Characters / Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords - The Sith Triumvirate

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Sith Lords

The Sith Triumvirate

In General

• Ambiguous Situation: Darth Traya's whole reason for starting the Sith Triumvirate, as the actions of Nihilus and Sion around the time Traya first meets the Exile seem to contradict her philosophies. It is possible she wanted to lead the Sith in a new, less self-destructive path, but Nihilus and Sion's devotion to the ancient Sith's dogmatic enmity towards the Jedi seems to have overridden whatever plans she may have had.
• Badass Army: One of the most dangerous and powerful Dark Side factions known at this point, probably more than Malak's Sith Empire given the massed force of leaders like Nihilus.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: By the point they find the Exile, the Triumvirate has lost its title quality and is now led by Nihilus and Sion, with the latter having the aspiration to betray the former some day.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: The Sith Empire led by Darth Malak was a traditional Sith horde, focused on sweeping the galaxy and destroying every enemy in sight. In contrast, the Sith Triumvirate works secretly, roaming the galaxy without claiming territory, and employs stealth, terrorism and assassinations rather than open conquest, at least at first. They are still fearsome when faced directly, though, an have a private army of soldiers as well as Sith acolytes. In this way, they serve as a potential inspiration (or at least foreshadowing) for the Order of the Sith Lords from the films, who ultimately succeed in destroying the Jedi.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Out of the three Sith Lords, Sion is the fighter, being a bruiser effectively unable to die physically; Nihilus is the mage, as he uses mainly his Force abilities and his very existence is sustained by them; and Traya is the thief, being underhanded and an expert on techniques that hide one's presence in the Force.
• Elite Mooks: The Triumvirate's Sith Assassins are lethal to Jedi, and their regular Sith Masters and Acolytes are not any less dangerous.
• Knight of Cerebus: In the story of the first and second games, even after the defeat of Darth Malak, the arrival of the Sith Triumvirate marked the instance in which everything went outright downhill for the side of good. By the beginning of the game, the Triumvirate has already almost succeeded where Malak failed and has annihilated the Jedi Order to the point only a few remain.
• Malevolent Masked Men: All of its members, except Sion, Traya and the army officers, wear some kind of mask or head-obscuring helmet.
• Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio: Sion is a barechested musclebound man, Traya is a dignified lady, and Nihilus' gender is entirely hidden by his attire and his very nature (although officially male).
• Motive Decay: Whatever the reason Darth Traya founded the Triumvirate for was, it was dropped when she was kicked out of the group.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: A discrete Sith faction acting for the Dark Side across the galaxy.
• Putting on the Reich: The Sith officers they inherited from the Sith Empire keep their grey uniforms and caps.
• The Remnant: A lot of their military forces come from previous Sith factions, specifically Darth Revan's Sith Empire. Otherwise averted, as their ideology and goals are quite different from Revan's. Ironically enough, they are also led by Revan's master.
• The Spook: While Malak and his cronies were working openly and with public aspirations to rule the galaxy, the Sith Triumvirate's sole existence as a faction remains unknown to the Republic and the heroes until well into the game, who are initially unsure of what they are exactly fighting against. The background reveals that the Jedi Order was somewhat aware that the Sith forces hunting them down were led by a new enemy, but Atris' dangerous plan to draw the latter out ended up ironically ensuring the knowledge almost died with them.
• Terrible Trio: The Triumvirate was originally commanded by Traya and her two apprentices. Later subverted when they kick her out, becoming a Big Bad Duumvirate.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: This might have been the reason why Traya founded the Triumvirate. Even afterwards, however, Sion seems to have his own philosophical reasons for what he does. Nihilus, on the other hand, has no noble illusions about what he does and roams the galaxy seeking nothing but sustenance to stave off his eternal hunger.
• Wrong Context Magic: In contrast to most Sith Lords, all three of their leaders are a perversion of the Force in some way, which makes them extremely dangerous to other Force users.

Darth Sion

Darth Sion

"...he is not a beast of flesh and blood."

Species: Human

Homeworld: Unknown

Voiced by: Louis Mellis (English), Patrick Borg (French)

"To have fallen so far and learned nothing: that is your failing."

— Darth Traya

The Lord of Pain, and leader of the Sith Assassins. Sion was once a pupil of Kreia's, but came to view her as weak and turned from her teachings. He is capable from recovering from any injury, but cannot actually heal his wounds. As a result, he lives in constant agony, kept alive by channeling his anguish and fury into raw power through the dark side.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: For a female Exile. Downplayed a bit, as while Sion is physically unappealing, it is more in a battle scarred and undead way as opposed to just plain ugliness. He is also not overt in his affections and, is in fact, frustrated by them.
• Alas, Poor Villain: As evil as he is, his condition is bound to generate some pity. Especially when you try to convince him to let go. At the end, he's happy.
• Always Someone Better: Comes to see the Exile as this, especially in regards to Kreia.
• Apologetic Attacker: When confronting the female Exile on Malachor, he doesn’t seem particularly happy at the thought of killing her, judging from his dialogue.
• The Apprentice: To Darth Traya, like Nihilus, though with the difference that he never completely left her influence even though he tried: he's obsessed with proving he is not a failure of a pupil.
• Badass Boast: Runs on these. Justified, since his strength comes from his belief in his own power as much as anything.
  Darth Sion: I can die a hundred times, Exile, and still I will rise again, as strong as before.
• Bald of Evil: His scars seem to have prevented him from growing hair.
• The Battle Didn't Count: When you fight him on Korriban. After you beat him, he acts like nothing happened in the cutscene afterwords. Justified since as long as he's holding his body together with the Force, you can't kill him. If an exploding starship wasn't enough to kill him, then you certainly aren't going to.
• Being Evil Sucks: The final confrontation with Sion can make it clear that he doesn't really enjoy his immortal, yet painful existence.
  The Exile: What kind of life have you lived with the Force flowing through you? Was it worth living?
  Darth Sion: It... it was not. No matter how many I killed... there was no end to the pain... the blades the Force tore through my flesh.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Darth Nihilus for most of the game until Kreia reclaims her mantle of Darth Traya and becomes the Big Bad for the remainder of the game.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Downplayed. He's not harmless by any means, but he does get upstaged by Nihilus and Kreia/Darth Traya.
• Body Horror: His body is literally in pieces, every bone broken, every muscle torn, skin scorched or rotted or torn off, and he is still alive. He feels it every waking moment. Only his will, fed by his pain, keeps him together.
• Broken Pedestal: Seems to see Darth Revan as this if one dialogue option on Malachor is anything to go by.
• The Brute: Subverted. He is the most physical, brutal and hands-on of the Triumvirate, and works as a squad leader of Sith assassins for both Traya and Nihilus. However, he sees himself as The Dragon instead, and is determined to prove he's much more than a glorified hitman.
• Card-Carrying Villain: The Dark Side is what he is.
• Combat Sadomasochist: He's been horribly tortured and mutilated in all manner of ways, but, rather than trying to avoid pain, he embraces it, as he feels it makes him stronger.
• Death by Depower: When he stops using his Dark Side powers, he succumbs to his lifetime of injuries and instantly dies.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Darth Vader expies present throughout all Star Wars media. What do you get when you strip away Vader's cool armor and focus on the man himself? You get an ugly, miserable man in constant pain that must obey a Sith Lord more powerful than him to survive. Sidious for Vader, and Nihilus and Kreia/Darth Traya for Sion. Darth Sion shows that Vader may look cool, but being like him would suck.
• Demoted to Dragon: A variation. During the end game, after Nihilus dies, he becomes Kreia's Dragon... again.
• Determinator: His body should be dead, but Sion remains alive through sheer will and the power of the Dark Side.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Says this to the female Exile during their duel on Malachor during one of his many attempts to dissuade her from reaching Kreia.
• Dumb Muscle: Subverted. He is definitely not a scholar, especially in a game filled of those, and all of his feats are physical in nature. He also looks like a musclehead, being buff, brutal and perennially barechested, and even his lines imply he is a bit of an anti-intellectualist, as he disdains both Kreia's musings and the Exile's enlightening. However, as Master Vash learned the hard way, Sion is still far from stupid, and is as a competent as his rank on top of his army suggests. His dialogue on Malachor V also suggests he has his own Visionary Villain streak, implying that it’s less anti-intellectualism as much as inflexibility and an unwillingness to accept new ideas.
• Duel Boss: The second fight with him on Malachor V.
• Enlightened Antagonist: Might not look like it, but the influence of Darth Traya is clearly there in this. It turns out Sion has his own philosophy about how to "heal" the galaxy. He's also shown meditating, which is something not many Sith in the franchise like to do.
• Ethnic Magician: Inverted. While most Jedi and Sith in Star Wars are canonically inspired by Eastern philosophy and aesthetics, Sion has a lot of elements that evoke Judeo-Christianity instead. Not only is his very name that of the Land of Israel, he meditates in a very Western Prayer Pose (on his knees, with his hands clasped) instead of the typical Lotus Position of most other Jedi and Sith, and his scarred body evokes the Christian practice of mortification of the flesh.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Basically the root of his anger with Revan as well as a male Exile; he is legitimately confused as to why both of them rejected power instead of embracing it.
• Expy: His physical appearance greatly resembles the Nameless One and he has practically the same condition. They're both horribly disfigured immortals. Are both shirtless. Sion has one dead eye and The Nameless One can re-attach one of his. And the way Sion can finally die is fairly similar to one of The Nameless One's possible endings: willing himself out of existence.
• Even Evil Has Standards: When meeting him for the final time, he tells the Exile to turn around and leave, even if it means being killed on the surface, as even that's better than facing Kreia. What the hell did Kreia do to The Lord of Pain to freak him so much that he wouldn't want the same on others?!
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Another one to the Jedi Exile, more clearly than Nihilus. Both are former Jedi who were taught by Kreia. However, the Exile is a being who was stripped of the Force or more accurately, cut themselves off of it, but eventually learned to live fully without it and carry on for a higher purpose. Kreia considers her the embodiment of her teachings and hope for the galaxy. Meanwhile, Sion clings to the Force to sustain his life, even if it means having to exist as a barely-living revenant in perpetual agony bound to his desire for power. Kreia considers him a complete failure useless as anything but a tool.
  • He's also one to Atton in some ways, in that both are Determinators who can repeatedly get back up from normally mortal injuries.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Speaks in a deep, harsh, sepulchral voice, befitting a walking corpse. The Scottish accent might catch you by surprise, though.
• Eviler than Thou: He ends up on the losing end of this to Traya, losing to her when he challenges her. She terrifies him so much that he decides to fully submit to her will.
• Fan Disservice: He is pretty muscled, has a manly voice, and clearly looks like he used to be a ruggedly attractive man before his current state (and uniquely for a human Star Wars character, he goes around perpetually shirtless). However, his skin is now basically shattered scar tissue, one of his eyes is blind, and a big chunk of skin around it is lacking, all of which makes him everything but desirable.
• Fate Worse than Death: His life is this, being in constant horrible pain from innumerable injuries that should have been lethal. Except the sheer agony of it fuels his Dark Side powers and keeps him going. Convincing him that his life is this is necessary to beat him, at which point he simply just lets go and finally dies.
• Foil:
  • To the Exile, who rejected voluntarily the Force and proved it is possible to live normally without it, while Sion is unable to do the same because he needs it to merely exist.
  • To a lesser extent, to Kreia. Both of them depend on the Force to perform basic body functions, but Kreia is an intellectual Jedi always hidden under her robe, while Sion is a brutish Sith who spends all his time flaunting his horrifying body.
• Genius Bruiser: Downplayed. He's no Kreia in terms of intellect and philosophy, but assuming he's just a dumb brute is a mistake you won't live to regret. Master Vash found that out the hard way.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: If ever there were a posterboy for Evil Scars, it's Sion: his entire body is nothing but scar tissue and open wounds.
• Go Out with a Smile: Regardless of which side you're on, he's happy when he finally accepts death.
• The Heavy: He's the far more visible, physical counterpart to Darth Nihilus' shadowy, mystical Evil Overlord.
• Immortality Hurts: He can't die and his body can put itself together from practically any damage. When we say "put itself together", we mean it literally: an autopsy done on him on a Republic ship describes him as basically a corpse that's been torn to shreds and then re-assembled piece-by-piece. Every bone in his body has been broken in practically every way possible, his flesh is little but ragged, dead scraps, and his skin consists of nothing but scar tissue. By any normal medical standards, he's practically a corpse already. Sion practically revels in how much it hurts as the pain fuels his Dark Side powers enough to make him nigh-immune to any further injury. At least, until you weaken his will and convince him to willingly die.
• Implacable Man: While he is highly skilled, he can be defeated in battle. It just doesn't help the opponent. No matter how badly he's beaten, he just draws on the power of the Dark Side to pull his broken, decaying body back together through sheer force of will and is back in the fight moments later. It doesn't matter how skilled the opponent is, he'll keep rising until he eventually wins through sheer attrition.
  Kreia: This is not a battle that can be won. Flee.
• The Juggernaut: You face him three times, and the first two you have to flee because you have no hope of actually beating him, because pain actually fuels his Dark Side powers and makes him stronger. Only a literal case of Talking the Monster to Death will finally get him to die for real.
• Kill the Ones You Love: In their final fight before the Exile reaches the center of Malachor, Sion will attempt to kill both Exiles for different reasons. For a male Exile, it is out of envy and hatred, but for a female Exile, Sion will first attempt to convince her to leave (which in his mind would also end in her death but at least in one where she won't suffer), and when that fails, tries this trope in order to spare her the horrible fate that awaits both genders.
• The Kirk: He's this in the Freudian Trio between him, Nihilus and Traya, balancing between the former's destructiveness and the latter's complexity.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Considered to be this by Kreia, who views his dependence on the Force to survive as a weakness.
• Last Words:
  Darth Sion: I am glad to leave this place... at last.
• Love at First Sight: For a female Exile, best seen when comparing his reaction to the Exile fleeing their first fight. For a male, Sion is indignant at the protection he receives, orders his men to hunt the Exile down, and swears that he will not escape next time. But with a female, Sion calls his men off from any pursuit or attack, saying the Exile has earned her retreat, and that they will meet again.
• Made of Evil: The Dark Side keeps him alive and he would likely fall apart if he tried the light side.
• Meaningful Name: His name is derived from the word "scion." He is envious of the Exile for being favored by Traya.
• Mythology Gag: Echoing Darth Vader's classic line from Empire:
  Darth Sion: [to Darth Traya] What is thy bidding, my master?
• Nigh-Invulnerability: He should already be dead, so he has trouble dying. Not even being on an exploding starship is enough to kill him. The only way to kill him is to convince him his life is not worth living, at which point he just stops using the Dark Side of the Force to hold his necrotic body together.
• Not Helping Your Case: Leaving Lonna Vash's corpse on display in a cage and hunting the Exile throughout the Academy won't make her listen to you about Kreia, Sion.
• Old Soldier: According to the expanded universe, Sion is quite a veteran, having served under Exar Kun, later formed part of Revan's and Malak's Sith Empire, and finally been a founding member of the Sith Triumvirate.
• Our Liches Are Different: For all intents and purposes, he's a sentient corpse animated only by his Force powers.
• Out of Focus: During the mid-game, he only appears on one (optional) planet, Korriban. After that, he has no impact on the plot again until Malachor.
• Outside-Context Problem: For all the conventional Jedi (and Sith) he faced, Sion was a unique foe - an effectively immortal warrior, who would always rise up again not matter how many times he would be cut down. As the only way to nullify his power was exploiting the emotional turmoil caused to him by the return of Traya, up to that point Sion was basically impossible to defeat.
• Pet the Dog: Bizarrely enough, to a female Exile. When the Exile defeats him temporarily on Korriban, instead of the utter rage you get with a male Exile, he accepts his temporary defeat and even orders his assassins to not harm her. He expresses a degree of sympathy (“You know what it means to be broken”) towards a female Exile in their confrontation on Korriban, and even, in cut content, tries to appeal to Kreia to spare the Exile whatever horrible fate he feared for her. He was wrong, of course, but it shows that there was most likely a crumb of goodness in Sion, twisted as it was.
• The Power of Hate: Literally the only thing keeping him alive, alongside absolute pain. You can only kill him by getting him to let go.
• A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: He was Kreia's former apprentice, before the Exile, after Revan. While Kreia was Sith herself at the time, Sion embraced the power of the dark side for its own sake, as an end unto itself rather than as a tool in service of a higher purpose, as Kreia herself intended him to see it.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: As the champion of the Sith Triumvirate, he is strong and has unique abilities that make him a threat to basically everybody. An experienced Jedi master like Lonna Vash apparently stood no chance against him.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: It's implied he might have raped Kreia when he and Nihilus teamed up to betray her.
• Recurring Boss: Dueled by Kreia on Peragus and fought by the Exile on Korriban and during the endgame. Multiple times on Malachor V, in fact, as his particular brand of mastery over the Force allows him to continually return from the brink of death to full health... or very nearly so.
• Shadow Archetype: To the Exile.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Speaks in a very gravelly, even voice that belies the rage he feels.
• The Starscream: In cut content, he confronts Nihilus along with several Sith assassins and challenges him, claiming he has surpassed Nihilus' feats. Needless to say, this leads nowhere after Nihilus defeats them all in one move, unleashing a wave of telekinetic Force.
• Sympathy for the Hero: Expresses it on Korriban when he first meets the female Exile.
  Darth Sion: You know what it means to be broken. The one who travels with you will break you, as she did me. I can end it before it begins.
• Talking the Monster to Death: During the endgame. With good reason — the only way to put him down for good is to convince him to simply stop. It also makes him progressively easier to beat with good Persuade skill.
• Technically-Living Zombie: His anger, rage, and pain are all that's keeping his decaying, scarred body together. A medical examiner was convinced that he was just a battered corpse when they saw him motionless on their table. Without the power of the Dark Side keeping him alive, he'd be dead. Is eventually convinced to let go of the force by the Exile though.
• Tragic Villain: Fundamentally is this. We don’t know about his backstory, but his condition, his mixture of hatred for Kreia and desire to earn her approval, and the glimpses of the good man he could have been make him this. There’s even a part where, if your Persuade skills are right, he says that the Exile is right, but he has nothing left but serving Kreia.
• Tranquil Fury: Seems to be held together by it. He’s constantly angry, but speaks (unless he’s particularly tested) in a very level tone.
• Transhuman Abomination: Sion is no longer a living man. He's now a walking corpse, with every inch broken, torn or otherwise damaged, animated by sheer willpower and his own agony.
• Undead Abomination: It's not clear if he's even "alive" in the conventional sense, being essentially a mass of broken bones, necrotic flesh and scar tissue held together by sheer willpower and the Dark Side of the Force.
• Villainous BSoD: Your attempts to erode his will during your last battle with him result in a progressive one of these. His Heel Realisation that the Exile was right about true strength being when you're able to walk away when offered ultimate power, not give into it.
• Villainous Crush: He develops an interest in the female Exile immediately after their first fight. But sticking with the Deconstruction nature of this game, the franchise's typical use of Love Redeems does not apply, or rather, it is done in a very different way. Sion's love hurts him more than it helps himself or the Exile, for his crush actively threatens his connection to the Dark Side and therefore his life, as it is fueled by his hate. For what little it's worth, he died seeming to still hold some affection for the Exile - all in all, while Sion's love never does redeem him, it does allow him to finally, finally let go.
• Visionary Villain: Interestingly, when asked about Revan, Sion is furious with them for (regardless of Revan’s alignment) seemingly abandoning the galaxy. In an inverted instance of You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!, he talks about how Revan could have healed the galaxy and instead turned away. It's not as obvious as Kreia or even Nihilus, but it's there nonetheless.
• Violent Glaswegian: A murderous Sith revenant with a strong Scottish accent.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Constantly shirtless, though any identifiable human skin has long since been replaced with scar tissue which looks more like cracked clay than living flesh.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Loath though he is to admit it, he is desperate for his old master's approval, to the point where he will hunt down the Exile and kill them to prove that he is not the failure she believes him to be.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Just seems outright confused by his newfound feelings towards the female Exile; even the voice directions for the "I hate you because you are beautiful to me" speech describe it as trying to describe what he's feeling and failing miserably. Justified in this case as said emotions may literally sabotage his survival rate.
• Worthy Opponent: Sees the female Exile as this, on Korriban as well as Malachor.

Darth Nihilus

Darth Nihilus

"He is a wound in the Force, more presence than flesh, and in his wake life dies… sacrificing itself to his hunger."

Species: Human^note Dark Side aberration

Homeworld: Unknown

"And he cares nothing for the Sith. Or its teachings. Or the Jedi. And when the Jedi are dead, he will feed on the galaxy, the Republic, and eventually consume the Sith as well."

— Darth Traya

The Lord of Hunger, and commander of the Sith Triumvirate's fleet. Once an ordinary Force sensitive, he attained the ability to consume the Force itself, allowing him to ravage entire worlds by himself. This granted him great power, but left him with a constant, unending hunger that ate away his humanity until he became nothing more than a walking embodiment of darkness.

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• Ambiguously Human: Not so much about his species, as he is officially a human, but rather about how much of that human remains in Nihilus. Dialogue about his nature informs that he is now more of a walking Force phenomenon than a Force user, but whether this can be taken literally or figuratively is up to the player. At the very least, he could be considered some kind of avatar or revenant, given that he apparently consumed his own body at some point.
• Being Evil Sucks: For all his dark power and intimidating appearance, Nihilus has lost everything. His old life and identity died on Malachor V and the powers he gained in his desperate attempt to survive inflicted him with an eternal, insatiable hunger for life. Now all he can think of is continuously searching for more life to devour in a futile attempt to fill the void within himself before it inevitably consumes him entirely. As Kreia points out, he is no master of the Force, but a slave to his eternal hunger for it.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Darth Sion for the majority of the story, at least until they are both upstaged by Kreia. He actually ends up being the first member of the Sith Triumvirate the Exile must defeat, and likely the easiest battle of the three.
• Big "NO!": After his attempt to feed on the Exile backfires, the player will tell him that his hunger will consume him, just as Kreia thought. Nihilus' response is in his own language as before, but sounds an awful lot like "Noooooooo..."
• Black Speech: Overlapping with Speaking Simlish, Nihilus only speaks in a strange sort of haunted, distorted sounds vaguely similar to the hiss of a Sith holocron. Although it is left untranslated to the viewer, other characters seem to understand him without problem, which implies that Nihilus actually communicates telepathically and that his "voice" is merely white noise created by a remnant of his humanity that remembers speaking. However, there might be more on this than it looks, as according to the author of the campaign guide, Abel Peña, Nihilus might be actually speaking "the first language ever spoken in the galaxy, or the raw dialect of the Force itself, untranslated by midi-chlorians."
• Body Horror:
  • The guy basically has to consume the lives of living beings, just to keep his soul in a mask, since his actual body long since rotted away to nothing into the Force. If that isn't a horrific concept...
  • Being near him long enough will leech the Force away from you little by little until you're basically a withered husk incapable of higher thought.
• Combat Aestheticist: His ornate mask and black robe are both pretty fancy, and he uses an one-handed lightsaber style that looks like a proactive variation of Form II, associated to finesse and grace. Nihilus' personality and means to express it faded a long time ago, but all on his persona implies he was a Sith of wealth and taste back when he was completely human.
• Contemplative Boss: Is constantly in the bridge of Ravager with his back turned towards his visitors.
• Cool Mask: Wears a white, skull-like one. After killing him, you can take it for a permanent boost to the Exile's Force points.
• Cosmic Horror Story: All we know is that he was a random but Force-sensitive guy who was at the wrong place and at the wrong time when a Republic superweapon killed so many people at once at the battle of Malachor V that it created a wound in the Force and turned him into a sort of Force black hole that needs to drain life from other organisms to sustain itself. He degenerated more and more until he wasn't even a man but an unstoppable urge to feed that could drain entire planets just by being there. And he is literally impossible to stop conventionally and will likely scour the entire galaxy of life before he starves himself. The only reason he was defeated was that he tried to feed on the Jedi Exile, who was similarly stripped of the Force during the same battle at Malachor V but learned to live without the force. This essentially meant that he fed on "nothing" and greatly weakened him. Had it not been for this he would have won.
• Create Your Own Villain: He was spiritually born in the Malachor V debacle, which was caused by the Exile (and Bao-Dur).
• Dark and Troubled Past: As a Malachor V survivor, this is a given, even if his own past is actually never revealed.
• Deathly Unmasking: After the final confrontation with Nihilus, Visas Marr - if she survived the boss battle - has the option of removing the dead Sith lord's mask. However, only she sees what's under it, and when asked what she saw, will only reply "A man, nothing more."
• Death by Irony: Despite all of his vampiric powers, he weakens himself critically against the Exile because they are a Force wound just like Nihilus. When the Exile offers to allow him to drain them, instead of the treasure of a Jedi Master's Force power, all Nihilus finds in the Exile is a void as voracious as his own. His short sighted greed has him effectively drain himself to near death, letting his enemies easily finish the job.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Darth Vader expies present in all other Star Wars media. What do you get when you focus on Darth Vader's armor and coolness more than the character in question? An empty but powerful husk with no personality or motivation except a desire to destroy everything, just like Darth Nihilus.
• Disk-One Final Boss: He's built up as the greatest threat that the heroes will have face. Eventually they do, but in a penultimate encounter. Ultimately his defeat allows them to direct their attention towards the true Big Bad, Darth Traya.
• The Dreaded: Even Kreia herself is terrified of him, knowing absolutely nobody but the Exile has the right tools to beat him.
  Kreia: I fear he may even rival some of the ancient Sith. He is already more of a force than a living thing, a hole in the Force that threatens to draw everything into it. And the teaching must die with him, or else all life will be placed in jeopardy.
• Dumb Muscle: Similar to yet different from Sion. In terms of raw Force powers, he could be believably considered one of the greatest in Legends, as he has the ability to destroy entire biospheres solely with the strength of his personal Force drain. However, this destructive ability came to the price of Nihilus being entirely re-defined by it, going from a powerful Sith lord to a mindless, all-eating machine. Nihilus also seems to lack strategic skills for someone in charge of a fleet, as he trusts all of the action on Sion and the Sith Triumvirate's former Revanite military.
• Evil Counterpart: To the Jedi Exile. He basically demonstrates what the Exile could have been if they were dependent on the Force and fell to the Dark Side. The game's writer Chris Avellone even revealed that, at least in his first drafts of the story, Nihilus was going to be the Exile's Literal Split Personality.
• Evil Mentor: To Visas, although as Kreia says, not in a conventional way given that he is not much of a master anymore.
• Evil Overlord: He checks most of the classic boxes of your stereotypical Dark Lord, while also being a planet-devouring Humanoid Abomination of the first order.
• Eviler than Thou: Was this to Darth Traya prior to the game, cutting her off from the Force and her plans to kill him with the Exile are because she couldn't kill him herself. Also proves this to Darth Sion in the cut content, easily overpowering him when Sion tries to break off their alliance.
• Eldritch Abomination: Played with. His powers are utterly horrifying, and he is capable of destruction beyond belief — to the point that Visas views him as some kind of dark Physical God. Oddly Visas has two different answers depending upon how you ask of what she saw beneath the mask, with one revealing him to be just an extremely powerful mortal and Visas accepting this...
  Exile: What did you see?
  Visas: A man. Nothing more.
  • ...while the other possibly plays this straight.
    Exile: Tell me what you saw.
    Visas: I saw a graveyard world, surrounded by a fleet of dead ships. I felt it through him... as I feel it through you.
• Foil: To the Exile. To the point where if you choose to remove his mask yourself after defeating him, you see your own face. What this means is ambiguous — did your experience on Malachor split you in two, is this similar to Luke seeing his own face behind Vader's mask on Dagobah? Either way, since the Exile's power and that of Darth Nihilus are essentially the same, Nihilus is the kind of monster you might become if you truly gave into the power you wield.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He started off as a normal person on the planet Malachor V... until the Mandalorian Wars got underway. At the end of the war, during hte final battle above Malachor V, the Exile gave the order to fire the Mass Shadow Generator superweapon to devastate the planet, and he was caught in the crossfire, like so many others. This weapon changed him into an insatiably hungry and empty being who fed on the life forces of other beings, leading to him being found and trained to feed on entire worlds by Darth Traya.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The most powerful, but the least prominent, of the eponymous Sith Lords. In cut content, he demonstrates this by totally owning Sion, but otherwise and appropriately for a character personifying nothingness, he does very little. One of the few things confirmed about Kreia's plan is killing him to prevent the death of life in the galaxy.
• The Heartless: All he has left is instinct and the desire to survive by absorbing energy.
• He Who Must Not Be Named: His name is never spoken out loud in the game and is only read in certain datapads, and on the battle toggle. Kreia herself says that his name mustn't be mentioned as even a stray thought could draw him near.
• Hidden Depths: Being unintelligible, impersonal and basically inhuman, he doesn't show much of thoughts and ideologies, but the nature of his powers and the vision he showed Visas hint Nihilus has his own worldview of the Force and galaxy, one that is not limited to (though probably shaped by) his desperate need to feed.
• Hidden Villain: He spends his time hiding on the Ravager and over the course of the game never leaves it. As only a handful of people in the galaxy even know he exists.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His own Force-sucking powers are the reason of his defeat, as they only achieve the opposite effect when trying to suck a Force wound.
• Horror Hunger: He feeds on the Force. Life dies wherever he goes. Planets wither when he approaches them. But in the end, he will never be sated and his power is totally uncontrollable — so just how much a Master is he?
• Humanoid Abomination: He's essentially a Force black hole that needs to "devour" the life force of entire planets to survive. It's implied he doesn't even have a physical body anymore.
  Kreia: He is already dead, it is simply a question of how many he kills before he falls.
• Hungry Menace: Nihilus isn't driven by ideology, greed, revenge, power lust, pride or any of the other usual Sith motivations. All he cares about is finding new sources of Force energy to feed on to sate his eternal hunger.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: His Force drain ability was developed in Malachor for the Sith assassins that would pursue Jedi to extinction, as it allow them to track down and feed on his opponent's own power; the stronger the Jedi are, the stronger the assassin becomes. Ironically, at least in the Light Side route, this apparently gamebreaking ability only gets him defeated by a Jedi of all things.
• Life Drain: His signature ability. Nihilus is described as a "wound in the Force", and the best way to envision him is basically a living Force black hole. Even before he makes any conscious effort to, his very presence saps away at the life of others.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The beginning of a pattern for Obsidian, and specifically Chris Avellone.
  • It's easy to see how that pattern began — the simple, stylized, and somehow oddly elegant mask taps into primal fears with its skull-like shape and blood-red stripes, standing out all the more against the draping robes, the strange horn-like shapes of his hood framing the mask, and the mere suggestion of a face underneath it. The mask made him alien and strange in a way unlike that was any other Sith at the time, and as with everything else about Nihilus, it's all the more frightening for being unexplained.
  • Obsidian would go on to revisit similar themes of hunger and depersonalization with the curse of the Spirit Eater in Mask of the Betrayer and the gas mask-wearing Ghost People from Fallout: New Vegas's Dead Money DLC, and then created several more sinister masked figures in the form of Tyranny's Faces of Nerat and the similarly black-clad, white-masked Tunon the Adjudicator. The association was strong enough that a Malevolent Masked Woman, the First Castoff, appears on the box art for inXile's Torment: Tides of Numenera, even though its spiritual predecessor Planescape: Torment had yet to introduce that trope.
• The McCoy: He's this in the Freudian Trio between him, Sion and Traya due to being driven by his Horror Hunger more than anything else.
• Meaningful Background Event: After his defeat, the Exile and company walk away... and the body inside the robes crumbles away à là Obi-Wan and Yoda.
• Meaningful Name: His name is derived from nihil, Latin for "nothing", the source of the words "nihilist" and "annihilate." He is one of the most destructive beings in the Star Wars universe, but there is nothing left of him besides his desire to consume. His "Lord of Hunger" title is also more than deserved as well for his... its previous horrific atrocities its directly responsible for.
• Mysterious Past: The only known facts of his background is that he witnessed the Battle of Malachor V and was a Force sensitive, so it can be presumed he was one of Revan's Jedi, or maybe a soldier of either side who ignored his Force sensitivity until that moment. His name, precedence or personality remain undisclosed.
• No Face Under the Mask: We never see him without, but judging by what is explained about his nature. there should be nothing there. The only parts of him that even exist physically are his robes and mask, which he holds together using the Force.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Over the course of the game, he... sends Visas to kill you and his ship, the Ravager, assaults Citadel Station. Much of the game is spent in fear of what Visas and Kreia tell you he might do. Granted, what he might do is devour all life on an entire planet, so 'nothing' is both scary and quite literal. We never visit Katarr or see him devour another planet, but his effect on those in his immediate vicinity aboard the Ravager — what's happened to Colonel Tobin in the short time since Onderon alone — is enough to get the point across.
• Oh, Crap!: Has a non-verbal but very visible reaction of this kind when trying and failing to feed on the Exile, showing he's Not So Stoic after all.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Visas speculates that if he succeeds in destroying the Jedi, he might try to destroy the galaxy just to sate his hunger, and perhaps eventually consume himself.
• Orcus on His Throne: Sends Visas to assassinate the Exile, watches as Sion brutalizes Kreia in a flashback, and is apparently supplying aid to Vaklu's coup on Onderon, but never actually leaves the deck of the Ravager over the course of the main game.
• Our Vampires Are Different: A dark being in a black cape, who lives by sucking the vital energy out of other lifeforms and can be killed only in a very specific way.
• Outside-Context Problem: Like Sion, though in a completely different power. Being a walking black hole that feeds on the Force, Nihilus cannot defeated by conventional means - he cannot even be physically killed, because he doesn't have a living body anymore (apparently, his soul is directly bound to an empty armor and mask). He carries a lightsaber, but he genuinely does not need it. The only way to beat him is basically being like him. He remains this throughout the story as few people even knew he existed, let alone how to fight him.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Nihilus proves Darth Vader's comment that "the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force" was more than just bluster. Nihilus snuffed out an entire world, and consumed its inhabitants, with a word.
• Pet the Dog: Some characters speculate that whatever shriveled-up pint of humanity he had left was what prompted him to rescue Visas from the ashes of Katarr, as well as keep her alive when he Force-choked her upon their first in-screen debut for implying that anyone could be a threat to him. Nihilus is, as usual, not particularly forthcoming with his motive.
• Power of the Void: He is, like the Exile, an absence in the Force. Nothing follows in his wake. As in, nothingness follows.
• Power Parasite: Like an exponentially expanding black hole, Nihilus absorbs the power and energies of the Force and life itself. While doing so makes him monstrously powerful, it also proportionately increases his dependence on new sources of power. Kreia notes that Nihilus' eventual starvation is certain; the open question is how much he'll consume before he falls.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: He is in command of the Sith Triumvirate and its fleet, and has the Force skills of his Sith assassins multiplied by millions. In fact, the fleet is mostly ghost ships crewed by zombie-like thralls of his through the sheer power of the Dark Side.
• Riddle for the Ages: What did Visas see when she took his mask off? She claims it was "just a man" but there really is no indication that there's a living thing under Darth Nihilus' robes.
• Self-Disposing Villain: Kreia states that Nihilus' hunger will inevitably destroy him no matter how much he tries to feed. Unfortunately, he'll last long enough to drain portions of the galaxy of life before then unless he's stopped. To defeat him the Exile has to go through the formality of fighting him, but he weakens himself severely by trying to drain the Exile's life force. As she is the same sort of wound in the force he is, the feedback/backlash nearly kills him all on its own.
• Shadow Archetype: To the Exile. He too is a void in the Force, which has warped him beyond recognition.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: What he tried to instigate on Visas, showing her a vision of the galaxy as he sees it — a Crapsack World of Force chaos — after rescuing her.
• The Spook: He is the only enemy of the game without a clear background in the Expanded Universe, and it only makes him even more scary.
• Speaking Simlish: Speaks in a low, rasping, distorted voice, seemingly meant to represent a terrifying alien language, or else psychic white noise as he invades the listener's mind telepathically.
• Starfish Language: Whatever he's speaking - it ain't English. Nobody's really sure what the hell his voice is meant to convey, but theories vary, with some popular ones being the language of The Force itself, or some ancient Sith language. Or maybe he's just too far gone to produce human speech.
• The Stoic: His empty-eyed mask and body language (or lack thereof) give the impression of a stern, emotionless individual, though it's difficult to know for sure.
• Story-Breaker Power: His Devour ability makes him a supremely powerful threat. Add to that the fact that he's actively hunting Jedi, who are already having a hard time understanding what he is and pretty much the only reason there's a story at all is because he works so slowly.
• Takes One to Kill One: He would have been essentially unstoppable if he had not tried to drain the Exile, a similar void in the Force. Draining the emptiness inside the Exile snuffed out the devoured Force inside him, making him weaker.
• Tragic Villain: According to his background, he was essentially turned into a Force vampire by his experiences in Malachor V through no fault of his own beyond bad luck. As evil as he may be as a Sith, he has no choice but to continue as the monster he's become.
• Transhuman Abomination: Nihilus started out like any other man, but became more of a force of nature than a sentient being after he was empowered by the massacre of Malachor V. Official databooks list him as Human (dark side aberration). He's effectively nothing but walking void held together with the remnants of his formerly-human mind with no motivation beyond his need to devour all the lifeforce he can to sate eternal hunger. His ship, the Ravager, is also essentially a wreck that is only kept working through his power. His ship's "crew" are only a step up from walking corpses thanks to his all-consuming influence. Many of them are just husks for his will, devoid of independent thought.
• The Unintelligible: He talks, but all the noise he emits sounds more like the whispers of a Sith holocron, or maybe like a person trying to speak but failing to do so and not realizing (which makes sense, as he has no actual mouth or lungs anymore). He can still issue orders to the crew of his ship, and Visas and Sion certainly understand him, but his "lines" lack subtitles and go ultimately untranslated for the player. Hilariously, this aspect is parodied in a cameo as a holocron in Legacy, where Darth Krayt is annoyed that he can't understand what Nihilus is saying.
• Unwitting Pawn: Winds up becoming one to the true Big Bad Darth Traya. For all his power, his single-minded need to sate his hunger made him extremely predictable and easy to guide to serving her ends.
• Vader Breath: His labored, distorted speaking voice. Although it's difficult to say whether or not he's still human enough to do something as mundane as breathe.
• Was Once a Man: He was left as one of few survivors of the Battle of Malachor V, in the wake of Republic detonating the Mass Shadow Generator superweapon on the planet. Already driven mad by grief from having lost everything and everyone important to him, he was forced to draw on the Dark Side of the Force and use it to feed on the Force within his fellow survivors in a desperate bid to keep himself alive. While this was going on he was also being physically and psychologically warped by leftover radiation from the Mass Shadow Generator. Exactly when he ceased to be a man or even a person at all is hard to define, but what is certain is there absolutely nothing left whatsoever of his old self in the Transhuman Abomination he has turned into.
• White Mask of Doom: Wears one. That's him on the box art.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: His only purpose is to feed his hunger.
• Words Can Break My Bones: Nihilus' speech apparently physically hurts to listen to if the hearer is not strong enough, most notable in his first scene with Visas, and the audio production does a pretty good job of getting this across to the player — it sounds like it hurts Nihilus himself to speak it, for that matter.
• World's Strongest Man: Nihilus' ability to consume the Force and devastate whole planets makes him the third strongest Force User in the Galaxy at the time^note His sole competition would be Revan, who Kreia implies is more powerful than Nihilus (or anyone she had ever met) and the Sith Emperor Vitiate. All three are roughly in the same league as each other, but Nihilus is the most dangerous as a Wound in the Force. As Vitiate isn't inside the Galaxy at the time, and Revan is in stasis, the title goes to Nihilus.. He is the reason that the Jedi have gone into hiding and the primary reason the Triumvirate is such a powerful enemy. Nihilus is far and away the greatest threat the Jedi, The Republic and the entire Galaxy have ever seen as his very existence will eventually end all life anywhere near him.
• Worf Had the Flu: Despite all his incredible power, neither the Exile or their allies seem to face any problem when fighting him. This is because the Exile is the same sort of wound in the Force as Nihilus himself. Their presence alone is enough to weaken Nihilus' powers and indirectly protect their allies from his draining effects. This gives them a fighting chance against him regardless of his attempts. When he tries to feed on her directly, the backlash alone weakens him so much that it's trivial for her to defeat him in combat afterwards. Had it been any other Jedi, he really would have been all but impossible to defeat.
• Your Days Are Numbered: According to Kreia, Nihilus' hunger only increases as he feeds. It will eventually grow so intense that no amount of life energy will be enough to sustain him, dooming him to inevitable starvation as his own void consumes him entirely. This offers the Exile little comfort as Nihilus will be able to destroy the Republic and scour much, if not all of the galaxy of life in what time he has left.

Darth Traya

Darth Traya

See her separate page (major spoilers).