Dark Guardians of Lettow

"Perfect strength, perfect power, perfect destiny."

- The Skywalker

The Dark Guardians of Lettow was the official name for a group of warriors founded by the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness Carden Mannux that practiced the Dark Side of the Force. The group was created based upon the teachings, writings and philosophies of Xendor Taral, Marka Ragnos and Darth Revan. The Lettow worshiped the Dark Side of the Force and, in time, they were bent on aiding the Sith Empire and the Galactic Empire in their quest to destroy the Jedi Order and, eventually, the Bendu Order. They were galactically known for their brutal discipline and lust for power in their upper ranks, along with the unholy methods they used to advance in rank.

During the early days of the organization, the Lettow simply worshiped the Dark Side as they prepared to unleash their fury on the unsuspecting innocents of the galaxy. They were rediscovered during the Millennium of Hiding by a Dark Lord of the Sith and secretly began serving the Sith Order until the death of Darth Plagueis, as the knowledge of their location was lost when Plagueis did not reveal it to his apprentice, Darth Sidious. Decades later, they were rediscovered by Sidious and his apprentice, Darth Vader.

The Lettow were instrumental in many battles during the Galactic Civil War, most notably the First Battle of Alderaan, the Battle of Endor, the Second Battle of Alderaan, the Sieges of Naboo and the First Battle of Coruscant. However, during the First Battle of Coruscant, all but two Dark Guardians, Kane Starkiller and Mara Jade, were destroyed. The destruction of the faction thereby destroyed almost four thousand years of hard work and determination from Carden Mannux onward. However, the philosophies and practices of the Dark Guardians were later used on Earth by the Prophets of Lettow, a group that tried to bring about the return of Carden Mannux.

Sith Battle Lords
Towards the end of his long reign as the Dark Lord of the Sith Empire, Lord Marka Ragnos had a massive fortress on Thule constructed where he would be able to escape the daily duties of being the Dark Lord and spend time alone. In his fortress, two major and mysterious chambers stood out. The first was the Obsidian Throne, a term that would be used by Dark Lords of the Sith for thousands of years to refer to their seat of power. The second was a large, ritualistic chamber where he devised a plan to create a group of fierce and strong warriors. Those warriors were to be called Sith Battle Lords.

The basic idea of his Battle Lords stemmed from a mistake that the Sith had always made, one that had been apparent to the Dark Lord for quite some time. That was the idea that the student should always rise up and destroy his or her master, thereby becoming the new master and the new Sith Lord. Ragnos realized, however, that if too many Sith were in the same place at the same time craving power, they would destroy themselves for whatever power they could gain. Therefore, it would destroy the Sith Empire. In Ragnos’ mind, evil did not work well with other evils, particularly when those evils were the Sith because they were not able to organize well, as they were always wary that someone would literally stab them in the back. Because they were not likely to work together, they were not likely to want to work for each other.

In an attempt to take care of such a problem, Ragnos came up with the idea of the Sith Battle Lords. His goal was to eliminate insubordination within soldiers and the followers of the Dark Side, thereby making it difficult for someone who was in charge of soldiers to mistreat them in such a way that would make the soldiers want them killed. Essentially, it was forced morale, though the soldiers would not have realized that the morale was being forced onto them. It was a fairly convoluted process and Ragnos needed someplace special to work on it, hence why he built a fortress in the middle of nowhere.

Ragnos, however, passed away before he was able to officially test his theories. However, before dying he wrote out the process for creating a Sith Battle Lord. It was a long, drawn out ritual and a great deal of Sith magic was involved. In the end, even he did not know what would happen during the ritual. All he knew was how it would end. When it did, the one who was to become a Battle Lord would be laid down upon an altar and cut open. While bleeding, more than likely profusely, his fellow Sith and Battle Lord brothers would pass by him and track through his blood as a symbol of strength, unity and brotherhood.

Less than a decade later, the knowledge of the Sith Battle Lords found its way into the hands of a Lord of the Sith called Darth Apocalus. Apocalus reigned for a short time in the years following the Great Hyperspace War, and the knowledge had been imparted onto him through the journals of his predecessor. However, many within the Sith Empire found Apocalus to be dishonorable and unworthy of holding the mantle of Dark Lord. Knowing that his reign was coming to an end, Apocalus gave the knowledge to his apprentice, Darth Cularin, who documented the information in a brief manifesto. Apocalus was then cast away into a frozen chamber in an ancient Sith citadel beneath the fiery rivers of Mustafar. The Sith felt that leaving him semi-conscious while frozen for eternity would be a more effective punishment than simply killing him.

Shortly thereafter, Cularin became the Dark Lord of the Sith. He had no interest in creating the Battle Lords, but rather than disposing of the information he placed the manifesto within the Tomb of Marka Ragnos on Korriban. Some information did leak out, though even the mainstream media refused to speak about it, despite the fact that they generally reported on propaganda and scandals. They worried that it would only fuel the so-called “delusions of the Sith” and that it would lead to more of the galaxy’s citizens joining the Sith Empire.

The knowledge of the Battle Lords was again lost for another thousand years until the third year of the devastating Great Territorial War. A Sith Lord called Darth Invidius was promoted to Grand Admiral of the Third Sith Empire and quickly began plotting against the Empress Viea. Knowing that he needed more power than he already had, he scoured the tombs in the Valley of the Dark Lords in the hopes of finding something that would aide him in his mission against the empress. He literally tore the Tomb of Marka Ragnos apart looking for anything that could help him, and he came across the manifesto written by Cularin. Within the manifesto was the location of the frozen body of Darth Apocalus on Mustafar.

Invidius spent the next year secretly gathering support for what he called the Macabre Alliance, which became a covert organization dedicated to overthrowing Viea and instituting Invidius as the Dark Lord of the Sith. During the First Battle for Coruscant, Invidius made his way to Mustafar and uncovered the Sith citadel underneath the surface. Once there, he uttered the password, “Samhain”, to open the large doors and made his way to the chamber where Apocalus’ frozen body was kept. When he arrived, the voices of thousands of dark, departed souls beckoned to him, and Invidius proclaimed that he had found Apocalus’ power worthy of rivaling his own. At that moment, the chamber was unsealed and Invidius brought Apocalus’ body to an ancient medical wing to recover.

Days later, Apocalus and Invidius arrived on Thule at Marka Ragnos’ fortress. After Invidius shared with Apocalus the history of what had happened in the galaxy between the Sith and the Jedi since the Great Hyperspace War, Apocalus revealed some, but not all, of the secrets of the Sith Battle Lords. Though Invidius initially protested, Apocalus took command of the Macabre Alliance, saying that he would be the next Dark Lord of the Sith and that he would effectively and efficiently implement the Battle Lord experiment. Not long after, they began their first experiment on a Macabre Alliance member named Darth Infernus. They went through the ritual and it appeared that his insubordination had been removed and that he had the forced morale. However, they quickly discovered a problem. Within days, Infernus was too easily slain by Darth Ravinos.

Apocalus quickly began attempting to perfect the experiments. He spent weeks doing so, but he was forced to put his experiments on hold when the time came for the Macabre Alliance to attempt a coup de tat against Empress Viea during the Final Battle for Coruscant. When the Galactic Republic and Jedi Order attempted to retake Coruscant from the Sith, Apocalus led his fleet to the capital world and fired upon Viea’s Sith fleet. However, Apocalus was overpowered and he went down with his ship. Shortly thereafter, Viea was also killed and the Sith were forced to abandon Coruscant. Around the same time, it was believed that Invidius had been killed by Ussej Padric Bac on Telos IV. However, Invidius survived the encounter and made his way to Korriban. When he arrived, he stole the manifesto of Marka Ragnos, which he found had been added to by Apocalus, and brought it to the Temple of the Ancients on Lehon. When the Sith who were loyal to the late empress found him there, they captured him and cast away his soul to the Citadel of Sorrow on Ziost for his treachery. The Sith who cast him away did not know about the manifesto, so the knowledge of the Sith Battle Lords and the failure that the experiment created was lost once again.

The Obsidian Guard
Thirty years after the final battle of the United Pirate Crusades, the Sith had all but destroyed themselves. The final seven Sith Lords that remained after the Great Rim Lines War saw their numbers dwindle to two, a master and an apprenticed named Darth Zios and Darth Viscerus. Viscerus operated on Thule, conducting dark experiments upon weaker beings and animals to perfect a form of alchemy. Zios, however, spent his time on Dxun in the Tomb of Freedon Nadd in an attempt to crack and discover its secrets, though for the most part it was to no avail. A Dark Jedi Master named Carden Mannux, a Chiss, heard of the state of the supposedly destroyed Sith and was appalled at what they had become. After investigating the possibility of the Sith still being in existence for nearly a year, he traveled to Dxun and found Zios in the Tomb of Freedon Nadd where he demanded to become a new Sith disciple. Zios laughed him off, deeming the Chiss warrior to be far too weak to even be accepted among his own people. Carden attacked him, as he believed himself to be the stronger, but Zios had Carden captured by his minions and brought to a makeshift torture chamber within the tomb.

Zios held Carden hostage for nearly three months, torturing him to gain information on a supposed Dark Jedi stronghold that had appeared somewhere in the vicinity of a powerful valley on Ruusan. Carden, however, refused to say anything. One night, he managed to break free of his chains and murdered the Dark Lord of the Sith. He stole Zios’ large, metal blade and when he attempted to escape he was overcome by a flash of light and exposed to the powers of the tomb, which Carden believed to be a side effect of whatever rituals Zios had been performing in the area. He felt a surge of power coursing through his veins, that power making him stronger than he had been when he had first arrived on Dxun. Shortly thereafter, he made his way through the jungle to an abandoned Mandalorian base where he commandeered an abandoned shuttle to disappear.

Over the next three years, Carden gained more strength through training, as well as being exposed to even more powers from ancient Sith sites throughout the galaxy. During his searches for power, he found information pertaining to the experiments that Apocalus performed while attempting to create the Sith Battle Lords. As Carden was disgusted by what the Sith had become, the information greatly intrigued him. He followed the information he gathered to Lehon where he uncovered the manifesto left there by Darth Invidius nearly seventy-five years earlier. Much of the information was cryptic, at best, so he had trouble understanding it. However, he devoted all of the time he had to uncovering the mysterious within that manifesto, and that was all he did for nearly a year.

After the end of the year of study, Carden learned that a former flame that he had betrayed named Rajani Zahra had attacked the Galactic Senate on Coruscant. He immediately made his way there and when he arrived a few hours later he found a great deal of carnage within the Senate, much of it being Rajani’s signature work. The incident allowed Senator Cos Jonathan Dashin to be elected Supreme Chancellor, and when Carden met up with Rajani following the attack she was less than pleased to see him. However, after Carden told her what happened to him on Dxun, as well as lies about how he had changed, she brought him to her then-new Dark Jedi monastery on Ruusan where she shared with him information on a secret facility that had once belonged to a woman named Sable, a Sith Witch during the Great Territorial War. Shortly thereafter, Rajani left to find the facility, though she had shared its location with Carden so he beat her there with his faster ship.

When he arrived, the spirit of Selae, the name that Jedi Master Kyra Maans took when she became the apprentice of Darth Myst, overcame Carden and he became momentarily possessed by her. However, her spirit was incomplete, so Carden’s will was able to overcome her own. The spirit of Selae remained within him, though it did not control him. Instead, he held many of her memories and her dark techniques such as her form of torture. Selae was known to torture people to no end, kill mercilessly, manipulate others to get her own desires, crave power and believe herself to be utterly superior to all others. Her qualities quickly became Carden’s qualities, and at that moment he decided to seek out the Dark Lord of the Sith on Thule. He never saw or heard from Rajani again.

When he arrived, Carden found the Dark Lord Darth Dire and demanded that he either let him become a part of the Sith or that Dire would be killed. Dire was amused, to say the least, though after seeing Carden’s immense power he allowed him to become a part of the growing Fourth Sith Empire. However, rather than being a Sith Lord, Carden was placed in command of the Obsidian Guard, an elite group of Force users whose sole purpose was to protect the Dark Lord of the Sith and his most important disciples. Carden was permitted to take on a “Lord”, but not a “Darth”, name that he himself could choose, as only Carden knew what would best fit him. Carden studied the manifesto left behind by Ragnos, Apocalus and Invidius in the hopes of finding an appropriate name, and he became very interested in the stories of the Legions of Lettow led by Xendor Taral. In honor of the legions, Carden took on the name Lord Lettow.

As he was training his new warriors, Carden came to realize the flaw in the experiments of Ragnos and Apocalus. Though they were correct in saying that insubordination needed to be eliminated and that the Sith needed to find a way to work together or be destroyed, they allowed their Battle Lord experiments to know as much about the Force as they could, which still led them to crave power. That craving of power was evident through Darth Infernus, who even after becoming a Battle Lord wished to one day be the Dark Lord of the Sith. Carden trained the Obsidian Guard to be tools, people who would be able to instinctively use the Force to produce amazing results without any knowledge of its true structure and mechanisms. To this end, he used the natural block created by untrained minds. He kenw that if someone did not believe that they could accomplish a task through the Force then, in the end, they would not be able to, even if they were powerful enough to do it. When he saw his theories work effectively in his guardsman, he began implementing a plan to create more drones like them until the Sith Empire was filled with them.

The Obsidian Guardsman were given a chance to prove themselves when a team made up of members of the Jedi Order, the Shadourian Order and the Bendu Order attacked the guard base on Yavin IV. There, Carden came face to face with Bendu High Priest Ussej Padric Bac III. Though the Obsidian Guard did manage to repel the smaller numbers of the invading strike force, Carden was beaten in his duel with Ussej and he felt shamed because of it. Because of that shame, he vowed to take revenge on Ussej no matter what the cost. Not long after, Darth Dire was killed by his apprentice, Darth Ruinus, during the Battle of the Jedi Temple. However, only weeks later, Ruinus was slain by his apprentice, Darth Mortis, as well. At that point, Carden was chosen to be the Apprentice of the Dark Lord of the Sith and became Darth Lettow. During his rule, Mortis began having strange and cryptic visions of a demonic being that referred to himself as the Blood God. This supposed deity vowed to avenge his imprisonment on someone called the “Morning Star”. For months on end, Mortis attempted to uncover the truth of the visions, and while doing so he documented everything he knew about them in his personal journals.

The Night’s Children
Darth Mortis’ final and fatal mistake as Dark Lord of the Sith was sharing the information he had gathered on the Blood Guard with Carden. Carden realized the potential that summoning such a deity held and knew that unleashing it upon the galaxy and using what knowledge it had would work to his great advantage when forming his new order of perfect Dark Side warriors. Two days after he first was given the information by his master, Carden engaged Mortis in a fierce duel just outside the Sith Temple on Korriban. As Carden struck his master down and claimed the title of Dark Lord of the Sith for himself, Mortis had one final vision in which he saw his former apprentice leading an army of darkness to great glory. At that moment, he realized that it was Carden who was meant to bring about the era of the Blood God and, because of that, accepted his fate.

With his new found power, the Dark Lord Lettow received a vision that disturbed him greatly. In this vision, Carden saw the Blood God who told him to seek out four relics for his return: the Blood Armor, the Mark of Blood, the Bloodied Steed and the Crown of Yore. Why the Blood God would need such items was a mystery to Carden but, nonetheless, he complied. Knowing that the retrieval of such items would require great care, he ordered three members of the Obsidian Guard to retrieve them, as he did not want any competition when they were being gathered. Thorodon, the leader of the guard, was first ordered to oversee the construction of a Shrine of Blood for the arrival of the deity. A high guardsman was sent to find the Mark of Blood. Another low guardsman was sent to find the Blood Armor. Carden quickly left to find the Crown of Yore and the Bloodied Steed, and he found them on Thule and Utapau, respectively. Only when the artifacts were recovered would Carden be able to summon the deity, thus bringing about the Era of Blood and the impending storm of chaos.