Vitiate

"'True power, never dies.'"Tenebrae—known to the Old Sith Empire as Vitiate, his reconstituted Sith Empire as the Sith Emperor, and his Eternal Empire as Valkorion—was an ancient dark side entity of enormous power who manipulated galactic affairs for 1,500 years.

Born in 5113 BBY as the illegitimate Sith son of Lord Dramath, Tenebrae carved a path of destruction across the planet Medriaas, torturing and massacring thousands by the age of ten. When Dramath confronted him, Tenebrae severed his father’s power and imprisoned his spirit for millennia of torment. Eventually, the Dark Lord of the Sith Marka Ragnos recognized Tenebrae's power and christened him as Lord Vitiate—the new ruler of Medriaas. Vitiate renamed the world Nathema and ruled it for the next century, distancing himself from Sith power struggles. Following Naga Sadow’s defeat in the Great Hyperspace War, Vitiate lured the remaining Sith Lords to Nathema and, in an elaborate ritual, drained their life essence and that of the entire planet, increasing his powers and prolonging his life.

Shedding his identity as Lord Vitiate, the self-proclaimed Sith Emperor led the scattered Sith survivors to Dromund Kaas and established a new Sith Empire. As the Empire secretly expanded over the next thousand years, the Emperor discovered the lost world of Zakuul and the Eternal Fleet—an ancient armada of unmatched technology. Dissatisfied with Sith ideology, the Emperor transferred his essence into a Zakuulan warrior named Valkorion and created a vast civilization known as the Eternal Empire. The Emperor desired absolute immortality to fully experience and expand his new creation across galaxies without risk of death, so he plotted to initiate a war between his Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic; the deaths caused by the conflict would fuel a new ritual that would allow him to consume almost everything in the galaxy and become an all-powerful god.

As the Emperor’s plans neared completion, he orchestrated the Mandalorian Wars as a preliminary test invasion of the Republic, but two powerful Jedi Knights—Revan and Malak—defeated the Mandalorians and tracked down his Sith Empire. The Emperor dominated their minds, but the pair soon broke free from his control and betrayed him—and each other—in the resultant Jedi Civil War that nearly destroyed the Jedi Order. Years later, a redeemed Revan, reimprisoned in stasis, waged a mental war against the Emperor, amplifying his fear of death to delay the Great Galactic War by three centuries. When the war finally erupted, the Sith Empire quickly took the offensive, conquered Coruscant, and destroyed the Jedi Temple. However, Revan influenced the Emperor—distracted by the births of his children on Zakuul—to sue for peace instead of pushing forward, prompting the Treaty of Coruscant.

After a decade of uneasy peace, the truce collapsed, and open warfare between the Jedi and Sith resumed. The Emperor attempted to initiate his galaxy-wide ritual, but a powerful Jedi Knight known as the Hero of Tython thwarted his efforts and destroyed his Voice, a host body that encapsulated his essence and power, in battle on Dromund Kaas. His wounded spirit went into slumber on Yavin IV, but a returned and crazed Revan attempted to resurrect the weakened Emperor to a physical form to permanently destroy him. A coalition of Imperial and Republic forces, believing Revan's meddling would result in the Emperor consuming the galaxy, defeated Revan before the ritual began. The Emperor’s spirit nevertheless fed off the battle and reawakened. Rejuvenated, the Emperor consumed the planet of Ziost to return to full power.

Valkorion once more, he revealed the Eternal Empire to the galaxy as his twin sons—Arcann and Thexan—invaded the known galaxy and captured a famous champion later known as the Outlander. Judging the Outlander alone to be a worthy adversary, Valkorion orchestrated his death at the hands of Arcann and embedded his consciousness within the Outlander's mind. Valkorion counseled and shaped the Outlander into a vessel of supreme power as the champion defeated Arcann, then his sister Vaylin, and disabled the Eternal Fleet. Finally, Valkorion revealed his true plan—that he had allowed his children to ravage the galaxy so that, once overthrown by the Outlander, he would take over the champion's body and rule as a heroic liberator. In a final clash of wills, the Outlander, aided by Valkorion's own family, overpowered the ancient entity, sending him into oblivion.

Although not truly dead, Vitiate went into what could be considered a hibernation. His very being was put inside a Sith Holocron, which was later used by the Sith Lord Darth Tylor, thousands of years after his defeat on Zakuul. Tylor used the holocron to further his training, after killing his master Darth Zikkor, to avoid being discovered by the true Sith Lords, as he would be executed for breaking the rule of two.