Jedi Order III (Jedi Renaissance)

The third iteration of the Jedi Order was organized at the end of the Pius Dea era by Grand Master and Supreme Chancellor Biel Ductavis after the defeat of the divisive Pius Dea religion and their ouster from the Galactic Senate. The Order maintained official ties with the Galactic Republic, serving as peacekeepers and diplomats on behalf of member worlds, using the Force to promote a doctrine that demanded the use of the light side to find peace and enlightenment. Members of the Order operated on hundreds of worlds, and were guided by a loose confederation of Jedi Masters and elders based on the garden world Ossus. The High Council fluctuated in power, struggling at times to maintain control over the hundreds of millions of Jedi active across the galaxy. It was during this time that the Second and Third Great Schism took place, and the Sith Order first came into existence and began warring with the Order. Forming an Empire in the Stygian Caldera, wielders of the dark side of the Force violated the strictures of the Order and were deemed heretics by the High Council, inciting war that would bring the Order and the galaxy to its knees. With membership spanning thousands of species and drawing from every world within the Republic, the Order was at its zenith on Ossus when the fallen Jedi Exar Kun led an army of Sith sorcerers to the world and caused the nearby Cron Star Cluster to supernova and irradiate the world. With Ossus destroyed and the Order scattered, its members were prone to stray from the Jedi path and be corrupted. When two Jedi heroes led a faction of revanchists against a Mandalorian threat on the Rim, the High Council condemned the action as warmongering and ostracized swaths of Jedi. When these heroes returned at the head of an army of Sith, the High Council disbanded the Order and commanded that all survivors flee Coruscant and seek safety elsewhere. Despite a pyrrhic victory against the Sith Empire, the Order was irreparably damaged and much of its membership dead. The Order was reorganized into its fourth incarnation under the leadership of Jedi Master Meetra Surik, a survivor of the revanchist movement and a proven hero of the Republic.