Drew Karpyshyn - Darth Bane - Path of Destruction

"The students here are taught to use the Force. They are taught the secrets of the dark side by you and the other Sith Lords." After a brief hesitation he added, "And I know there are many other academies like this one."

"No," Qordis corrected. "Not like this one. It is true we have other training facilities spread across our ever-growing empire, places where individuals with promise are taught to control and use their power. But each facility is unique, and where individual students are sent depends on how much potential we see in them.

"Those with a noticeable but limited ability are sent to Honoghr, Gentes, or Gamorr to become Sith Warriors or Marauders. There they are taught to channel their emotions into mindless rage and battle fury. The power of the dark side transforms them into ravaging beasts of death and destruction to be unleashed against our enemies."

Through passion I gain strength, Bane thought. But when he spoke he said, "Brute strength alone is not enough to bring down the Republic."

"True," Qordis agreed. From the tone of his voice Bane knew he had said what his Master wanted to hear.

"Those with greater ability are sent to worlds that have allied with our cause to destroy the Republic: Ryloth, Umbara, Nar Shadaa. These students become creatures of shadow, learning to use the dark side for secrecy, deception, and manipulation. Those who survive the training became unstoppable assassins, capable of drawing on the dark side to kill their targets without ever moving a muscle."

"Yet even they are no match for the Jedi," Bane added, thinking he understood the direction the lesson was taking.

"Precisely," his Master agreed. "The academies on Dathomir and Iridonia are most similar to the one here. There apprentices study under Sith Masters. Those who succeed in their training become the adepts and acolytes who swell the ranks of our armies. They are the counterparts to the Jedi Knights who stand in the way of our ultimate conquest.

"But even as the Jedi Knights must answer to the Jedi Masters, so must the adepts and acolytes answer to the Sith Lords. And those with the potential to become Sith Lords, and only those with such potential, are trained here on Korriban."

Bane felt a shiver of excitement. Through strength I gain power.

"Korriban was the ancestral home of the Sith," Qordis explained. "This planet is a place of great power; the dark side lives and breathes in the very core of this world."

He paused and slowly extended his skeletal hand, palm upward. It almost seemed as if he was cradling something unseen, something precious and invaluable, in his claw-like fingers.

"This temple we stand in was built many thousands of years ago to collect and focus that power. Here you can feel the dark side at its strongest?" He closed his fist so tightly that his long fingernails cut into his palm, drawing blood. "You have been chosen because you have great potential," he whispered. "Great things are expected of the apprentices here on Korriban. The training is difficult, but the rewards are great for those who succeed."

Through power I gain victory.

Qordis reached out and placed his wounded palm on the crown of Bane's bare scalp, anointing him with the blood of a Sith Lord. Bane had seen plenty of blood as a soldier, yet for some reason this ceremonial act of self-mutilation revolted him more than any battlefield gore. It was all he could do not to pull away.

"You have the potential to become one of us, one of the Brotherhood of Darkness. Together we can cast off the shackles of the Republic."

Through victory my chains are broken.

"But even those with potential can fail," Qordis finished. "I trust you will not disappoint us."

Bane had no intention of doing that.

The next few weeks passed quickly as Bane threw himself into his studies. To his surprise, he discovered that his inexperience with the Force was the exception rather than the rule. Many of the students had trained for months or years before they had been accepted at the Academy on Korriban.

At first Bane found this troubling. He had just started his training and he was already behind. In such a competitive, ruthless environment he would be an easy target for every other student. But as he mulled it over, he began to realize he might not be as vulnerable as he'd thought.

He alone, of all the apprentices at the Academy, had been able to manifest the power of the dark side without any training at all. He'd used it so often he'd come to take it for granted. It had given him advantages over his opponents in cards and brawling. In war it had warned him of danger and brought him victory in otherwise impossible circumstances.

And he'd done it all on instinct, with no training, without even any conscious idea of what he was doing. Now, for the first time, he was being taught to truly use his abilities. He didn't have to worry about any of the other students… if anything, they should be worrying about him. When he completed his training, none of the others would be his equal.

Most of his learning came at the feet of Qordis and the other Masters: Kas'im, Orilltha, Shenayag, Hezzoran, and Borthis. There were group training sessions at the Academy, but they were few and far between. The weak and the slow could not be allowed to hold back the strong and ambitious. Students learned at their own pace, driven by their desire and hunger for power. There were, however, nearly six students for every Master, and the apprentices had to prove their worth before one of the instructors would spend valuable time teaching them the secrets of the Sith.

Though he was a neophyte, Bane found it easy to garner the attention of the Sith Lords, particularly Qordis. He knew the extra attention would inevitably breed animosity in the other students, but he forced himself not to think about that. In time the additional instruction he got from the Masters would allow him to catch up to and pass the other apprentices, and once he did he wouldn't need to worry about their petty jealousies. Until then he was careful to stay out of the way and not draw attention to himself.

When he wasn't learning from the Masters, he was in the library studying the ancient records. As the Jedi kept their archives at their Temple on Coruscant, so the Sith had begun to collect and store information in the archives of Korriban's temple. However, unlike the Jedi library, where most of the data was stored in electronic, hologrammic, and Holocron formats, the Sith collection was limited to scrolls, tomes, and manuals. In the three thousand standard years since Darth Revan had nearly destroyed the Republic, the Jedi had waged a tireless war to eradicate the teaching tools of the dark side. All known Sith Holocrons had been either destroyed or spirited away to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant for safekeeping. There were many rumors of undiscovered Sith Holocrons, either hidden away on remote worlds, or covetously hoarded by one of the dark Masters eager to keep its secret knowledge for himself. But all efforts by the Brotherhood to find these lost treasures had proved futile, forcing them to rely on the primitive technologies of parchment and flimsiplast.

And because the collection was constantly being added to, the indexes and references were hopelessly out of date. Searching the archives was often an exercise in futility or frustration, and most of the students felt their time was better spent trying to learn from or impress the Masters.

Perhaps it was because he was older than most of the others, or maybe because his years of mining had taught him patience, whatever the explanation, Bane spent several hours each day studying the ancient records. He found them fascinating. Many of the scrolls were historical records recounting ancient battles or glorifying the deeds of ancient Sith Lords. By itself the information had little practical use, but he could see each individual work for what it actually represented: a tiny piece of a much larger puzzle, a clue to a much greater understanding.