#old sith

@ theslothknownasbones 

I shall remove the already old people from the list.

vader: definitely the “back in my day” grandpa. his body wears down a bit, so much so that walking in his suit becomes extremely difficult. he takes to zooming through the streets in a super rad hoverchair, stopping to talk to people about the good ol’ days or laugh at politicians.

maul: kind of how he’s like in Rebels. he’s a loner and a bit spooky, but he likes to enlighten young ones with the knowledge he’s gained over the years. a very good storyteller. will use his prosthetic legs to beat the shit out of troublemakers.

savage: could still bench press a Wookie. the most swol grandpa ever, though he also has a soft tum now because he loves to eat (alas, that super-high metabolism has left him). challenges everyone he meets to a duel. freelances as a bodyguard.

asajj: retires as an old “witch of the woods”, learning Nightsister magic and giving advice to people who seek her out. she’s like the new Mother Talzin, except she’s either a.) fucking with people because she can, or b.) genuinely helping lost souls with their problems. still as beautiful as ever.

kylo: the most hip grandpa ever. his hair is still long, long enough to tie into a ponytail now, and he’s got that sweet-ass scar. kylo takes up teaching older kids about the Force—specifically, how a grey jedi sees it. i think that would be his stance as an old man. takes to watching over vulnerable younglings and scaring away people who would take advantage of them.

nihilus: i believe over time the accident that basically rendered him a Force being might have less of an effect. what if he eventually started to rebuild himself? wishful thinking, but maybe he wanders through space, trying to become something new. he leaves his old self behind and visits each corner of the galaxy. becomes kind of a mystical figure.

I’m down to the last few days of this, and I’m finally going to veer away from Old Town (after 26 or 27 posts about it, lol?)

I may ramble in these last few posts, but I want to address one of the places I diverged from a popular idea about the Old Sith (pre-contact with the Jedi rebels who conquered them.) That’s the idea that they were a society with very strict castes of some sort. I actually don’t know where this came from: I’ve relied on the small amount of lore we were given in game or that the devs themselves posted on the SWtOR website during the lead up to the game launch and during the early days of the game and never saw anything about castes. But apparently there is some written source somewhere that includes this detail (I’m assuming in the EU, not SWtOR itself.)

To be honest, I’m personally uncomfortable with the colonialist way people from non-caste societies often write about a society with castes. When it comes to the Old Sith being divided into castes, a lot of fanfics also create visible biological distinctions between the castes, and I don’t think most of the writers understand what they’re doing when they do that. They’re dividing the Old Sith into races, with the more attractive, smarter “races” at the top and the brutish, less intelligent and less educated “races” at the bottom. (I am also uncomfortable with the common interpretation that the upper castes voluntarily collaborated and interbred with the conquerors, but I won’t get into that issue here.)

The most obvious example is the way this often plays out with the supposed warrior caste who are assumed to be the ancestors of the Massassi on Yavin IV. They’re often written as degenerated from the warrior caste, who are generally described in these fanfics as huge and brutal and already violent “by nature.” I.e. biological.

But in-game, the lore points to something different:

This says that Exar Kun did this to them (with or without their consent, we don’t know) and does not say they were from a warrior caste or even that they were already warriors. If I recall correctly, I think there may be a lore or history entry somewhere that says he did this to create guards on Yavin IV who would try to repel everyone.

And Elara Dorne says the following:

Elara Dorne: Evolutionarily speaking, the Massassi are fascinating. They were genetically altered from Sith, then naturally adapted to the jungle. Pity they won’t consent to a study.

So, the fact Sith were altered to produce the Massassi is relatively common knowledge in the Empire. But neither mention castes or a warrior caste.

That said, this is not intended to be a criticism of people who choose to write the Old Sith as having castes. It’s an explanation of why I am uncomfortable with it and chose not to use one. I’ve pretty much gone my own way with the Sith-bloods anyway, and a caste structure wouldn’t work with the story I’m trying to tell. Even if it did, I would only use a caste system if I did substantial research into how real world caste systems actually work according to those who live under them (and not outsiders) and then extrapolate how this would effect modern Sith-blooded culture.