History of the Sith Order, successor to r/SithOrder
Written from 2017/03/19 – 2017/10/20
This entry of my personal holocron is meant to serve as a complete record of the history of the Dark Council of the Sith Order, to be used for future reference by myself and my future students. The contents are told entirely from my own point of view, and as such will focus primarily on my experiences within the order. To begin with, let us look at the origin of my introduction to the Sith Order. - Neauar
"/r/SithOrder and Hierarchy" 2015/12/09 – 2016/02/04
On the date of December 9th 2015 I first came across the existence of a subreddit known as /r/SithOrder. On the next day, after spending the entire night reading as much of the order's work as possible, I decided upon my new name, Neauar, and officially presented myself to the Sith Order as it was at the time. Not long after this I began participating in various discussions around the community, one of particular interest was between myself and an individual who would later be known as Darth Anguish. The topic of this quite long conversation was the order's lack of a formal hierarchy, and how we might benefit from such a thing. Both Lord Anguish and I agreed that we needed a formal chain of command, but we were mostly at a loss for ideas regarding how we might go about creating such a thing. Anguish had considered using private education for recruitment, while I was more focused on connecting with influential establishments. That was the end of this particular conversation, but the idea of a hierarchy first put forward by Darth Anguish is something which stuck in my mind for quite some time afterward.
"Venon and the Assembly of the Council" 2016/07/15 – 2016/09/01
On the date of July 15th 2016, as mentioned in the holocron entry titled "Legacy", a post was made on /r/sithorder by a user named "nanderson98" asking why the order seemed so inactive, and what he could do to change that. After reading this post and coming to learn that there were still those associated with the order who wished to see it grow, my interest in the cause of creating a formal hierarchy for the order was renewed. Not long after this I contacted him and offered the position of becoming my apprentice. I explained that myself and others had long been discussing the idea of creating a proper hierarchy within the Sith Order and that I planned to see this through, with his assistance. With renewed enthusiasm and a new apprentice by my side, I quickly began work drafting the concept which would later become the Sith Order I'm a part of today. This first began with the concept of the Dark Council, a ruling council of master Sith Lords whose wisdom and strength was respected by all within the order. I soon began the task of assembling a list of Sith Lords from within the order who I thought worthy of a seat on this new Dark Council. Initially this list consisted of; Darth Tenodris, Darth Chirikyat, Darth Voldus, Darth Neuro, Darth Anguish, Darth Verum, Darth Nevian, Darth Corax, and Darth Hulmyst. Soon after creating this list of possible candidates, and sharing it with my new apprentice, I reached out to the first name listed, Darth Tenodris. I left the task of recruiting Tenodris up to my apprentice as I found myself unavailable at the time, but needless to say the effort was a success. Not long after this I lost contact with Venon, for reasons not important here, and with his disappearance the task of assembling the council was stalled.
After roughly two months of trying to discover the whereabouts of my lost apprentice, I decided to move forward without him. I sent word to Tenodris saying that we would continue with the plan while also sending invitations to Darth Nevian, Darth Verum, Darth Neuro, Darth Anguish, and Darth Voldus. I chose to remove the founders of /r/SithOrder from the list as they had been inactive for quite some time and their ideas for the order appeared very dated when compared to ours. Darth Anguish was the first to respond, followed shortly by Verum and Neuro. After giving them a few weeks and not having heard anything from either Voldus or Nevian, I decided that it was time the council was officially assembled.
As of the date of September 1st 2016, the Dark Council of the Sith Order had been officially formed. It's membership at the time of creation consisted of Darth Tenodris, Darth Anguish, Darth Neuro, Darth Verum, and myself, Darth Neauar.
"The Spheres of Influence" 2016/09/01 – 2016/09/19
Shortly before the official creation of the Dark Council I decided to begin working on the concept of the spheres of influence, a number of unique areas of expertise, each under the control and management of a member of the Dark Council. To begin with, I created this list of spheres for us to use; the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge and Philosophies, the Sphere of Biotic Science, the Sphere of Sith Preservation, the Sphere of Politics and Government, the Sphere of Sith Intelligence, the Sphere of Military Affairs, the Sphere of Psychology, the Sphere of Economics and Logistics, the Sphere of Sith Philosophy, and the Sphere of Sciences and Technology.
The first list of spheres to be drafted included only ten, despite there being just five members of the Dark Council at the time. Because of this, each member of the council would be required to manage two separate spheres of influence, until any additional members could be recruited to ease the responsibility. I then gathered information on each member of the council's various skills, qualifications, and life experience to best determine which spheres they were most fit to manage. After considering all of the information available to me, I decided upon this list;
- Darth Tenodris would control the spheres of Ancient Knowledge and Philosophies and Psychology.
- Darth Anguish would control the spheres of Military Affairs and Sith Intelligence.
- Darth Neuro would control the spheres of Biotic Science and Sciences and Technology.
- Darth Verum would control the spheres of Sith Preservation and Sith Philosophy.
- And I, Darth Neauar, would control the spheres of Politics and Government and Economics and Logistics.
"Nevian's Arrival/The Council's Departure" 2016/09/30 – 2016/12/30
On September 30th 2016 we, the Dark Council, officially announced ourselves to the larger Sith Order for the first time, almost without any notice. It was not long after this that we began to discuss how Darth Neuro had been absent for some few weeks. I then sent a warning to Neuro but this did not recieve any reply, and so the council was forced to remove Darth Neuro from our ranks as a result of his extended absence and unwillingness to respond when called upon. Thus leaving his two spheres, the spheres of Biotic Science and Sciences and Technology, without a master.
Much to our benefit, however, I recieved a reply from Darth Nevian, one of the Sith Lords initially sent an invitation to join the council, stating that he had been away for some time and was willing to accept my invitation and join us. After sending Nevian a formal assessment to complete, and reviewing his answers, the members of the Dark Council decided that he would be accepted into the council and that he would be best suited to manage the Sphere of Sciences and Technology, given his expertise in matters of that subject.
Not long after this, myself and others were discouraged by the lack of any activity or support shown by the members of /r/SithOrder. Later that week the descion to remain associated with /r/SithOrder was put to a vote, and with all in agreement we removed ourselves from the subreddit, erased all evidence of our Dark Council's existance there, and in effect created our own Sith Order. This was the moment that the Sith Order I am a part of today first came into being. From this point forward we would no longer have any affiliation with the dying and stagnent ideology practiced by the members of /r/SithOrder.
"Acolytes and Reorganization" 2016/12/18 – 2017/01/03
On the 18th and 25th of December 2016, posts were made on /r/SithOrder by aspiring Sith acolytes looking for structure and masters to learn under. I then decided to reach out and contact these acolytes, on behalf of the Dark Council, to inform them that /r/SithOrder was all but dead and that if they truly wished to learn from more experienced Sith Lords that they would have to join our new Sith Order, which they did.
We then welcomed the acolytes Solum, Arbitus, Chaerod, and Necromanteion into the ranks of the order. All acolytes were then required to answer a carefully constructed questionnaire, based on the one used for Darth Nevian, to help determine what their function within the order should be, and who they would be learning under.
Not long after this, however, we suffered a security breach. The discord server the order was using for more efficient communication had been compromised and shut down. For now all you need to know is that the exact cause of the security breach remains unknown at the time of writing this. After recovering from this breach, and creating a new discord server for us to use, we had been forced to re-evaluate the current structure of the order to better prevent something like this from happening again in the future. Because the recent addition of these new acolytes into the order had occurred directly before the security breach, it was believed by many that one of them could have been the cause of this incident.
As a result of these security concerns, I took the opportunity to present an idea, which I had been considering for a few weeks prior to the incident, to the rest of the Dark Council. The idea was a complete restructuring of the Sith Order based around the concept of compartmentalization. Each member of the Dark Council would be in charge of their own group or "cell" with each group containing multiple acolytes, apprentices, and Sith Lords. All of which are completely unaware of the existence of a larger Sith Order or any of the other cells. This way there would be no chance of any new acolytes obtaining enough information to damage the entire order ever again. The following is the statement I made before the entire Dark Council regarding the new structure of the Order:
"After the recent situation with our previous discord server I've had some ideas regarding how to preserve the order. We may only be small, but we're already attracting some attention. This is not beneficial. I believe it to be in our best interest to dissolve the order as it currently stands. We, the Dark Council, will keep our positions and stay in contact with one another, but any acolytes or apprentices will not be made aware of the existence of any larger, organized, order. We each find and teach our own group of acolytes, all completely unaware of the existence of the other groups. Any apprentices or acolytes currently aware of the existence of our order will be ordered to keep that information a secret. We are still the Dark Council, we still rule the Sith Order, but to ensure our security and to make sure our plans are followed through with the least amount of set backs possible, acolytes must be kept in the dark."
Shortly before the incident, just after we recruited the new acolytes, I was contacted by Darth Tenodris, member of the Dark Council, to say that he had come in contact with someone whom may be of interest to us. He described this contact as follows: "she's walking the left hand path and a member of the temple of seth for 9 years. She's a physical trainer, she has published two books and has a personal (mystical) grimoire of 400 pages".
After considering this information, and consulting with both Darth Verum and Darth Nevian, it was decided that we should attempt to establish contact with this individual. As of the time of writing this we have not been able to make contact with this individual and considering that this event transpired months ago, I doubt that will change. However, as a result of this individual being brought to our attention, we, the Dark Council, have begun to consider the idea of creating two new spheres of influence to cover subjects for which the Dark Council is currently lacking in expertise. These two new spheres of influence are the Sphere of Legal Affairs and the Sphere of the Occult and Arcane Studies. The individual's expertise in the areas of the occult are what lead to the idea behind the sphere of the Occult and Arcane Studies, while the sphere of Legal Affairs was created because the council was lacking any formal legal expert. Despite the creation of these new spheres, however, the Dark Council is still lacking anyone with the proper experience to fill these roles. As of the time of writing this, we have three spheres of influence which are without a master, the Sphere of Biotic Science, the Sphere of Legal Affairs, and the Sphere of the Occult and Arcane Studies.
"Vault 7 and Security Protocols" 2017/03/07 – 2017/03/09
Vault 7 was a series of documents that WikiLeaks began to release on March 7th 2017, that detail activities and capabilities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dated from 2013–2016, include details on the agency's software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise smart TVs, web browsers, and the operating systems of most smartphones, as well as other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Upon the discovery of these leaks, Darth Verum, member of the Dark Council, brought it to the council's attention. After a short discussion between Verum and myself regarding how at risk we were of being monitered in such a manner, it was decided that security protocols needed to be drafted in order to ensure that we know exactly what to do should anything close to this level of surveillance be uncovered again in the future, with a much larger effect on us.
I then began the task of creating these security protocols, the first of which was to be directly influenced by the events of Vault 7. Initially I only drafted three security protocols, protocol #1 "Isolation", protocol #2 "Migration", and protocol #3 "Malgus". The first security protocol, "Isolation", details the steps to be taken should the Sith Order, it's goals or it's members, be discovered by hostile entities. The second protocol, "Migration", deals with what to do should the dominant ideological views of the public begin to shift to the other end of the spectrum. And finally the third protocol, "Malgus", details the course of action we, the Sith Order, are to take should anyone from within our organization attempt a coup, or power grab, against the Dark Council.
"Tenodris & Nox" 2017/05/04 – 2017/05/22
On the date of May 4th, 2017, I recruited my second apprentice, Nox. The reason for my interest in Nox was her extensive knowledge in the areas of spirituality and the occult, which the order was lacking. I spent only two weeks training Nox before I felt that she did not fit within the Sith Order, or as my student. And so she was expelled from my service and the Sith Order. Though only a few weeks after this Nox reached out to me once again requesting to be brought back into the order, to which I agreed on the conditions that she start from the bottom as an acolyte, to prove herself worthy in every regard before regaining her standing.
Following shortly after on May 18th, 2017, Darth Tenodris, member of the Dark Council, informed Darth Verum that he no longer had the time or availability to continue with his duties on the Dark Council. Tenodris did, however, state that he and his apprentice, Mystran, would remain as members of the Sith Order and continue to aid our cause in whatever ways they can, when available. With Tenodris off of the Dark Council, Anguish, Verum, and I are the only founding members of the Council to remain active members of it at this time. But the seat, and spheres of influence, Tenodris left behind will still be waiting for his eventual return to the Dark Council, should he ever decide to do so.