Prologue: Consequences

Note: If you have played KOTOR 1 and KOTOR 2, there is no need to read the Prolouge. It introduces you to the basic plot of KOTOR 1 and 2.

The distant stars glittered eerily against the large window of the great star cruiser Leviathan. Dark Lord Revan had ordered his scant crew off the bridge so he could meditate. He had to consider deeply the choice he was about to make. He entered into a state where he could feel the very contours of the Force around him, where he could feel the life of his crew and the inorganic coldness of the ship and the ship's components. These are the moments Revan lived for. Dark Lord, pah... Revan snorted at the title he had been given. He wasn't a conqueror, but a savior.

He meditated on the events that had made him 'Dark Lord Revan'. Ah, he remembered the holocast so clearly, could see every slight movement the hologram made as it explained the situation.

"The Mandalorians have moved Coreward now, and they are bombing more and more worlds. How long can you Jedi sit complacently?! Is it your way to let innocents be slaughtered?!" The one called Atton Rand ranted angrily over the holocast. "Two more worlds have fallen to those beasts in the last week! The Republic's armies alone can't handle this! How long..." By this time Revan had already started formulating... How could he gain a large enough following to destroy these animals, these Mandalorians who supposedly fought for 'honor'?

He had managed to gather a following to destroy the animals, but it had taken long, too long. He had had to be too stealthy, too subtle for the kind of quick action required when innocents were being killed by the thousands, the millions, the thousands of millions. At least the foolish Jedi Council knew nothing of his plans until he and his followers rose up with him to leave, proclaiming their intents even as they took to the great Republic ships. During that period (what he called the Great Commission) over ten thousand Jedi Knights joined Revan, along with the twenty thousand strong he had subtly and gradually commissioned, not only from Dantooine, but also from Coruscant, whom he had recruited when he should have been doing other missions.

Finally, he could meet the Mandalorians in battle.

That he did, and he defeated them. Afterwards, Revan, the soldiers under his command, and his loyal Jedi followed him into the depths of space. Revan had found what he was looking for.... the Star Forge. A massive factory built by an advanced, extinct species that built unlimited ships. It gleaned excess dark side power from the one who claimed it, and used it to power the great Forge, somehow transforming that energy into tangible, material objects, such as great but curious looking ships. Thus, it had an unlimited supply of ships.

So Revan came back as a conqueror. He swept aside all resistance easily, but then.... he was captured by the Jedi Council.

That those fools managed to capture him was a fluke of luck. His apprentice, Malak, afraid to actually stand before him and claim title of Dark Lord, fired on his ship, attempting to kill his master and the Jedi. However, the Jedi managed to escape with Revan, and they wiped his memory... gave him a new identity.

The Jedi tried to nurture him, turn him into something he was not: a pawn in their game to assert domination through politics and not brute force. When he finally confronted Malak, however, Malak revealed his identity. After this, a powerful Jedi named Bastila sacrificed herself to save Revan. When Revan escaped, he gladly asserted his new role as Dark Lord and began a quest of revenge.

At least, that's how it appeared to everyone else: a simple quest for revenge. Yes, Revan wanted revenge, but his true motivation was much different.

When he had been Dark Lord, he had been fairly subtle in his conquering of the galaxy. He had eliminated key leaders who's role he could replace, bombed only worlds that posed a strategic challenge, and tried to be as under-zealous as possible when it came to actually killing. Why? He wasn't really a Sith. Ha!, he thought. Sith.... Sith are fools. Sith are creatures who are consumed by the Dark Side, who are the Dark Side, and people adopted it to mean a Jedi who left the Order and went about on his own agenda. How much more false could such a definition be? Sith was a species. 'Sith' loved death, hate, destruction, but Revan was compassionate, and understood the importance of life. He had to conquer the galaxy though, because the galaxy needed to be united under one strong hand because of impending threats that only he knew about: the Wounds and the True Sith, the species Sith.

His apprentice, however, knew none of this. If the Sith ideal was something that could truly be embodied, then Malak fit the pattern. When he took the mantle of Dark Lord, he had no worries about galactic stability... all he wanted was people to fear him. The fool assumed fear beget respect, and thus he could rule the galaxy by brute force and slaughter. Thus, he was over-zealous in his wanton slaughter. He bombed worlds for practically no reason whatsoever except that he just didn't like that planet where it was. Malak was a fool, a barbarian, a bumbling oaf who couldn't possibly understand the subtlety involved with uniting (not necessarily 'conquering') a galaxy. He needed to be eliminated so that he wouldn't cause more damage.

By the time Revan finally made it to the Star Forge on the fringes of space and killed his stupid apprentice (for he would always be the apprentice, no matter how deluded he or anyone else happened to be), the damage had been done. He had attempted to unite a force at Korrriban, but in the confusion factions arose, and these factions destroyed themselves. Revan left Korriban on the ship Leviathan with some of his old companions (those who had accompanied him after his memory had been erased). And then.... he found himself on the bridge of the Leviathan, mediating.

He stood and realized that now was the time to leave. Once more he would seek solitude. He walked through the halls of the large ship into the docking bay, where he jumped into a small, specially programmed fighter and flew into space, leaving his crew at the edge of space.