Jedi Order (Dark Times)

The Jedi Order, also known as the Holy Order of the Jedi Knights or the Old Jedi Order, was an ancient monastic peacekeeping order and religious institution unified by its belief in the Light Side of the Force and served as the protectors of peace throughout the galaxy. After the formation of the Galactic Republic a few hundred years after the formation of the order, the Jedi quickly aligned itself with the republic and became its guardians and protectors four thousands of years. The Jedi Order quickly rose to prominence over the next few centuries and became the dominate and most well-known force-sensitive organization in all of galactic history. The Jedi were lead by a series of various councils who lead them throughout the millennia and helped them grow into power despite the many trials that the order had faced.

Throughout its history, there were many members of the Jedi Order who became disillusioned and broke away from the order which lead to the outbreak of various schisms and conflicts from within the order itself. Many fallen Jedi Knights would betray the order believing them to be violating and abusing the force and claiming that they know how the powers of the force should be wielded. These defectors would go one to form various different organizations and monastic orders with many more infamously completely falling to the Dark Side of the Force and would later form the Sith after embracing the dark side. The Sith would be the most powerful and dangerous enemy to the Jedi as they would form various empires and would wage countless devestating wars with the Jedi and the Republic which almost lead the two to ruin. The Jedi first battled the Sith in the Great Hyperspace War and thousands of years later, manipulated the Mandalorians into warring with the Republic leading them into decline.

The most devestating however was the Great Galactic War which a resurrgent Sith Empire invaded the galaxy and conquered half of the Republic's territory while a civil war broke out within the Jedi Order leading to its further decline and being reduced to a shell of its former self. Its weakened state eventually lead to a galaxy-wide purge by the Sith Triumvirate which nearly exterminated the Jedi had a few survivors not existed. The survivors however would go on to rebuild the Jedi Order and restore its former glory as the protectors of both the Republic and the galaxy. The Jedi's millennia-long war with the Sith was still not over and by the end of the Old Republic Era, the Jedi managed to retake all lost Republic territory from the Sith and almost destroyed the Sith Order as a whole which secretly survived thanks to the efforts of Darth Bane who kept the Sith alive with the Rule of Two and fooled the Jedi into believing that the Sith were extinct.

Following the end of the New Sith Wars, the Ruusan Reformation was conducted by Supreme Chancellor Tarsus Valorum, the Jedi were removed from the military entirely and the possession of Sith artifacts, relics, and textx was deemed illegal and all Sith items, symbols, historical and religious texts, holocrons, and other artifacts were supressed and kept away from the Republic as a means of ending the Sith's legacy according to Valorum and the Jedi Order. The Sith however, were still alive and survived by keeping their numbers small with the Rule of Two and conspiring to eventually bring down and destroy the Republic and the Jedi. During the Separatist Crisis, the Sith conspired against the Republic and Jedi by taking over the secessionist movements and forming the Confederacy of Independent Systems and leading them throughout the Clone Wars which ended with the execution of Order 66 and the following Great Jedi Purge which dissolved the Republic replacing it with the Galactic Empire and the Jedi Order was destroyed in the aftermath of the war and was reduced to mere holdouts spread throughout the galaxy.