"The Reawakened" were a group of twelve Jedi in the Galactic Republic who lived at the time of Darth Ruin. Disheartened and disillusioned by the Fourth Great Schism and the seemingly inevitable rebirth cycle of the Sith, they determined to leave behind the Jedi and the galaxy as they knew it. Boarding a sleeper ship, they set course into the Unknown Regions, trusting in the Force to guide them where it willed.
An error in the freezing process rendered their bodies static but kept their minds active, and over the next twenty-one centuries, they slowly went mad, each telepathically dragging the others down. When they finally landed on Kizav, they had been so far reduced that they craved only the experience of physical and emotional stimulation. Enslaving the native Skavik and striking a deal with their natural predators, the Veracht, the twelve unleashed their horrors on the Golden Empire in what became known as the Nightmare War.
History
The New Sith Wars
Two thousand years before the Battle of Yavin, Merita Ot'kyn was an esteemed Caamasi Jedi Master and a contemporary of Phanius. A former short-term member of the Jedi High Council, Ot'kyn had debated with his colleague Phanius on the nature and proper use of the Force. When Phanius departed the Order, resigning his commission and becoming one of the Lost, Ot'kyn took the blow hard.
An even worse blow came when Phanius emerged as Darth Ruin, declaring himself Dark Lord of the Sith. War erupted with Phanius and his Sith faction, and many Jedi found themselves bleakly anticipating another bitter, violent conflict with their perpetual nemeses. The Adarian Jedi Master Ador Hentral in particular abhorred the idea of the Jedi going to war, feeling that it defied the Jedi Code. Ot'kyn and Hentral attempted to persuade the Jedi Council to abandon its plans to fight Phanius, letting the Republic root out the Sith and leaving the Jedi unsullied by the conflict, or at least attempting to bring the Sith back to the light side. They were denied.
Though rebuffed by the leadership, who viewed it as their duty to oppose the Sith, the two Jedi Masters were not without supporters. Several Jedi had grown tired of the perpetual conflict between Sith and Jedi, especially since it seemed impossible actually be rid of the Sith once and for all. Others felt the Order was not the right place for them and wished to build new lives for them elsewhere. None of them had any desire to actively oppose the Jedi, but they felt themselves unable to wage war on the Sith, many of whom had once been friends, and determined to leave the Order.
In the end, Hentral and Ot'kyn were joined by Masters Desha Marad and Vev Nar, and Jedi Knights Karshi Saan, Charg, Voara Culee (Hentral former Padawan), Wuluro, Tirj, Kasavo Shei, Meerto Adrimbani, and Sacco Vyrak. It was Wuluro who asked where they could possibly go that would take them away from the incessant plague of the Sith and warmongering of the Jedi, and the historian Tirj who provided the answer.
The Jedi procured for themselves an ancient vessel, a sleeper ship with the technology to freeze its inhabitants between departure and arrival. The system was long since archaic, rendered meaningless by hyperspace navigation's ability to travel the galaxy in hours or days instead of years or centuries. But the twelve Jedi were not looking for speed, but for a long sleep to escape the troubles of the galaxy. And so they set off from Coruscant, bound where the Force would carry them.
The flaw in the plan
As a consequence of sleeper ship technology becoming hopelessly obsolete, no one living was truly qualified to repair it. Though the antiquities dealer in the Gree Enclave from whom the Jedi bought the ship assured them it was in proper working order, the worn-out freezing technology could not be fully repaired. The Jedi set out from Coruscant, then froze themselves in twelve stasis tubes.
It took little time before they realized something had gone horribly wrong. Their bodies were completely frozen and immobile, as was expected. However, their minds remained active. Their telepathy allowed the Jedi to communicate with one another, and for some time they were able to keep each other strong and stave off the horror of their condition. But, much like unwillingly "enlightened" B'omarr monks, the disembodied state eventually became too much, and one by one the Jedi slipped into madness.
As each fell, overwhelmed with horror and fear of existing eternally in such a condition which might never end, he dragged down the others, so the communal link among them became a poison, infecting everyone involved. Over time, fear was supplemented by rage; rage at the Jedi Order for ignoring them, at the Sith for bringing war, at the Gree for selling them a defective ship, and at one another for all agreeing to the plan. Though they could not influence their environment, their minds were still active in the Force, and the former Jedi fell to the dark side.
Awakening
Over twenty-one long centuries passed, and the Jedi forgot their former identities, forgot everything but the haze of pain and anguish that was their perpetual companion. In 148 ABY, however, the Jedi ship came to land on the planet Kizav in the Unknown Regions. The sleep system at last shut down, and the Dark Jedi awoke from their long sleep. Their minds were twisted and insane, and now they had full sensory power and command of the Force back.
A scouting party of Skavik drones discovered the ship, and the Dark Jedi fell upon them like locusts, slaughtering them ruthlessly with lightsabers and the Force. Drunk on the feeling, they proceeded to massacre several more collectives before they found their way to the Skavik queen and a plan forced its way through the haze of madness. Slaughtering Skavik was enjoyable, but the fallen Jedi knew they would run out of Skavik long before they ran out of desire for destruction. Sacco Vyrak and Karshi Saan persuaded the Skavik queen to ally her enormous army of drones to their cause.
Unbeknownst to the Skavik, Hentral, Culee, and Vyrak sought out the insectoids' natural predators, the mysterious Veracht. In return for their service, the three Dark Jedi offered the Veracht not only as many Skavik as they desired, but worlds of additional victims. After Culee and Vyrak bested several Veracht in combat, the Veracht leaders agreed to the plan and pledged their people as elite fighters and assassins.
Preparations
Taking their ship and as many Skavik as they could cram aboard, the Twelve activated the ship's unused hyperdrive and planet-hopped using the Force for astrogation until they came to Awpierh. The industrialized planet stood no chance against the Dark Jedi and their minions, who quickly captured several capital ships. Equipping them with speedily-manufactured hyperdrives, they returned to Kizav for reinforcements, then went back to Awpierh and annihilated the population.
The Skavik were imported to Awpierh by the millions, and manufactured more ships and weapons of war. Several times the Dark Jedi lost their focus and killed hundreds or thousands of their minions, or fed them to the Veracht to ensure loyalty and slake their own lusts for slaughter vicariously. But within a year, the Dark Jedi were ready to attack.
The first wave
The Dark Jedi and their Skavik army attacked the Golden Empire, striking several border worlds in the Xoquon and Romasi sectors, including Klee`shlyoo`hshee. In all cases, the Dark Jedi jammed offworld transmissions, and hit so hard and with such brutality that nothing escaped the planet. Hundreds of millions of beings were massacred and thousands of cities leveled, with the few survivors fleeing into the wild or setting up underground resistance movements.
When the Dark Jedi attacked Dolomir, however, they underestimated the planet's communications systems. As a hub of interspace technology, Dolomir had pioneered numerous hyperwave transceiver systems. The Consul of Dolomir was able to send a brief message to the Sith Star, including images and videos of the invaders, before he and his guards were overrun and slain.
Breakdown
Alerted to the danger, Queen Rin Sakaros used her precognitive powers to predict the next targets of the Dark Jedi rampage. When Sacco Vyrak and a million Skavik showed up at Daispin, Aria Nikina and Rajj-Yo were at the head of a Royal Army force assembled to defend the planet, and the Tempest was in orbit for the space battle. Vyrak the subsequent battle, Vyrak dueled Nikina and was decapitated, and although the Skavik recovered Vyrak's headless corpse, they were forced to flee.
The defeat at Daispin proved to be the beginning of the end for the Dark Jedi, though neither side realized it at the time. The twelve Dark Jedi had been bound to one another during their long centuries of isolation, their minds telepathically linked. Though they were warped shadows of what they had been, twisted and malevolent, their telepathic bond granted them some measure of focus. The removal of a single link in that chain, however, threw many of them into chaos.
Already intent on dominating the group, Ador Hentral became paranoid about the intentions of the others, especially the similarly-focused Desha Marad. He was gleeful when Marad became obsessed with the idea of cloning Vyrak, and maneuvered his former Padawan Voara Culee into Vyrak's place as foremost field commander. Wuluro became more aggressive and intemperate, and Kasavo Shei sullen and frightened of abandonment, which ironically led her comrades to push her away in contempt.
Losing ground
The war went on, but while Marad's newly formed Vyrak Legions were a formidable force responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians and several Centurions, the Dark Jedi continued to suffer losses. Panicked and feeling alone, Kasavo Shei fled to Mandos with only a handful of clones, where she committed suicide after losing a duel with Breek Zagrev. Karshi Saan and Merita Ot'ykn were killed within two weeks of one another, and, during an argument with Tirj and Meerto Adrimbani, Wuluro goaded Tirj enough that the Herglic smashed her head. But Charg brought back intelligence from Saan's outpost on Awpierh.
Having discovered that Rin was part-Qua, Hentral ordered an invasion of Quadia to obtain a sample of the Sickness. All the surviving Dark Jedi apart from Marad and Adrimbani took part in the attack, with Hentral Battle Meditating from orbit and Culee, Vev Nar, Charg, and Tirj attacking the ground. They succeeded in locating the disease, but Culee left Tirj behind as a rear guard, and he was slain by Luna Raquelsei, Selish Anteran, and Axelia Solios.
The end
Feeling trapped on Kizav, Meerto Adrimbani committed suicide shortly after the Battle of Quadia, jumping onto the engines of a warming transport and being incinerated. Worse, the plot to infect Rin with the Sickness was unsuccessful, and backfired horrifically when the Prime Fleet emerged from hyperspace and the Sith witch used the Force to tear apart Kizav's primary. Hentral, Culee, Nar, and Charg escaped in their fleet, but Desha Marad was destroyed along with Kizav and every other planet in the system.
Deprived of both his home base and foundry world, Hentral committed what remained of his force to an all-out attack on Rin's fleet at Dolomir. Using a combination of Battle Meditation and mind control, he drove the Skavik and Vyrak clones on in reckless charges. Culee, Nar, and Charg boarded the Sith Star, but all were defeated; Vev Nar fell to Kieran Sapphire's blade, while Charg was decapitated by Vos'elk'eetash. Culee dueled Eskol Kaartinen, but even as they traded blows, Zahyr assassinated Ador Hentral, and his telepathic stranglehold on his force died with him. Already mortally wounded by Kaartinen's blow, Voara Culee finally came back to herself in her last seconds, and begged Kaartinen to kill her. He ran her through the heart, and the last of the reawakened Dark Jedi was destroyed.
Behind the scenes
Then, after Vyrak dies, they'll get an idea. An awful idea. They'll all get a terrible, awful idea.
—User Sakaros, to Fermata13 about the creation of the Vyrak Legions
For a long time, the group of Dark Jedi collectively did not have a name. User Sakaros described Desha Marad's scheming in the wake of Sacco Vyrak's death with the above line, and as a result, Sakaros, Fermata13, and Jade-Starrz adopted (and still carry on) the habit of referring to them as "the Grinches".
The unpredictable and often violent personalities of some of the Reawakened were inspired in part by Joruus C'baoth in the Thrawn Trilogy.