Sith

The Sith are one of the many villainous Star Wars factions. They practice the Dark Side of the Force.

During the Clone Wars, there were known to be only two, a master and an apprentice, a practice created after the New Sith War by Darth Bane. Before the the Great Sith War era, the Sith Order, like its Jedi counterpart, had hundreds of thousands of members. However, after the devastation visited upon the order by Republic forces, Bane, one of the last survivors of this period, devised this Rule of Two. The Rule stated that there could be no more than two true members of the Sith Order, there could only be a master and his apprentice. This doctrine allowed the order to strengthen and hide from the Republic for centuries until there existence was revealed during the Invasion of Naboo.

It would be during this Invasion that Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul would do battle and ultimately die as the Trade Federation influenced by Maul's master Sidious fought against Republic taxation policies. After Maul's apparent death, former Jedi Master Dooku became Sidious' new apprentice gathering the unhappy corporate forces in the Republic into a Separatist Confederacy which launched a war for galactic dominance.