Absalom wrote:javcs wrote:Yeah. There was that for a while .. and the proliferation of SSDs was ... surprising.
Considering that it's an entire galaxy I'd say it's to be expected, but certainly I don't really recall any of the books giving enough idea of
scale to justify the dime-a-dozen SSDs.
javcs wrote:and (b) they'd actually learn from things that had happened ... and weren't taken completely by surprise every goddamned time (seriously ... why is it that there was only one serious attempt to make sure that the Sith really had been wiped out - and it was an unofficial program!).
Well, in their defense, we are talking about very
long spans of time in many cases, where the Jedi are presumably always working on a variety of problems, so after a few generations without a resurgence it seems likely for them to grow lax. Do you really think we'd expect it if the Romans just suddenly sprang up out of nowhere to conquer the Mediterranean again?
And as for wiping them out, the prequel trilogy gave me the impression that attempting it would greatly increase the chances of the participating Jedi falling to the Darkside. And considering the semi-"current" idea of One Master-One Student and the wealth of Dark Jedi pupils that e.g. Sidious (or was it Dooku? Or both?) took on, if you don't already know exactly who the current Sith are you wouldn't know if you just killed the seat-warmers anyways.
By only one serious attempt to make sure they were actually wiped out, I meant, only one serious attempt to look for any survivors and/or relics for containment/destruction - that is, seek to prevent them from rising again. And that was after Exar Kun's defeat, and was ended shortly after/during the Mandalorian Wars preceding Revan's Sith Empire. And again, that was an
unofficial, non-sanctioned program - and the Jedi doing the work of tracking down possible Sith/Sith artifacts didn't fall (though they did get lied to by one of their bosses who secretly was a Sith/Sith sympathizer). And what was it? Five, six, years after Revan, there's the events of KotOR 2 and
that group of Sith. In the space of less than 50 years there were at least 3 separate Sith Empires that arose, or sought to rise and establish themselves (might possibly be 4) - Coruscant gets attacked and trashed multiple times (admittedly, one of those times involved a virus takeover of the orbiting Republic fleet.
The "Rule of Two" and the attendant secrecy is both fairly recent and moderately short-lived. It's only in effect from approximately 1000 BBY to approximately the time of Sidious's apprenticeship - at that time, it was determined that the Rule of Two had served its purpose and was to be ended in a transitional process. Caedus and Vergere (don't remember her Sith name, yeah, apparently she was one the whole time
) mostly kept to it, but mostly to the secrecy parts.
In addition ... according to other sources within the EU, the
whole time, there's been (yet another) Sith Empire lurking beyond known space; and possibly multiples. It's like it's the whole "another previously secret/hidden/unmentioned Imperial task force" situation in the EU all over again, only instead of it being a "new" Imperial force that's actually been around the entire time, it's a "new" faction/group/Empire of Sith that's actually been around the whole time.