Highlights
- The Sith Order’s reign of terror spanned thousands of years, causing wars and destruction in the galaxy.
- Darth Momin crafted a city-destroying superweapon long before the Death Star, showcasing Sith power.
- Starkiller Base, built from Ilum, surpassed Death Stars in destruction, an unprecedented Sith creation.
The Sith Order inspired terror across the galaxy for thousands of years. As masters of the Dark Side of the Force, Sith Lords and Ladies have started dozens of wars and lain waste to entire planets in their quest for galactic domination.
The Sith Empire reigned over a large swathe of the galaxy until the Jedi Order drove them to the brink of extinction. After Darth Bane created the Rule of Two, the Sith survived in secret. The line of Sith lived in on from Master to Apprentice, while plotting to rise to even greater heights of power than the old Sith had ever achieved. Sith ingenuity helped them chip away at the Republic and the Jedi for millennia until their moment would eventually come. Their creations, like their ideology, wreaked havoc and caused pain throughout the galaxy.
8 Darth Momin’s Superweapon
A Starship Capable Of Destroying Cities
- Appeared in Darth Vader 22, a comic released in 2018
- The weapon could destroy entire cities
Darth Momin was an unconvential Sith Lord who lived thousands of years before the events of the original trilogy. Unlike other Sith, he betrayed his master and then decided not to take on an apprentice because he did not believe in using the title of Master. Instead, Darth Momin perfected the art of killing.
He designed a superweapon capable of destroying entire cities from orbit. While that isn’t impressive compared to the might of a Death Star or later creations by Sith, the fact that he created something so powerful thousands of years before the Death Star speaks to the deadly nature of his creation.
7 Malachor Superweapon
An Ancient Kyber-Powered Weapon That Petrifies Victims
- The weapon is featured in Star Wars Rebels Season 2
- The weapon kills its victims by turning them to stone
Malachor, according to Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus, was always off limits to Jedi. A great Sith superweapon was built there thousands of years before the rise of the Empire. The weapon resembled a pyramid-shaped temple and was powered by a kyber crystal, like the lightsabers used by both Jedi and Sith.
The Malachor Superweapon was only activated one time, during an ancient war between the then-large Sith Order and the Jedi. It misfired and petrified every living being across the planet. The statuesque figures are still there, serving as reminders of the Sith creation’s destructive power millennia later when Ezra and Kanan arrive during Rebels Season 2.
6 Operation: Cinder
Palpatine’s Posthumous Order To Kill Millions
- Appeared in Battlefront 2‘s campaign
- Emperor Palpatine ordered this Operation to be done in the event that he was defeated
Operation: Cinder was part of Emperor Palpatine’s contingency plan that would take place if and he was ever killed. It was a horrific retaliation for the death of Palpatine, carried out against entire planets regardless of their loyalty to the Empire. The horror of Operation: Cinder was enough for commando Iden Versio to finally see the evils of the Empire and betray her father, who was the admiral in charge of carrying out the Emperor’s wishes.
A network of satellites above the targeted planets shot lasers down to the surface, which caused mass casualties in a matter of minutes. The lasers even sparked an electrical storm on the planet Vardos, which rendered it uninhabitable afterward. Tens of thousands of people suffered because of Palpatine’s evil plans, and the suffereing continued even after the Sith Lord was defeated.
5 The Death Star
The Iconic Planet-Destroying Station From The Original Movie
- Appears in Episode 4: A New Hope
- The Empire uses it to destroy Alderaan
The original Death Star was orders of magnitude larger than any other space station that existed at that time. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s realization that it was, in fact, a space station and not a moon is a chilling moment in the original Star Wars.
The Death Star’s power, made possible by its immense kyber crystal core, was horrifying to the galaxy. Alderaan, a peaceful planet, was destroyed in mere moments just so that the Empire could show off its new technological terror. While the Death Star was destroyed thanks to a deliberate, fatal flaw in its design, the power it exerted definitely shaped the fate of the entire galaxy.
4 Death Star II
The Largest Space Station Built During The Galactic Empire
- Appears in Episode 6: Return of the Jedi
- Secretly an operational recreation of the original Death Star
The second Death Star was built in secret above the forest moon of Endor. The Rebel Alliance sought to destroy it before it could become operational, only to find out that the Emperor had predicted this plan and used it to lure them into a trap.
This space station was a larger version of the original Death Star, and its superlaser was just as or more powerful than its predecessor. Since it was destroyed in the battle of Endor, however, the only shots it ever got to take were aimed at Mon Calamari cruisers. The Death Star II was the most powerful creation to be completed during the Galactic Civil War.
3 Axial Superlaser
The Power Of A Death Star In A Much Smaller Package
- Appears in Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker
- Each Star Destroyer at Exegol is capable of destroying a planet
After Darth Sidious’ mysterious reincarnation, he gathers a huge fleet of Xyston-class Star Destroyers on Exegol. While they look very similar to the Imperial Star Destroyers from the time of the Galactic Civil War, these ships were significantly more powerful.
Each of these capital ships was equipped with an Axial Superlaser. These powerful weapons had the capability of destroying a planet, making each ship in the Final Order’s fleet as much a threat as the Death Stars had been decades earlier. With so much power condensed into a single hyperspace-capable ship, these Superlasers were a marvel of Sith engineering.
2 Starkiller Base
The Largest Planet-Destroying Station Made From A Planet
- Appears in Episode 7: The Force Awakens
- It used to be the Jedi planet, Ilum
Ilum was an important planet to the Jedi Order, since it was where most of the kyber crystals that power lightsabers were found naturally. After Order 66, the Empire set to work stripping the planet of everything that the Jedi had once held sacred.
Unfortunately, this process was even more devastating than typical mining. The Empire hollowed out Ilum’s equator and turned the planet into the largest superweapon the galaxy had ever seen. It was renamed Starkiller Base by the time the First Order was ready to unleash its destructive power. By absorbing the energy of its sun, this base was able to destroy multiple planets with a single barrage of Superlasers, and cause more destruction than both Death Stars put together. No other weapon forged by the Sith caused as much destruction in a single blow as Starkiller Base.
1 The Grand Plan
Darth Bane’s Plot, Which Kept The Sith Alive For Centuries
- First referenced by name by Darth Maul in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
- This plan ultimately led to the Galactic Empire
The Sith Order used to be as large and numerous as the Jedi Order. Darth Bane changed that by creating an idea called The Grand Plan. A key aspect to this was the Rule of Two, by which the Sith would live on in secret, with only one master and one apprentice at any given time. Darth Bane’s ideological creation led the Jedi to falsely believe that there were no Sith around to threaten them, which lulled them into a false sense of peace over the course of centuries.
The Grand Plan was more than this secretive lifestyle, however. It was long-term plan that spanned thousands of years, and every Sith in Darth Bane’s lineage helped to progress it. Darth Sidious, as the last Sith Lord, completed the final steps of the Grand Plan by usurping the Old Republic and establishing the Galactic Empire. Every death and tragedy caused by the Empire can be directly attributed to the brainchild of Darth Bane and the fact that his followers managed to succeed in creating a galaxy-wide order ruled over by the Sith. No physical creation could cause as much destruction as the philosophy of the first modern Sith did.
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