The Sith met with resistance from native Klatooinians, and soon several Hutts as well, who attacked the Starstalkker and surrounded the Winged Dagger, taking the Sith into custody. They were brought to trial in front of Calrissian and Jedi Knight Jaina Solo, who had just arrived on the planet. Faal claimed that Holpur and his crew had acted of their own accord, and so the entire crew of the Starstalker was condemned to death. Faal, Calrissian, and Solo then left to meet the rest of the fleet outside of the Maw.
The fleet then entered the Maw under the protection of Calrissian's asteroid tug. However, upon their arrival at their first destination, Sinkhole Station, they found that the station had been destroyed by Abeloth. Two frigates, however, failed to slow down, entering the debris field at a great speed. The Rockhound used its tractor beams to slow them, and managed to stop and save one of the ships. The other, however, was traveling at too great a velocity, and was obliterated upon impact. The Jedi and Sith then agreed to travel to Abeloth's planet, where they noticed Ship, still under Abeloth's control, and also saw the remains of the Eternal Crusader. Once they had landed, the allies decided to search for Abeloth by Mind Walking beyond shadows. While beyond shadows, however, Faal was killed, and commission of the Winged Dagger was returned to Syndor.
The Sith and Jedi eventually located Abeloth and fought her, and the Sith executed their betrayal by attempting to capture the dark side being. Meanwhile, Solo engaged Ship, who was still under Abeloth's influence, in combat in her StealthX. The Sith failed in their endeavor, however, and Skywalker defeated Abeloth; and immediately after Abeloth's apparent death, Ship fled the system. The Sith and Jedi then agreed to send all of their respective forces away except for Taalon, Khai, Khai's father, Gavar, the Skywalkers, and Stadd, who remained behind to investigate more about Abeloth.
Solo and Calrissian left, but when they exited hyperspace they found they had arrived at the incorrect location. After discovering that someone had slipped a sabotage mouse droid aboard the Rockhound at Klatooine, they began to suspect pirates. Solo went out in her StealthX to confront them, and found that they could feel her presence in the Force, and were thus Sith. She and Calrissian escaped and made it back to Coruscant, where they reported to the Jedi Council. Meanwhile, they detailed a map with the assistance of Jedi Knight Jaden Korr, showing that the Lost Tribe of Sith had been attacking vessels and taking them for use in their armada all over the galaxy. After further examination, Jedi Master Corran Horn realized that the Sith were preparing a war fleet.
Following a disagreement between the Skywalkers and the remaining three Sith Lords, the Jedi, accompanied by Vestara Khai, pursued Abeloth to the lunar surface of Pydyr. However, Khai transmitted a message to a fleet outpost on Boonta, which then relayed it to Kesh. Subsequently, a Kondo-class assault shuttle carrying Taalon and Gavar Khai was dispatched. The Sith lost the shuttle, named Obuuri, during their search for Abeloth, but were soon reinforced by three additional Kondo-class shuttles under the command of Sith Master Jestat Vhool. Upon locating Abeloth, she used visions to drive the Sith fleet members insane. During the subsequent conflict with Abeloth, Taalon, who had begun to transform into a being similar to Abeloth, was killed by Vestara Khai, forcing Abeloth to retreat. As the Jedi prepared to depart with Vestara, Vhool intercepted them. Before the Sith could inflict harm, a squadron of StealthXs dispatched from Coruscant intervened, engaging the Sith and enabling Vestara and the Jedi to escape.
Simultaneously, Gavar Khai conceived a strategy to locate and assassinate a Jedi queen that Taalon had foreseen. The Sith discovered that Hapan Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo bore a striking resemblance to the Jedi queen, and a Sith team led by Saber Querdan Dei aboard the EE-104 Fisheye Cryptic Warning was dispatched to eliminate her; however, the attempt ultimately failed. Meanwhile, Gavar Khai received a message from his daughter, informing him that she and the Jedi had tracked Abeloth to the planet Nam Chorios. Saber Khai was then placed in command of a flotilla consisting of several Corporate Sector Authority frigates to carry out Operation Shieldfall—a mission aimed at killing the Skywalkers and either eliminating or capturing Abeloth. He deployed Sith agents ahead of the fleet to seize control of the world's orbiting Golan III Space Defense NovaGun platforms, but upon the Sith's arrival in the system, they were ambushed by a squadron of Jedi StealthXs. Before long, two of the frigates were destroyed, and two more sustained severe damage. Faced with heavy losses, Gavar was compelled to order a complete withdrawal. As the Sith recuperated from the failed mission, Abeloth contacted Gavar and initiated negotiations regarding their shared adversary—the Jedi. Abeloth was transported to Tahv, where the alliance was formalized. However, she betrayed the Sith, attacking Vol and the city. As she escaped, a segment of the Sith armada, led by Gavar Khai in the ChaseMaster Black Wave, defected to join Abeloth. They engaged the ships that remained loyal to the Lost Tribe and fled with the dark side entity.
While numerous Sith from the Tribe infiltrated Coruscant, which the New Jedi Order had abandoned, a Sith squadron of Skipray blastboats was sent to ambush the Jedi Academy on the planet Ossus. The local Jedi and Hapan forces were aware of the Sith's intentions, and the Hapes Consortium deployed four squadrons of Miy'til starfighters to delay the Sith while the academy was being evacuated. The Sith still hoped to assassinate Djo, who was present during the evacuation; they managed to board one of the Jedi's vessels and plant baradium bombs inside. The Jedi and Hapans noticed that the vessel, Sharmok 718, was behaving erratically, and concluded that the Sith had boarded it. Consequently, the Hapans ordered their escorting Volgh Squadron to open fire; this action detonated the baradium, destroying the entire vessel, the Jedi on board, and Volgh Squadron itself, but Djo was spared from the attack. Shortly thereafter, the Tribe suffered a significant blow when the Jedi successfully completed their mission to liberate Coruscant, eliminating the Sith forces on the planet. Abeloth was also destroyed; nevertheless, Ship chose to transport Vestara Khai to another Sith faction, the One Sith, rather than returning her to the Tribe on Kesh.
Initially, Ship functioned as the armada's leader, as the Tribe depended on the Sith Meditation Sphere as their sole means of interstellar travel, as well as a source of intelligence regarding their next target. However, as the armada grew, the Sith gradually assumed leadership, and vessels were placed under the command of high-ranking Tribe members, such as High Lords. One of the first vessels to be seized, the Eternal Crusader, was placed under the command of Lady Rhea. Rhea's apprentice, Vestara Khai, also served on that starship.
Lord Viun Gaalan later commanded a small group of shuttles to retrieve Khai from Dathomir, and eleven capital-class ChaseMaster frigates, including the Black Wave, were placed under the command of High Lord Taalon. Among these frigates were also the Starstalker, commanded by the Human Sith Vyn Holpur, and the Winged Dagger, commanded initially by Syndor, then by the Keshiri Leeha Faal, and subsequently by Syndor again following Faal's death while beyond shadows. Master Vhool commanded a trio of Kondo-class shuttles.
During Operation Shieldfall, Gavar Khai commanded a flotilla of Corporate Sector frigates. However, after Abeloth betrayed the Lost Tribe on Tahv, a number of Sith in the armada defected to join her, including Khai and fellow Saber Tola Annax.
The armada made its debut in author Christie Golden's 2009 Star Wars novel, Fate of the Jedi: Omen, which was the second novel in the Fate of the Jedi series. The armada continued to appear in each of the subsequent Fate of the Jedi novels—Fate of the Jedi: Abyss, Fate of the Jedi: Backlash, Fate of the Jedi: Allies, Fate of the Jedi: Vortex, Fate of the Jedi: Conviction, Fate of the Jedi: Ascension, and Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse. The first mission undertaken by Ship and the Sith was depicted in a short story by Golden, "First Blood," published in 2011. The fleet was later referenced in the 2012 reference book The Essential Guide to Warfare.
At the conclusion of Apocalypse, the Sith forces on Coruscant were eliminated. However, neither Ascension nor Apocalypse specified precisely how many Sith of the Tribe remained on their homeworld, nor did they specify whether the Tribe still possessed any spacecraft capable of interstellar travel.