Safely ensconced on her ship, Darth Spectre was thoughtfully going through her collection of holocrons, her mind full of doubt while she tried to concentrate on what she'd learnt before she could rationalise it with meditation later. A large chunk of the collection had come from what Darth Krayt had gathered over the years before he had founded the One Sith, and much of that collection had luckily come from the collection of the original Rule of Two which had been relatively easy to recover since Luke Skywalker had been more concerned with other matters after the downfall of the Empire, but Spectre guessed the Sith Lord she had…served under as an apprentice had gathered holocrons from many other sources, including the Lost Tribe, but she had liberated a few artefacts and holocrons from the Lost Tribe herself.
With this knowledge, she knew the Sith had a heritage to build their future on.
But she still had many doubts.
Spectre had spent a lot of her time consulting the guardians of the holocrons, learning their secrets taking in their teachings and practicing her knowledge - she had learnt from the holocrons of Darth Taral and Darth Prophraoh of a tradition where the Sith Lord would visit a planet, and give themselves to the Dark Side, and thanks to the star maps she had a good idea of where to go for such a visit since it would give her the chance to hone her skills and learn new ones - while being alert for any kind of deception. Darth Bane's holocron was contemptuous towards Krayt and his image of the Sith, and he despaired at the news the moment Krayt was killed the entire empire started fracturing until it collapsed into nothingness and the Jedi had won.
That opinion was true to say none of the Rule of Two Sith with any common sense, from Bane to Zannah, Taral, Gean, Opes, and Prophraoh had been pleased their hard work had been for nothing and in the long run, the future of the Sith was in jeopardy.
Krayt had proved Bane right; by forming a massive organisation composed of Sith, he had spread the Sith and their power in the Dark side too thin and while many of those Sith had been capable, the fact the empire fell apart and they didn't know how to function without the guiding hand of Krayt, earned a great deal of contempt from the Rule of Two Sith.
But as she had consulted the avatar guardians of the holocrons, Darth Spectre had begun having some doubts about what she should do. Originally she had wanted to create a new Grand Plan to eradicate the Jedi, and take over the galaxy, but as time passed and she consulted the holocrons while she racked her brains for the best way she could actually form the plan without making it seem like the Sith had learnt nothing from the disasters caused by Sidious and Krayt, Spectre's doubts grew and grew when she had found one holocron in particular.
Darth Gean and Darth Toxis, both of the Rule of Two, had saved the Sith when Geans' master went insane and began turning to Light side teachings; if she hadn't killed him, the Sith's future would have been destroyed while Toxis would later dial down the Sith's plans and arrogance to allow their future success….a success undone by the arrogance of Darth Sidious. While Sidious had been the powerful Sith Lord who had successfully ensured the peak of the Rule of Two, and Bane's original Grand Plan; taking the position of Chancellor and igniting the fire that began the Clone Wars, there was no mistaking the fact Sidious had doomed the Sith.
He had underestimated the Jedi and the Light side of the Force.
He had chosen Anakin Skywalker to become Darth Vader and was lumbered with an apprentice who was unstable and would be turned back to the Light by his love for his son.
During his time as the Emperor, Sidious had been lazy, fully believing he had secured his power base and when the Death Star was completed he could spread fear and destruction throughout the galaxy. While that would almost certainly work, history has shown rebellion would be sparked, and it had when Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star. Spectre might have been a Sith Lady, but she was also a scientist and she was trained in logical reasoning. She was worried for the future of the Sith, she was terrified if she went to the trouble of recreating the Sith, eventually, they would fall apart the way they had done many times in the past.
Darth Spectre did not want to create a new Order of Sith Lords, set up the foundations of a new Grand Plan, find a worthwhile apprentice and invest so much of her time and energy into his or her training, knowing they would kill her eventually, and find their own apprentice to start off the cycle again….only for a future Sith Lord to turn to the Light, and destroy the Sith again. Or for them to make some stupid mistake which would see the Light return to the galaxy.
Spectre was impressed with the Sith from the Rule of Two era, but she was also confused by it; as a rule, all Sith desired some kind of power. The Dark Side fuelled their quest for power through destruction, and as she went through the holocrons and learnt more about the Rule of Two era from the avatars of the different holocrons, Spectre was gifted with a number of ideas for where to take the Rule of Two she was planning on creating, but she wondered how the Sith Masters had been able to keep to a central quest before Sidious took power.
But Spectre wondered sometimes why some of the Sith Lords from the same lineage didn't try to split off and denounce the Grand Plan. What was it that kept them from doing it?
Spectre had been working for the last year to try to clean up the mess left by Krayts' empire, gathering knowledge and forming networks as she went in the hopes of learning about secret caches of Sith Lore, and also meditating so she could locate other artefacts before she discovered a holocron created by Darth Momin.
Darth Momin.
Darth Spectre had only heard of him a scant few times during her education at Krayt's academy. Momin was a twisted Dark Side scholar she had heard, one obsessed with creating art, but in actual fact, Momin was more complex; rumour had it, that Momin was the mastermind behind the creation of Darth Vader's castle on Mustafar. A humanoid Force-sensitive who believed pain and fear were the only true emotions, Momin had already been twisted long before he met his Master, and he killed her in a due after she had trained him to use his powers because he disliked being a student. Spectre could understand that, and the young Mirilan considered what she had learnt from Momin'a holocron. Unlike other ancient Sith Lords like Darth Andeddu and Darth Bane, Momin was not interested in carving out an empire, he instead turned his attention to learning more about the Dark Side's nature and creating dark arts he considered worthy.
But he had created a super weapon, and while she knew it was long destroyed, Spectre was curious enough to wonder what it was how it worked, and why the Sith had only mentioned him in previous holocrons, but nothing more than that. Spectre had meditated many a time before she discovered Momin had planned to use his weapon to permanently freeze populations, so the inhabitants would be left frozen with horror on their faces.
Once her understanding of Momin being struck from history came, that did not mean she was dismissive of him and his teachings before he took that sick step, Momin was one of the reasons why Spectre was rethinking many of her long-term plans.
When Momin learnt of how the Sith Empires of the past, recent and distant, had fallen, he had derided them, not hiding his disdain for how the Sith Emperors had arrogantly focused on their own selfish desires and decided not to serve the Dark Side.
While she was unsure how to take that at first, Spectre had to admit Momin's avatar was right and had a point on many things, and it had only caused her to worry for the future of the Sith, and the Order she was going to create; she refused to create a Sith Order, dedicating many years of her life in training an apprentice who would take the Order to the next levels and find an apprentice of their own, only for the Order to fail because a future Sith Master arrogantly turned their back on the Dark Side and the good of the Sith.
Spectre had meditated for a long time, consulting the Dark side many times over to divine in the best way she could proceed. Like all Sith, Spectre desired and cultivated power, and like many Sith Lords, she believed in the enslavement of others. But was it the only way to go? Try as she might, Spectre couldn't rid herself of those mutinous thoughts, and she found herself wondering about new ways of furthering the strength of the Dark side of the Force.
And she had started asking herself some deep, probing questions as a result. Was forming an empire, ushering in a massive galactic war as Bane envisioned and Sith Masters like Plagueis and Sidious sparked off and beginning a Jedi Purge the only way forward for revenge the only way to go? If she created a Sith order with a similar Grand Plan to Darth Bane, how long would it be before it fell apart? Would the Dark Side be appeased? Was killing the Jedi the only thing for the Sith to do when they could do so much more?
The scientist in Spectre knew the answer was no, and that was confirmed when she meditated. From what Spectre could tell, Darth Tenebrous, one of the last Sith Masters of the original Rule of Two, had desired power by seizing the body of the Chosen One and balancing out the Force, while manipulating it to account for the needs of everyone in the galaxy and ruling over it while the Jedi Order died out. It was an audacious plan, but the Will of the Force acted against Tenebrous.
Spectre did not believe it was a good idea to defy the Will of the Force like that, and she did not like the idea of a descendent in her lineage carrying a similar plan out. But there were other ways of serving the Dark Side.