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"You must face the ultimate test,
the ultimate seduction, the gravest of journeys."
"You will travel to Moraband."
"Journey to the ancient homeworld of the Sith.
Face all that you fear. All that haunts your soul."
Moraband and Faction Goals
One of the most exciting things we've developed for the new timeline, Star Wars: Dawn of the Republic, thus far is the culture and heritage of the Sith Order. This revolves around the planet Moraband. For those unfamiliar with that world, it's the ancient homeworld of the Sith and it was first introduced in "Sacrifice," the final completed episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Those who know the lore of the Expanded Universe know that the planet was once called Korriban, and it has been around since the 1990s in stories like Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi. During production of "Sacrifice," the team behind The Clone Wars originally referred to Moraband as Korriban, but the name was changed on the wishes of George Lucas who preferred the name Moraband. Lucasfilm has since said that a world so old could have had many names across the ages, suggesting that Korriban may very well have been its name at one point.the ultimate seduction, the gravest of journeys."
"You will travel to Moraband."
"Journey to the ancient homeworld of the Sith.
Face all that you fear. All that haunts your soul."
Moraband and Faction Goals
Dawn of the Republic is going to do things a little differently. Instead of Moraband and Korriban being the same world, for our site they are going to be two planets: the twin worlds of the Sith. This announcement details the culture and heritage of the Sith surrounding the twin worlds of Moraband and Korriban, and how that ties into the goals of the Jedi and the Sith.
The Twin Worlds
Once, the Jedi Order was unified, brothers and sisters in the Force, but from the Hundred Year Darkness were born the Sith. Those cast out of the Jedi Order for following the dark side of the Force settled on Moraband, deep in the far reaches of the Outer Rim, and became the Dark Lords of the Sith. It was on this dark and desolate world that the Sith forged an empire the likes of which the galaxy had never seen. But they were defeated, and the Sith were cast back into the shadows from whence they came. Though their empire had fallen, this was not the end of the Sith. They waited, and then they returned, and in their absence Moraband became their sacred world.
When the Sith returned, they did so not from Moraband, but from Korriban, its sister world, sharing the same orbit around their sun. For a real world analogy, Moraband is to Pluto as Korriban is to Charon. Moraband is the world of the dead, and it has become a place of great reverence for the Sith Order. Moraband is where the dead are taken to be buried, with the most prominent of Sith being buried in the Valley of the Dark Lords. Few ever travel there; except in cases like burial, it is sacrilegious to set foot on Moraband.
Korriban is where the Sith Order itself is based. At a certain time each day, the great temple on Moraband and the great temple on Korriban are perfectly aligned. They point right at each other. This is a time of great importance for the Sith, for it is the time of day when they can commune with the spirits of the dead that dwell on Moraband. And the orbits of Moraband and Korriban are such that Moraband is always in the sky of Korriban, day and night.
The spirits of the dead are always watching Korriban.
Faction Goals
This is going to seem like an odd transition at first, but Moraband very much ties into something we also want to do to help the timeline move along and give the factions a little something extra to drive them beyond simply beating the other side militarily. We want each faction to have an overriding objective, one that can decide the fate of the galaxy one way or another.
Before getting into what these objectives could be, I want to frame it like this: giving factions overriding objectives is a macro-level approach to what we're already doing with the new battle system, which those of you familiar with the "Manaan Rules" will know (and what those of you who aren't will see more in detail in our next announcement). Under the new battle system, with people engaging in PvP duels rather than controlling entire militaries, the battles effectively become Capture the Flag scenarios. If there are three battle locations and a faction wins two of them, that faction wins the battle. So if battles have clear objectives in order to give combatants something to focus on and to limit the ambiguity that ends up dragging a battle out forever, then it stands to reason that the timeline as a whole should have them too - thus providing factions something to focus on and limiting the ambiguity that drags a timeline out forever.
To preface the plan a bit more, I want to tell you a bit about a fact that was revealed in the 2014 canon novel Star Wars: Tarkin. That novel reveals that the Jedi Temple on Coruscant was built over an ancient Sith shrine, and the dark side energies that seeped out of the shrine - something the Jedi thought they were preventing by building their temple there - helped cause the eventual corruption of the Jedi Order and cloud their vision to the point that Darth Sidious was able to exploit it and destroy them. The Jedi Temple on Coruscant won't exist in our timeline yet - the Order will be based elsewhere - but the Sith shrine does exist at this point far beneath the surface of Coruscant. So the faction objective for the Sith would be to push into the Core Worlds, take or at least get some level of control over Coruscant, and finally gain access to the shrine for the first time in nearly 5,000 years.
Now, we can get into more detail about what this means, and what the Jedi goal would be too.
If the Sith shrine is the goal of the Sith, then it stands to reason that Moraband should be the goal of the Jedi. So what is the Jedi goal? Let's start with some info about the Sith. The Sith don't have a concept of death. That's why they want to live forever. The ability to commune with the spirits of the dead is key to their survival, because those spirits have ancient secrets, ancient knowledge, and ancient wisdom. Without the guidance of their ancestors, Sith society crumbles. That's what the goal of the Jedi will be - destroying the power of Moraband, and thus destroying Sith society with it. While Jedi rely on holocrons to preserve their knowledge, the Sith rely on their spirits, so losing their connection to the spirits means they lose access to the most ancient of Sith teachings and much of their dark side power.
The spirits that dwell on Moraband are similar to Jedi spirits in the sense that they are fully aware, but, unlike Jedi spirits, the Sith spirits are tied to one place. They are part of Moraband, rather than part of the Force, which just goes to show you how dark and evil Moraband is. But if the Sith can fulfill their goal and gain access to their shrine again, they believe it can allow them to become part of the Force and, in doing so, reshape the Force to their own reality. So that ties the two goals together; getting the shrine and wrecking Moraband do not exist in vacuums from one another. And if the Jedi wreck Moraband, it turns the spirits into shells, rather than fully aware, and they become echoes of their former selves rather than conscious in any meaningful or helpful way. If the Jedi succeed in their goal, then the Sith will have tried to gain everything and eventually lose everything.
Another interesting aspect is what this means for when Sith characters die in the RP. If the spirits of the dead dwell on Moraband, then it stands to reason that Player Characters (PCs) from the Lords of the Sith sub-faction that get buried there can become spirits on Moraband. But, that would only happen if their body was buried there. That presents an interesting new twist for death within the Sith faction. Sith are going to fall in combat on other worlds, which means getting their bodies to Moraband could be difficult. So when Jedi PCs kill Sith PCs, for example, the Jedi would want to burn the bodies of the fallen Sith. That way, their fellow Sith can never retrieve their bodies. Those fallen Sith cease to exist. The Jedi think they're doing the Sith a favor by sparing them from that fate, for the Jedi have their own name for the Valley of the Dark Lords: the Valley of the Damned.
So that adds an interesting element to the RP where if someone wants to have their dead Sith PC appear as a spirit on Moraband, then other Sith PCs are going to have to retrieve their body somehow. While the Jedi get an interesting element of their own by trying to burn bodies before they can be retrieved, which gives the Sith even more reason to hate them. That's something we've never done in the RP before.
Conclusion
How do these goals about the Sith shrine and wrecking Moraband actually help give the faction direction? Well, conquest and territory-capturing is still going to be how the war plot primarily moves forward, so what this does is give direction to that push so the conquest isn't aimless and doesn't drag out forever. A lot of times in past timelines, including this one, faction leaders put together battle plans that went after well-known planets or that were designed to give people something to do, but didn't necessarily make any strategic sense. This provides a unifying strategy, so every engagement that a faction undertakes can push towards a particular goal.
We'll have more on the battle system referenced in this announcement soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments about what you read here, please feel free to let us know.
