Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This holocron is the index of our line and the instrument by which it continues. I am Darth Plagueis, its present custodian and Gatekeeper.  

I am Muun, and my species is comfortable with numbers. We balance books from an early age, seeing where value moves and where it stalls. I carry that habit into the Force. I read power as a ledger, with every gain sitting beside its cost. Every risk draws interest until it is paid. I built this archive in that spirit, so the ones who come after me can see what the line has purchased and what it sold to survive. 

You will read these pages in order. Bane first, then each Master in sequence, Master to Apprentice, without skipping or reshuffling. Sequence matters as it shows cause and effect. It also shows how a method hardens when it meets reality and how ornament falls away when it cannot pay for itself. This is not a shrine but a record of decisions and their prices. 

Each Master speaks in the first person and as plainly as they are able. Some will be direct. Bane was one of these. He will tell you where he came from, what he did, and why. Others see the Force as a web in which every event answers another like notes in a symphony. They will speak in patterns instead of lists. Both kinds of thinking are useful and are true to the way the Force presented itself to them. Do not favor one voice because it sounds familiar or dismiss another because it asks you to listen differently. All their teachings are part of the same account. If you skip one, you erase part of the balance, and the totals will lie to you. 

Each recording follows the same frame. First, origin: not for sentiment but for causation. You must see the pressures that forged the Sith who is speaking and the tools those pressures taught them to build. Second, doctrine: what they held to be true and how they proved it in use. Third, apprenticeship: how they trained a successor to standard and how they corrected that successor when standard slipped. Fourth, research: practices they refined, instruments they created, limits they moved or failed to move. Failures are included because their cost bought information. Use it. Most add a short audit at the end that names what they would repeat and what they would change under different conditions. Pay attention there, as it will save you years. 

This archive values application over recital. You are not asked to admire any of us but understand what was done, why it was done, and what it bought. Keep a clear ledger as you read. For every technique, write the conditions in which it works, the conditions in which it fails, the price to prepare it, and the price to use it. Note who saw it and what trace it left. Numbers and conditions will keep you honest when pride or shame tries to rewrite the story. 

By advancing through these pages, you accept the Rule of Two as law. One holds the power; one tests it. There is no council to dilute blame and no choir to drown doubt. If the Apprentice is found to be unworthy, the Master ends the line at that point and chooses again. If the Master decays, the Apprentice ends the Master and continues. In this way the line stays lean enough to move and hard enough to cut. If this sounds cruel, you have mistaken comfort for strength. 

You will notice certain habits in our line: we discard language that is not tied to outcome, do not trade mystery for respect, and do not dress ignorance in ritual. When we use a fiction, it is to move a target or to buy time. When we adopt a principle, it is because it pays. Where predecessors grew indulgent, we cut. Where they cut too deep, we restore with purpose. Over generations this rhythm is why our line did not end when pride and waste almost killed it. 

You will also see how close the Sith came to disappearing. Bane will show you the Brotherhood that mistook consensus for strength and equality for unity, and how he answered that error. Others will show you how the same temptation returns under new names. Learn to hear the same failure through modern words. Answer it with the Rule of Two, and if this archive does its work, you will learn to spot infection while it is only fever and act before it causes collapse. 

Turn the page. Begin with Darth Bane. Hear a plain voice cut from a forgotten rock and tempered in a soldier’s war. He will show you how scarcity trains the hand, how command is arithmetic, and why an order that mistakes numbers for strength must be broken before it breaks you. When you have his measure, keep reading. Do not skip any of them. Omit one voice, and the account will not balance; only a full ledger tells the truth. 

Chapter Text

I am Darth Bane. I was born on Apatros, a world of stone and dust where the ground chews up men and spits them out as debt. Outer Rim Oreworks owned the veins, the shafts, the bunks, and the bodies that kept the cutters running; the company ledger measured a man’s worth in ore weight and injuries survived. They called me Dessel. My father called me something else. When drink loosened his tongue he called me the bane of his existence and swung until he could not lift his fists. The name outlived him, and the mines taught me more, and faster, than he ever did. I learned that the shift whistle separates men who run from men who set their feet, that hunger makes liars of honest mouths and cowards of loud ones, and that you watch hands, not words. By the time I could drive a drill without shaking my wrists apart, I knew how to find leverage.

Apatros punished mistakes twice: first with pain, then with the ledger. Split your knuckles on a vibrating cutter and you still finish the shift with blood in your glove; after shift, ORO docks your pay for “tool abuse.” Snap a drill head and you buy a replacement at company prices; while you wait, the crew runs short, the tunnel falls behind, and the whole section loses its output bonus. Miss a step on wet rock and twist an ankle; the medic charges your account for a brace and two days of ration vouchers, then the foreman writes you up for lost production. Start a fight and win, and you get a night in the cage; the morning after, your bunk fee goes up and your allotment is “temporarily reassigned” to cover damages. On Apatros every error hurts you in the body and again on the slate.

So I made every movement count, let anger cool until it could buy me something, and spoke only when words changed the outcome. Down in the cuts I felt things I could not name. The rock tightened before it sheared. A brace whispered before it slipped. The air went still before a collapse. I stepped aside a heartbeat early and lived. Others did not. Overseers called it luck. Crews called it a curse. I called it useful and kept my mouth shut.

I would have died down there and been tallied on a quarterly report if not for a card game in a canteen that smelled of stew and machine oil. A Republic ensign wandered in with coin to lose and rank to hide behind. He made sport of one of mine. There is a courage that comes cheap when a uniform and a bottle do the speaking. I told him to walk away. He reached for a holdout. I felt a surge rise in me. I hit him once. His skull met the table. He did not get up.

On a company world there is no justice past the fence, only costs moved from the ledger of the powerful to the back of the man who cannot pay. If you bloodied a foreman, ORO fined you for “disruption,” then sent you to the worst shaft for “remediation.” If a Republic patrol broke a miner’s ribs, ORO billed the victim for medical and lost output while the patrol shipped out before dawn. When equipment failed because a quartermaster resold the good parts, the crew that complained lost meal vouchers for “insubordination.” The corporation did not arbitrate; it balanced. Every problem became a line item. Every line item was settled with flesh.

Killing an off-world officer was not something ORO would negotiate. It was a liability they would settle with a body and a receipt. I left before they chose mine. Groshik, a Neimoidian who ran the only canteen that felt alive on that gray rock, counted the angles, called in an old debt, and found me a berth on a freighter that “wasn’t taking passengers.” The manifest did not include my name. By the time the shift changed, I was gone, headed to a war I did not care about.

War gave me a new name and a better use for what the mine had carved into me. I signed on as Des because the Sith recruiters did not care what you called yourself if you could march, shoot, and keep your mouth shut. They dropped me into the Gloom Walkers, and the name fit. The lessons were the same as Apatros, only louder: read the ground, spend strength when it buys position, hold it when the price is wrong. The “luck” that kept me alive in the shafts matured at the front. I felt a lane of fire an instant before it opened and stepped clear. A mortar round landed where I had been a heartbeat earlier. A tripwire showed itself even though its line matched the mud. I sensed a flank soften before it folded and heard a squad’s breath go thin before it broke. In a street fight I knew which doorway hid a barrel and which hid a corpse. In the rain I knew when the enemy’s courage would slip, and I pushed then. We took ground we were not supposed to touch and kept it for less blood than anyone would believe. The men called it luck because that felt better than naming what they could not explain.

The test came on a ridge that watched a mountain pass. Command’s plan was as simple as it was stupid: charge straight up the open slope at noon and take guns that had been registering our approach for two days. The timetable was chosen to impress a Sith Lord’s peers, not because fog would cover a crawl or wind would spoil the aim. The lieutenant who read the orders believed the right words could bully the ground into obedience.

We did not go at noon. I had no intention of marching men into sunlight and blaster fire to flatter a clock. We moved before dawn, when fog pooled in the gullies. The plan said charge; the ground said climb. We crawled along a drainage cut the batteries could not see, slid sideways under their arcs, and went up the ridge by handholds and scrub until we were on their flank. I kept the squad belly-low in the muck and shifted only when I felt the gunners sweep their aim across the empty slope to check ranges.

When the flare finally went up, we were already beneath the emplacements. We took the crews from the flank, rolled the position gun by gun, and swung the nearest cannon to rake the counterattack as it clawed up from the pass. By dusk the ridge was ours, the pass was closed, and our dead numbered fewer than the briefing had budgeted.

The lieutenant came up the line with a lecture about obedience and schedules, about how noon had been chosen for “coordination.” I ended his speech with my fist. His nose went sideways and his words came out red. I told him his clock did not outrank the ridge. They hauled me off in binders before the blood dried, charged me with disobedience and assault, and set a court-martial for morning. I was victorious, but I was more useful to them as an example than as a soldier who refused to die on command.

They did not get their court-martial. A Sith Lord came instead. He walked into the holding room with two troopers, read the charges, and asked one question: why did you change the plan? I told him the truth. He nodded and gave his name: Kopecz.

Kopecz explained that my “luck” was not luck at all, but the Force. The way I felt a lane of fire before it opened, moved a heartbeat ahead of a collapse, or pressed where men would break, that was power I had been using like a miner uses his back. The army could lose a squad leader. It could not afford to throw away someone who bent a battlefield without knowing he was doing it. He signed my transfer, tore up the tribunal’s schedule, and my life changed again.

He took me to Korriban. From orbit the planet looked like a wound that never closed. The academy sat over a valley of tombs cut into the rock. The gates opened, my name went into a register, and the army’s charges vanished. I walked in as Des, but I kept the other name, the one my father had spat at me, and made it mine. Bane.

They handed me to instructors who did not try to be liked. The first real lesson came from a blademaster named Kas’im. For a Sith, he was patient, but the patience had an edge. He set my stance from the ground up, moved my feet until balance sat in my hips, and fixed my shoulders and grip so arm and blade worked as one. I had believed I could fight because I had lived through brawls, alley knives, and a war. He showed me that surviving is not the same as fighting well. So I drilled. I worked the same steps until the burn in my legs turned into steadiness. I cut and recovered until my hands stopped wasting motion. When I failed, I did it again. When I failed again, I did it a third time. Kas’im did not praise effort. He nodded once when the blade tracked clean and moved me to the next fault. That is how the work went.

Days were simple: dawn forms and footwork, partner drills, conditioning and controlled bouts, then study. There were no easy hours. If you tired, you hid it. If you fell, you paid in bruises and in another round. I did not object to that justice. A blade does not care about intentions. It cares about your edge and where you put it.

Between drills I read. The manuscripts were old and wrote plainly about power made through discipline, focus, and will. In the archives I found Sith who never asked permission to be what they were. Some wrote about the body and how pain can be trained into endurance until it becomes a resource instead of a warning. Some wrote about influence and how pressure at the right point and the right hour can move entire worlds. Others wrote about armies and why you force a battle on your terms or you do not fight at all. All agreed on one point: power is not a committee. Power concentrates, and if it does not, it thins until it is useless.

The academy also had politics. Lord Qordis fronted that part. He liked councils and votes and the sound of unity. At first I went along. It was easier to agree than to be the one who said no. But a week of watching decisions showed the weakness. A meeting replaced an order. A compromise replaced a result. A title replaced proof. The Jedi could afford that. They were holding ground they already owned. The Sith could not. If everyone shares the hilt, the blade turns in our hands.

So I kept my distance from Qordis and his gatherings. I did the work. I trained and I read. I kept a strict ledger in my head for every choice. If a stance added reach but slowed recovery, I cut the reach and kept the speed. If a flourish drew eyes but opened a line, I stripped it away. If a practice let a student hide behind a title, I ignored the title and made him show a result. I brought lessons from the archives to the ring and priced them. If they bought position or time, I kept them. If they did not, they went back on the shelf. Bit by bit the ledger got cleaner, and so did my blade.

My use of the Force sharpened with the same routine. In sparring I felt the instant a partner’s certainty hardened into habit and I cut across it. In drills my footing stopped being a guess; I could feel slope and grit through my boots and place my weight where no shove could move it. Meditation shifted from sitting still to setting myself in order. I could find my temper like a knot in a rope and decide whether to pull it tight for power or leave it slack for control. I drilled the basics until they were automatic. If a push did not throw a man every time, it was sloppiness, so I fixed it. If a pull only snatched a weapon from a weak grip, that was luck, so I learned to tear a hilt from a sure hand. I practiced chokes until the pressure clamped like a fist and let go the instant I chose. I trained deflection until I could bend a blaster bolt off its line by a thumb’s width; never flashy, always enough.

As the weeks turned, the Force stopped feeling like a storm that favored me and started feeling like a tool that answered to discipline. When I set my breathing, focus, and footing, it came on steady and strong. When I reached for it out of impatience, it refused me and left me standing in my own weakness. That refusal taught its own lesson. I learned to bring power on cue, hold it without bleeding it away, and cut it the instant the work was done. The result was simple. I hit what I aimed at. I moved when I chose. And when I decided to end a fight, it ended.

In time the truth became a plan. The Sith would never beat the Jedi by copying their council. A council spreads risk until no one bleeds for the decision. Victory belongs to the one who takes full risk and acts without delay. Power must sit in one hand so it can be used, and it must be tested by another hand so it does not rot. The shape was clear: one to hold power and prove it, one to challenge that power and earn it. No votes. No sharing. No refuge in numbers. A chain that stays strong because every link is forged under strain.

So I chose to break the order that stood and rebuild it to fit that truth. There would be one Master and one Apprentice. The Master would hold power, and the Apprentice would seek it. If the Apprentice surpassed the Master, the Master would die and the Apprentice would take the place earned. If the Apprentice failed, the Apprentice would die and another would be chosen. Knowledge and strength would concentrate in the two, passed on only when fully paid for.

To make room for the new line, the old one had to end. I gave the Brotherhood what it craved: the illusion that its council could decide the outcome of a war. I fed Lord Kaan the promise of a perfect weapon that needed every Sith voice speaking the same note and let his hunger for unity carry the tune. On Ruusan they gathered in a cavern like petitioners at a shrine, hands joined around power they did not understand, and I stepped back to let arithmetic finish what pride had begun. The thought bomb answered their chorus with silence. Their strength, spread thin enough to please a council, snapped in an instant. The Jedi who stood against them died with them. The ledger closed on both accounts.

When the ash settled, the Brotherhood was gone, and I walked the ruins and chose an heir. One Master. One Apprentice. The Rule of Two. The line would begin again on a foundation that would not share power. I destroyed an order that pretended to be strong and became the root of the one that actually is.