Website / New Sith Brotherhood

Nothing good ever happens in a Brotherhood.

—Jon Stewart

Site link.

For the better part of a decade, the Sith-themed play-by-post community that ended in late 2018 under the name "New Sith Brotherhood" has seen highs and lows, but a community that brought out the best in a lot of people, to compose compelling characters, who sometimes blurred the lines between hero and villain. A mix of Disney Canon & Legends material, the then-current, overarching metaplot stretches back to a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

33 years after the Battle of Yavin. With the defeat of the Yuuzhan Vong 5 years ago at the hands of the First Order and their superweapon, Starkiller Base, the galaxy attempted to piece itself back together. The New Republic licked its wounds, while other disparate remnants of the old Galactic Empire consolidated power in the Outer Rim, the First Order slowly began to test the might of their enemies, scattering the Jedi Order re-founded by Grand Master Luke Skywalker. It was believed that the First Order's sinister Knights of Ren were the last practitioners of the Dark Side. They were wrong. Hiding in the shadows, a new Sith Order under the command of Palpatine's last Hand, Andor Vaklas, who declared himself the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Groznii. While Groznii's Sith waited out the Vong War, internal strife almost shattered his order, until out of the smoke of the last civil war, came Darth Xaos, whom Groznii's Dark Council anointed his successor when their former master turned insane.

Under Xaos' command, the Sith Order was reborn as the New Sith Brotherhood, setting their sights on galactic liberation, freeing its peoples from all weaknesses. Forging alliances, scattering the Sith's influence all across the galaxy, Xaos' Brotherhood led in secret, the pro-secessionist faction, and spiritual successor to the Confederacy; the Obsidian Union. Drawing their enemies into small skirmishes they could not win, the Obsidian Union dealt their first major blow to their enemies at the Battle of Codia. Using a superweapon of their own, the Sith slaughtered billions in an instant, crippling the Republic Fifth Fleet - it's then-largest attack flotilla, and the First Order's Death Squadron - so-named after Vader's own fleet. War is coming, and evil never dies...

---

This website includes examples of:

• Above Good and Evil: Most members of the Brotherhood consider themselves to be this. Those few that do believe in good and evil think that they’re the ones who decide what qualifies as which.
• Ace Pilot: Reaver, Exolus and Ares are currently the Union's top guns, along with the elite NPC pilots of Razor and Warlord Squadron. There's a couple of pilots who also think they're this, but fail to grasp that a good fighter doesn't equal a good pilot.
• All Your Powers Combined: Characters can, if their Spirit (Force) stat is high enough, combine several individual Force Powers and a skill into a new power with effects derived from all of them. Usually they're balanced out be being either situational or just a straight-up combination of the effects of those powers (such as using Repulse and Lightning at exactly the same time).
• All There in the Manual: A lot of information on past events, organisation of the Union, information on locations and individuals etc is contained in the Fanon section of the site, which form a significant chunk of the core of the site. Most fanon-specific information^note Read as: information unique to the site metaplot and thus not on Wookiepedia is found here.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Soundly averted. Whilst there are certainly some despicable individuals around (mostly NPCs), the Sith in their current incarnation are considerably nicer than most of the Sith that have come before, and a lot more complex than the "power for power's sake" view of many prior generations.
  • Which is one of the primary reasons that they're having so much success. That, and their increased emphasis on teamwork.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: In-universe, are these heroic crusaders fighting the tyranny of the Galactic Alliance (usually claimed by people brainwashed by propaganda or brought over to the Union's side by GA action) or ruthless killers just trying to slaughter control of the Galaxy as most Sith do (most not in the former camp)?
• And I Must Scream: Higher-level Brotherhood members are fond of subjecting people they don't like to this. See the characters page for more specific examples.
• Anti-Hero: Varies from individual to individual, but definitely present.
• Anti-Villain: Again, varies.
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account:
  • This is generally the case with Sith Lords, who fairly often throw around large sums of money without batting an eye. Justified in that Lords, due to their Influences path ability, usually have colossal interstellar corporations (like Kuat Drive Yards or Corellian Engineering Corporation) to pull obscene amounts of money out of^note KDY, for example, once dropped enough money on the Corporate Sector (50 quadrillion credits) to cover the cost of over 3 billion Imperial Star Destroyers, going by the figures on Wookiepedia.
  • Averted in the case of the Union itself. They do have a fair bit of cash (mostly due to the membership of planets like Lianna and Dac/Mon Calamari), but most of it is spent on lighter-class ships like patrol cruisers (so they can't afford many heavier ships), and the Galactic Alliance still has funding numerous orders of magnitude above the Union's.
  • The Hutts generally play this straight (with enough cash to build up a strong frigate-based Navy of their own), but this is also justified as the Hutts are canonically exceedingly wealthy (and do build up a fleet in canon after the Yuuzhan Vong War).
• Awesome by Analysis:
  • Everyone of Knight level and above. Once you reach level 7 and are Knighted, you can't receive training anymore. Whilst you can (and often will) receive points in certain skills or powers as mission rewards, the vast majority of your skills from that point on are going to be learned and upgraded using skill points, perks, force power points etc. Everyone is effectively teaching themselves (to potentially enormous levels of skill in certain areas) from level 7 on.
  • Some people make this the point of their fighting style; Exolus, for example, deliberately leaves holes in his defence to draw his enemies in and block those when he's outmatched. Others can look at look at a battle and come up with a plan on the spot.
  • This is also a path ability for the Warlord Master Path: Deconstruct Enemy. By analysing an enemy commander's stratagems and tactics, they're able to gain a comprehensive understanding of the individual in question, as well as figure out their tactical strengths and weaknesses.
• Back from the Dead: Warlord Zsinj in the site's backstory. This didn't last; he died alongside his master Groznii at the end of the First Schism.
• Badass Army:
  • Pretty much the whole point of the Sith Warlord Master path. This currently consists of the Jaig Legion (Darth Reaver), with another being created (the New Alderaanian Defence Initiative, under Darth Ares).
  • A former member of the site had one (Lady Vidia's Wachetroopers), and destroying them was a major part of a past site-wide.
  • The Chiss Ascendancy's Automated Droid Armies as well, despite being droids. The Chiss themselves also qualify, but they rarely see action. The upcoming Swarm War is likely to change this.
• Badass Normal: A lot of NPCs, especially personal lieutenants and minions. One of the main rules is that none of them can be force-sensitive, yet it's possible (though difficult) for them to go toe-to-toe with a player-character and then win.
• Bad Future: These are occasional premises for unofficial missions; there have been at least two in the site's history, with different divergence points. They're usually only bad from the perspective of the player characters though.
• Bad Guy Bar: The Condor Club. Leave your sanity at the door and take nothing inside as canon unless explicitly stated to do so.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Though they haven’t made too many appearances thus far, the One Sith make the New Sith Brotherhood seem a lot nicer by comparison. This also applies to any group of Sith who aren’t part of the Brotherhood.
• Boring Yet Practical: Pretty much every piece of equipment the Union uses. As opposed to the Empire which preceded it, the Union doesn't have access to a galaxy of resources to spew out superweapons and terror symbols, so they usually have to make do with whatever they can get their hands on. Their tech is slowly improving as time goes by though, due to increases in territory and new alliances.

• Chekhov's Armoury: Dol Gorath, a hidden world containing an arsenal of weapons and war machines left over from a bunch of Sith smashed by the Union's (at the time) Chiss Allies during the First Schism. Darth Ares and Lady Hecate uncovered it and the large quantities of vehicles and weapons it housed in its cache, a major boon to the severely under-equipped Federal Military.

• Command Roster:
  • Ignoring individual ships, Union Military Hierarchy goes thusly◊.
  • Political hierarchy, meanwhile, goes like this◊.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: An actual mechanic with the minions that the Lords gain; the smaller the amount of minions you have compared to how many you can have, the better the minions. If you have, say, 6 minions out of a possible 55, those 6 are going to be extremely skilled individuals, whereas if you have all 55 most of them will simply be cannon fodder.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Many, many, many. Individual characters frequently reference past events that happened in both their own personal storylines, and to the wider community. Larger site events, such as site-wides, usually have resounding effects and link to later or previous site-wides. Then there's little in-jokes in dialogue and descriptions that will go over your head if you don't recognise the reference. References to canon are also plentiful, especially when canon characters are involved. Some of the more noticeable examples:
  • Wedge, seeing the Union deploy an Eclipse-class Super Star Destroyer, wishes that Artoo was around to destroy it like last time.
  • A group of Sun Guard^note Who get the most screentime in Darth Plagueis, set up shop in Wraith Squadron's old Hawk-bat base, which Vanno visits. The same mission also featured a planet in the first Rogue Squadron novel where the New Republic dumped a small Imperial ship (as well as the ship itself), and the Mandalorian base on Dxun, which has become a heritage site for the Mandalorians.
  • When faced with the emergence of an enormous load of biomechanical horrors, Reaver comments that it might be related to the Blacklight virus (and fortunately is wrong). Reaver as a character makes more references to canon events than most.
  • The New Bethrezen Opera House features Palpatine, a grueling seven-hour play retelling the life of the eponymous character. The first few hours are essentially a (highly musical) retelling of Darth Plagueis.
  • The Death of Darth Xaos, being both the longest single piece of writing on the site and told almost entirely from Luke's perspective, has a huge number of its own. Notably:
    • Luke mentally recalls Mara's analogy of being unable to hear the sound of birds in a factory from the Hand of Thrawn duology.
    • When he needs to slip into Union space, he uses an old freighter that previously appeared only in Star by Star.
    • Jacen Solo taking Luke's son Ben on a camping trip to Endor is mentioned. This is notable because a) it actually happens about a year earlier than in canon, and b) actually happens, whereas in canon it's a lie Jacen makes up to cover a trip to Hapes.
    • When trying to pass as a member of the Union's Dark Disciples, Luke completes the disguise by styling his facial expression to look like a Hutt with eyebrows.
    • Luke and Xaos' final duel happens in the statue room of Bast Castle on Vjun, and the statue is still there (albeit in pieces). The statue and castle previously appeared in both Dark Empire and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. Kyle Katarn also brings up his visit to Vjun in Jedi Academy when the location is first brought up.
  • A subtle example. A short story detailing Lumiya's actions in the background of an event was titled "Dark Star Rising". The story that incorporated Lumiya as a formal part of canon, rather than the lesser-canon of the Marvel comics she originally appeared in, was titled "Lumiya: Dark Star of the Empire".
• Cool Ship: Being that this is Star Wars, there's a lot of these; however, special mention needs to go to the Ascendancy-class Destroyers. Based off of an entry to EVE Online's design-a-ship contest, they're basically flying railguns designed solely to tackle larger targets (up to Cruiser classification, with escort).
• Crapsack World: Debatable at this point, but if things keep going the way they are people will either have a choice between the Galactic Alliance, which is slowly but surely turning tyrannical due to the war with the Union, or the Union itself, which is run by Sith and has legalised areas such as drug, arms and narcotics trades, and member planets are run as the planets see fit, meaning they can freely turn into dictatorships and no-one will do a thing.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Following on from established precedent in canon (most notably Darth Vader himself), cyborg characters receive a large penalty to their Spirit (Force) stat.
• Darker and Edgier: NSB has some peers in the Star Wars Extended Universe in terms of darkness and edginess, but not many.

• Depending on the Writer: The characterisation of Jedi varies between mission runners, usually ranging from Jedi in-name-only (they're more like the stereotypical, brutish image of Sith) that attack the Sith on-sight, to the real deal who approach the Sith diplomatically, attempt to persuade them back to the Light Side and don't attack first.
• Determinator: Take the iron will perk, and you become this.

• Enemy Civil War: Or, more accurately, Protagonist Civil War; lots of those. The New Sith Order went through four different Sith Schisms before being reformed into the New Sith Brotherhood. There was nearly a fifth when Darth Byss planned to seize power in the aftermath of the Fourth Schism but, in the fashion of a true Starscream, the plan fell flat on its ass. And nearly again when Lady Vidia tried to replace Xaos (whose death she had helped arrange) but failed to gain sufficient support amongst the Sith to truly cause a Schism. There have also been two Obsidian Union Civil Wars, the first of which was the same conflict as the Fourth Sith Schism while the second was the same as the second almost-Schism.
• Enemy Mine:
  • The roots of the Obsidian Union came from Xaos convincing several planets that the Galactic Alliance wasn't all that great. Things snowballed from there.
  • The Jedi and Sith have teamed up on a few sparse instances against a greater threat. Notably, it's usually individuals or small groups teaming up; the largest team-up, which was House Xaos and a group under Luke Skywalker himself, had an incredible amount of friction for its duration, whereas smaller groups usually run a lot smoother.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Humans aren’t the majority in the Brotherhood, just the largest minority. In the Union as a whole it’s doubtful that they’re even that. The current Dark Lord not only isn’t human but is a member of a species that only recently returned from the brink of extinction. This is a big change from how things were under Palpatine.
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: Both averted and played straight. New Bethrezen has lights which imitate natural sunlight...yet its Sith Temple never seems to get any of it.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: Though the Brotherhood would likely take issue with this phrasing, this is the goal of the New Sith Brotherhood’s founding document: the Code of Brotherhood. Interestingly, this is both played straight and averted, with the brotherhood often fighting other Dark Side force users.
• Evil Overlord:
  • The Sith in general, from almost all viewpoints.
  • The Lords in particular. Whereas most classes get physical (combat, force etc) skills at higher levels, Lords tend more towards influence and command, gaining minions to control and developing influence over planets of their choosing. Warlords can probably be considered the epitome of the examples on the site, commanding armies of their own as well as holding high positions within the Union Hierarchy.
• Evil Versus Evil: There have been five Civil Wars so far, spurred on by real life events. See below.
• Face–Heel Turn: These are Sith. Regardless of their current incarnation, it comes with the territory. One of the worst, in-character and out, was Lady Vidia's ^note In character, the Union lost one of its most critical members (the direct point of contact for most planets and the Commander-in-Chief of all armed forces, save for the Dark Lord themself) which resulted in multiple planets seceding, another civil war and a long period of rebuilding and politicking afterwards. Out-of-character, her actions nearly resulted in the loss of the entire site (fortunately, the two most important parts, the site fanon and character bios, were preserved) and triggered its own long period of rebuilding., and all of the schisms in the site's history, both IC and OOC, have been caused by a backstab of some kind.

• From Nobody to Nightmare: A sizable number of Sith start off with fairly inconspicuous backgrounds or upbringings, most of them not being particularly famous in their past. Give them a few years and they'll be pretty high up on the Galactic Alliance's shoot-on-sight list.
• The Heretic: The Brotherhood applies this to anyone who claims to be a Sith but doesn’t agree with its principles. These individuals in turn apply it to the Brotherhood.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The Galactic Alliance. The emergence of the Obsidian Union means the post-Yuuzhan Vong-war galaxy has turned out very different, and whilst this accelerated the happening of several events (such as Natasi Daala's appointment to Chief-of-State), the War with the Union is slowly causing the Alliance to turn into the tyrants the Union claim them to be.

• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Inquisitors get a bonus to their intimidation stat if they decide to get less civil in their persuasions.
• Knight Templar: The Inquisitorius is an organization of Jedi hunters given carte blanche to slay or convert their foes by any means necessary. The highest members can even call down an Exterminatus, the mass execution without trial of a particular group of a planet's inhabitants the inquisitor suspects have fallen under the sway of the Jedi.
• Life Drain: Surprisingly averted; no characters actually have the Drain Life Force power, despite it being one of the more symbolic Dark Side powers.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • Sith Architects are the epitome of this trope: as opposed to Warlords (who focus on leading armies) and Priest-Kings (who take a religious angle), Architects have huge webs of contacts, influences and resources across the Galaxy, running their operations from the shadows and controlling their puppets using whatever proxy method they need.
  • There is, of course, the Dark Lord himself, and arguably the Dark Side Spirits in this Fanon as well (Xaos certainly could be argued to still be running the Union from beyond the grave).

• Mêlée à Trois:
  • Union vs Alliance vs One Sith (who are mostly fighting the Brotherhood from the shadows).
  • Not to mention Lumiya is currently running about. Doing what, nobody knows; she's not even slated to turn up in canon for another 4 years or so.
• Monologuing: Bigger villains (like site-wide bosses) are fond of this. More savvy members of the Brotherhood usually go on the offensive the moment they go to draw breath if the GM gives them the chance.
• Mood Whiplash: Due to varying levels of seriousness between characters and players, there's the occasional instance of this, sometimes in the same character. It can be very disconcerting to go from one character hacking up the body of his opponent and charring the pieces with lightning to make sure he's dead, to that same character dancing like Michael Jackson in Thriller a few months later.
• Mutually Exclusive Magic: Sith Sorcery/Alchemy and Elemental Magic. No class is capable of using both. Not even the philosopher's stone abilities of one of the Acolyte master paths, which lets them use any force power untrained, can let them use the elemental magic of the witches/warlocks, and likewise, the witches/warlocks are unable to use Sith Sorcery or Alchemy. This creates a sizable dose of tension between the Acolytes and the Witches/Warlocks.
• '90s Anti-Hero:
  • Though almost never played straight (no-one bothers with excessive pouches or suffers from Youngblood’s disease, many of the Union-aligned characters can be seen as Reconstructions of this trope. The current Dark Lord, Darth Lucifer, fits it rather well; being a muscle-bound badass who does not hesitate to kill in battle (often in grizzly ways) and is named after the Devil. He may have also been influenced by Judge Dredd, who is himself a prototypical example. Lucifer’s predecessor, Darth Xaos, may have lacked the action-movie influenced traits of a Nineties Anti-Hero but still has more than a few shades of it. Sporting a shaved head and goatee coupled with a name starting with ‘X’ are just the most superficial of these traits. Xaos managed to couple absolutely ruthless ambition and a sadistic streak a mile wide with enough positive effects on the Galaxy in such a way as to easily qualify. Lucifer’s distant relative and bitter rival, Darth Exolus, also meets many of the requirements nicely. He’s done *many* questionable or outright atrocious things (including matricide) but always in the name of his people’s benefit. Though one gets the sense that “his” is more important than “people” in that sentence. And anyone who has paid more than five seconds of attention to him doesn’t need to be told why Darth Reaver fits this trope. Some, such as Darth Ares and Darth Drakonis, manage to avert it though.
  • If the male version of this trope is prevalent among Sith then its feminine version is nigh unto universal. Thus far Darth Amorata and Darth Niamh are the only ones to have averted it completely. Admittedly, the absurd, Liefeldian anatomies and beyond-scandalous outfits are dialed back to a more reasonable level (we did say ‘Reconstruction’, remember) but one has to imagine that the Brotherhood’s ladies have gotten used to dropped jaws. In fact, Lady Vidia’s early characterization was strongly influenced by Sara Pezzini, perhaps *the* archetypal Nineties Anti-Heroine.
  • Maybe this trope is so common simply because it’s a natural consequence to portraying the Sith as anything more sympathetic than Villain Protagonists or possibly because many site members grew up during the era when this character type was most popular. Either way, you can’t swing a dead Nexu without hitting a dozen player-characters and non-player characters that qualify.
• Orcus on His Throne: The Force Ghosts of the dead Dark Lords. As of Darth Xaos’ funeral it’s official Brotherhood doctrine that one needs their blessing to be Dark Lord. Some are actively involved in furthering the Sith cause in the world of the living but most prefer to lounge about in Chaos waiting for sacrifice and worship.
• People's Republic of Tyranny:
  • The Obsidian Union’s idea of freedom basically boils down to the Sith being free to dominate the Galaxy.
  • The Galactic Alliance is slowly but surely turning into this as well (and actually fits the trope better as its full title is the ‘Galactic Federation of Free Alliances’).
• Plot Armor: The basic rule for killing Canon characters is that their killability is directly inversely proportional to how many people have heard of them. Big name characters like Luke, Han, Leia, C-3PO and R2-D2 are unkillable (they can be beaten in combat though), whereas most other canon characters, whilst much tougher than the average opponent depending on their rough popularity, are mortal.
• Red Baron:
  • Higher level characters are fond of giving themselves titles; Lucifer is the "Lord of War", Reaver the "Lord of Battle", Exodus is "Emperor Narat" or "His Royal Highness" etc etc etc.
  • A couple of high-level Union positions also fall into this, such as "Scourge".
• Retcon: A couple of minor ones here and there to make things more sensible, such as retconning the flagship of a former Sith Lord (Darth Nefarious) from an Imperium-class Ultra Star Destroyer (ridiculously implausible fanon ship) to a much more reasonable Sovereign-class Super Star Destroyer.

• Ring World Planet: New Bethrezen, an enormous torus located in the orbit of a remote gas giant in a, strategically and resource-wise, worthless solar system that serves as the headquarters of the Obsidian Union.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment:
  • The Union and GA respectively. Of course, both governments represent a somewhat cynical take on the inevitable results of their respective philosophies (see People’s Republic of Tyranny).
  • "Acting upon our own moral convictions and the principles of equality and compassion that guided the Old Republic, the Alliance has accomplished its lofty goals. … The New Republic is dedicated to liberty, freedom and justice for all beings in the Galaxy. The New Republic is sworn to be fair, virtuous and honest, for it was the corruption of the Old Republic that was fertile ground for the seeds of tyranny..." –from the Declaration of a New Republic.
  • "The peoples of the Galaxy are no longer willing to permit their traditional ways of life, which are founded in their respective natures and the products of generations of struggle, to be overwritten by the grey, lifeless and contrived theories of a handful of coreward intellectuals." –from the Articles of Dissolution.
• Running Gag:
  • True to Star Wars fashion, the words "I've got a bad feeling about this" are usually uttered at least once per mission.
  • There's one Krayt Dragon on Tatooine that's been used to teach about five different people Force Speed by sending them deep into the cave and making them use Force Speed to escape it.
• Space Pirates: The Union loves these, providing them with safe haven and pointing them at the Galactic Alliance to harass and raid as much as they please. Most pirates in the Union have unified under the banner of the Brotherhood of Independent Traders, which is also tasked with controlling the flow of traffic and people to and from New Bethrezen, the Union's secret capital.
• The Starscream:
  • A whole truck load. Most recently there was Lady Vidia; the wife of Dark Lord Xaos who ensured that Luke Skywalker got the information he needed to slay the immortal Xaos. She assumed she could then seize control of the New Sith Brotherhood and Obsidian Union but failed due to being unable to attract any allies amongst the Brotherhood.
  • Darth Nefarious only slightly fits this trope since he declared himself Dark Lord in defiance of the Sith Council rather than betraying a single Big Bad. The treachery and eventual failure of his power grab means he does fit it somewhat, however.
  • Darth Raziel and Darth Unrivaled could be seen as Well-Intentioned Extremist variations of this trope. Convinced he had achieved an understanding of the Force beyond that of other Sith, Raziel declared himself the leader of a new group called the Sith’ar and sought to wipe out “unenlightened” Sith. His followers consisted of his apprentices, Darth Unrivaled, Unrivaled’s apprentices and much of the Union’s military (up until then commanded by Unrivaled). The conflict initiated by this is variously called the Sith’ar Heresy, the Fourth Sith Schism and the First Union Civil War and lead to the reformation of the New Sith Order as the New Sith Brotherhood.
  • However, the character from NSB’s metaplot that fits this trope so well as to make its namesake seem trustworthy is Darth Byss. A Yuuzhan Vong with an absurdly low Presence Stat of three, Byss never made any secret of his desire for absolute power. When the Code of Brotherhood was issued after the Fourth Schism in order to turn the Sith into one, big, happy evil family it rubbed Byss’ (type four) Social Darwinism the wrong way. He immediately set about planning a take over. Said plan was immediately uncovered and he was forced to flee with his followers in tow. They then founded their own Sith group which very quickly fell apart due to infighting.
  • The members of the first Sith Council averted this trope by being successful in their overthrow of Darth Groznii (except for those who would go on to have it applied to them later).

• Villain Protagonist: They're Sith. They might debate the villain part, but Word of God says the dark side is evil.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Force Illusion, with a high enough rank in the power, can be used to outright kill people with weak enough minds. There's also a school of Sith Magic which is essentially Force Illusion ramped up to eleven, which also qualifies.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The Union. Propanganda paints them as heroic liberators against the corrupt totalitarian regime of the Galactic Alliance. Woe to the poor soul who actually believes this is true.

---