Jump to content

How did Revan and Malak’s ex-Republic “Sith” end up prejudiced against aliens?


DFenderOfMen

Recommended Posts

Something that has always bugged me lore-wise about the original KoTOR, that maybe someone else can help explain. How did Revan’s “Sith” come back from the unknown regions with prejudice against aliens and believing in human superiority? They were Republic soldiers. Around the time of the Mandalorian Wars was there a common speciesism in the Republic? The troops that followed Revan into the unknown regions couldn’t have been influenced by Imperial society, or else word would have gotten back about them to the Republic about the Sith Empire, with defectors and intercepting transmissions and intelligence operations and so on. The secret of the Sith Empire in the unknown regions was only known by a select few.

 

Honestly, a lot doesn’t make sense about how Revan and Malak’s troops were corrupted, and turned against the Republic. The best case that could be given is the fear and respect of their leaders, with defectors being wiped out before returning with the “Sith” fleet to conquer the Republic. But this still doesn’t explain how they came back with an overt prejudice against aliens, unless the aliens that followed Revan and Malak to the unknown regions almost universally rebelled against becoming “Sith”.

 

Or am I misremembering KoTOR? I know the Tarisians were mostly speciesist, but if memory serves me properly, so were Revan and Malak’s “Sith”, to a certain extent... if memory serves me properly.

 

Or was it just the influence of old Imperial society, with people doing research and leading the “Sith” with the ideas of the old Sith, including the racism. I guess if you identity with an ancient group, and you do your research, that its ideas can be revived. But it still doesn’t really explain how former Republic soldiers would have received those particular ideas so much. You would expect them to adapt Sith ideas to their own already existing beliefs, like the general equality of sentient species and value for diversity.

 

Maybe the humans under Revan and Malak’s command were more receptive to the Sith ideas so that the humans fought the aliens who went with them to the unknown regions. But the Republic military from the time period doesn’t seem to have factions dividing species as much as I know of the lore, and it seems to integrate different species across its military. This would make the organizing of a unified alien opposition from within the Republic military under Revan and Malak’s command seem almost impossible.

 

Thoughts? Maybe I’m misremembering KoTOR, or maybe there’s something I’m missing.

Edited by DFenderOfMen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't remember there being a lot of non-human prejudiced among Revan and Malak's forces. As I remember it there were a number of non-humans in Malak's forces. It was rampant on Taris, and there were some other examples of speciesism: such as the Ithorian freighter captainin KotOR 2 on Nar Shaddaa. Some could be attributed to the individual being speciesist.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

With regards to exactly why Revan and Malak fell to the Dark Side, that was explained both in SWTOR and in the Revan novel. They went off into deep space in search of the 'Great Evil' that had pushed the Mandalorians into war; this caused them to find the Sith Empire. They plotted what they thought would be an assassination attempt on the Emperor, but instead they found themselves captured. The Emperor easily broke their minds and instantly turned them to the Dark Side. He sent them back to the Republic as a sort of preliminary strike team, both to weaken the Republic and to gain access to the Star Forge (which would allow him to invade the Republic far ahead of schedule). However, as Revan and Malak returned to the known galaxy, the control of the Emperor wained enough for them to follow their own, albeit dark and twisted, desires.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

With regards to exactly why Revan and Malak fell to the Dark Side, that was explained both in SWTOR and in the Revan novel. They went off into deep space in search of the 'Great Evil' that had pushed the Mandalorians into war; this caused them to find the Sith Empire. They plotted what they thought would be an assassination attempt on the Emperor, but instead they found themselves captured. The Emperor easily broke their minds and instantly turned them to the Dark Side. He sent them back to the Republic as a sort of preliminary strike team, both to weaken the Republic and to gain access to the Star Forge (which would allow him to invade the Republic far ahead of schedule). However, as Revan and Malak returned to the known galaxy, the control of the Emperor wained enough for them to follow their own, albeit dark and twisted, desires.

This explanation as cemented by the novel and by SWTOR has always bugged me.

 

Maybe I just inaccurately remember the lore in KOTOR 1 and 2, but I could have sworn the implication was originally a lot more generic. That Revan felt the need to be a brutal strategist to defeat the mandalorians and this slowly corrupted them as a result. Which, as I remember it, is driven home in the story of The Exile as well, with their choice to go to war against the council's wishes.

 

I always felt like the idea that the emperor corrupted them robs them of their agency as characters and undermines the lesson/complexity implicit in the idea of the moral quandaries of war, military strategy, and survival, and cheapens it into a mind control story.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This explanation as cemented by the novel and by SWTOR has always bugged me.

 

Maybe I just inaccurately remember the lore in KOTOR 1 and 2, but I could have sworn the implication was originally a lot more generic. That Revan felt the need to be a brutal strategist to defeat the mandalorians and this slowly corrupted them as a result. Which, as I remember it, is driven home in the story of The Exile as well, with their choice to go to war against the council's wishes.

 

I always felt like the idea that the emperor corrupted them robs them of their agency as characters and undermines the lesson/complexity implicit in the idea of the moral quandaries of war, military strategy, and survival, and cheapens it into a mind control story.

 

KOTOR I hints at the Star Forge corrupting him, a corrupting influence in the unknown regions and once you get to Lehon you find out the Star Forge is like a Dark Side feedback loop. It feeds off and nourishes it the Dark Side.Its Kreia's opinion in KOTOR II that Revan became a Dark Lord of the Sith out of his own will. That wasn't the case. She was correct about the war driving him further towards darkness but not about when and why he became Sith. And the Emperor corrupting them doesn't rob them of anything, as Revan is able to break free from the Emperor's control without any aid during the search for the Star Forge. Which is an amazing feat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also thought 'The Emperor did it!' was stupid and contrived. Revan did it to herself. Yes, the star forge would have played a role as a feedback loop, but that eponymous book isn't canon to me, it's bad fanfic written by a guy who never played K2.

 

I have no idea why they became prejudiced - and clearly no one else in this thread does either. I guess the answer, if we take the 'The emperor did it!' route, is that the Emperor is DS which means bad, and xenophobia is bad, thus they become space-racists. Yes, there were aliens among the Sith, but the vast majority were human. We might also make a distinction between the Tarisian xenophobia and Sith occupying forces on Taris. They were both xenophobic, but OP's question remains valid: why would the Sith on Taris be xenophobic? Are they Tarisian or something?

 

IMO a more palatable explanation is that they weren't prejudiced under Revan. When we play K1, we're seeing the Sith as Malak has molded them, not Revan [which is how we went from Atton's description of force-sensitive death squads during Revan's tenure and ended up with the incompetent Darth Bandon during Malak's]. If we take as a given that Revan fell to the dark side as a result of being a master strategist fighting a war, then it's not 'DS' to be anti-alien, it's a poor use of resources.

Edited by Ardrossan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

IMO a more palatable explanation is that they weren't prejudiced under Revan. When we play K1, we're seeing the Sith as Malak has molded them, not Revan [which is how we went from Atton's description of force-sensitive death squads during Revan's tenure and ended up with the incompetent Darth Bandon during Malak's].

Yes, I think this would be the most logical option considering Revan himself never seemed to have an issue with aliens. And even though the Revanite's sources of information is somewhat dubious they do mention how Revan wanted to use everyone.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You also have to remember that at that point in KotOR, the occupation and destruction of Taris, Malak was in complete control and it was all their doing. By then Reven had been removed from the 'Sith' for an indeterminate, but certainly not insubstantial, amount of time. Also remember that it was commented on, in KotOR II IIRC, that Malak's approach was entirely different from Revan's. Revan had a plan and purpose. Malak seem solely intent on destruction and domination.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The sith were not very racist outside of Taris, on Korriban for example they had a twi lek(Ythura) as the right hand of the academy’s master. As pointed above, Revan and Malak were very different in how they led the sith, I think that there was more prejudice after Malak took over since it is said in SWTOR that Revan was not racist. Also it could have been a result of the influence of imperial society.

 

Overall, I am fairly sure that when devs were creating KOTOR without the thoughts of the new story outside of it, they intended the sith to be racist because they are evil in game. With all retcons and additions to the story, some original parts of it don’t make much sense anymore, this is one of them.

Edited by Thenightvortex
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Overall, I am fairly sure that when devs were creating KOTOR without the thoughts of the new story outside of it, they intended the sith to be racist because they are evil in game. With all retcons and additions to the story, some original parts of it don’t make much sense anymore, this is one of them.

 

Yes, they're the bad guys so they're space-racists. I think the out-of-universe reason is that the original trilogy imperials are xenophobic which is why they're xenophobic in K1 and this game, because the devs at BW looked at the source material for this era [Tales of the Jedi], said 'this is stupid' and went on the make an empire essentially identical to the more familiar Galactic Empire so fans would have something familiar to grasp onto.

 

And it's debatable if that was the right decision or not. It doesn't really matter for the OP's question, though you have to do a bit of mental gymnastics to get there. It becomes more problematic when you realize that in 4000 years their ship designs, superweapons, and even hairstyles will be the same. But OTOH a lot of stuff in Tales did look really stupid. Like Coruscant would have looked more like an Azeroth ripoff than a high-tech city-planet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The emperor put Revan and Malak on a collision course with the republic and it wouldn't matter if Revan broke free of the mind dominated effect of the emperor at that point he found the star forge, the fact is that the emperor put Revan and Malak out there in the first place, so whatever happened after that was due in part because of the emperor. there is no escaping his involvement, it isn't all entirely on Revan and Malak when they discovered the star forge and started using it.

 

Revan and Malak were mind dominated and if their troops could of also distantly been mind dominated as well, like an overwhelming suggestion they can't help but follow but with no ability to control their actions, they could of easily picked up the command to hate aliens and not report to the republic and die for the cause no matter what. the emperor has the ability to mass mind dominate as seen on Ziost and a few hundred years may have passed, but that wouldn't see the emperor as a less version of himself,

 

Even if Malak had taken the time to change the troops under his command, it would of most certainly had the distant effect from the emperor anyway, because the mind domination would of still been fresh in his mind and a tool to use as a dark lord in building his power base.

 

i can't see how a dark side Malak would of been able to function on his own after all his life was spent being a Jedi, those are the first thoughts he has to draw on to use as he tries to make sense of what he is doing, but he can't do that so what else does he have to go on? the only thing that he can use is what the emperor left and any training he would of received while under his spell, reciting the sith code and so on. much like the JK in chapter 2 when the JK got mind dominated by the emperor as well and received training from an overseer in the dark arts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...