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Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

-Merc
Keep Rat

<citation needed>
--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

This is new canon; previous canon the Sith used synthetic crystals and had no specific doctrine regarding them except to claim that they were better than the Jedi's adegan crystals because they were uniquely created by their wielder and thus were an extension of their strength.

-Merc
Keep Rat

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

My Sith name is clearly Darth Sarcasticus. :)

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

Hah! Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel!

In any case...yeah, I agree. This doesn't make one lick of sense. As if Jedi couldn't tell when one of their own died from lightsaber wounds? Or hear their death-shriek in the Force?

The last thing the Sith want is for the Jedi to be able to keep track of them. This sounds like the practice of a splinter offshoot of the Sith that killed each other off without ever seeing a Jedi in years.

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

The whole point is that you're supposed to kill a Jedi WITHOUT using a lightsaber, to prove that you're just that much of a badass.

>Or hear their death-shriek in the Force?

Jedi die of non-Sith-related causes all the time, tho. It's a dangerous lifestyle. And many Jedi die and there is no "death-shriek" that alerts other Jedi; often they die and that's it. As far as the other Jedi know they just vanished.

>The last thing the Sith want is for the Jedi to be able to keep track
>of them.

That doesn't mean "we are completely passive and invisible."

Darth Sidious sent Darth Maul to openly meddle in the Naboo Crisis, swinging a giant double-bladed red-crystal lightsaber around everywhere and murdering Jedi Masters with it. Darth Tyrannus ruled half the galaxy openly as a Sith Lord. Darth Plagueis' life is non-canonical at this point (he existed, he was Palpatine's master, everything else is questionable) but in his previous incarnation he had more than his fair share of run-ins with Jedi; he kept things at arms length, but there were still confrontations.

The Rule of Two Sith are absolutely okay with revealing themselves to the Jedi sometimes, they just don't live openly and provide the Jedi with an obvious target. "Sometimes we murder a Jedi and take their crystal" can be done subtly.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Sith: "We are the leading cause of Jedi deaths."
Jedi: "I wish. No, it's stim overdose."
Sith: "_Stim_ overdose?"
Jedi: "We have to sit through a lot of tedious negotiations." (beat) "Don't judge us."
Sith: "Oh, because being a judgemental ass is your prerogative?"

I recognize the novels have declared this canon, but given that it's a stupid-ass canon, I've elected to ignore it.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

How is this stupid?

Honestly, it's entirely in keeping with Sith philosophy and it's a hell of a lot more interesting than "we bake our crystal in an oven."

At some point you say "Master, I'd like a lightsaber of my own." And your Master says "I received this lightsaber because I was strong enough, powerful enough in the Force, skilled and deadly enough, to murder a Jedi without having this lightsaber. I killed one with nothing more than my own mastery. I took their crystal. I broke it to my will, suffusing it with the power of the Dark Side until it surrendered. It serves me now, and no other. If you want your own, you must do this thing as well. Are you strong enough, my student? We shall see."

That is hella Sith. That is ABSOLUTELY something the Sith would do. "If you can't kill a Jedi without a lightsaber, you don't deserve a lightsaber" makes complete sense.

It's also in keeping with many earlier interpretation of the Sith. Palpatine, in earlier Star Wars works, expounded to Vader that the Sith had moved beyond lightsabers, and mostly only kept them around to taunt and mock the Jedi with. You'll notice that he doesn't use one in Return of the Jedi, and that other Dark Jedi/Sith Lords in many of the earlier Star Wars EU works didn't either. Joruus C'baoth didn't use one, for example. Mara Jade was taught to use one but was never issued one. This eventually fell by the wayside, mostly because lightsabers are awesome, but it was a thing for awhile.

Now, the whole "you need to kill a Jedi to get a crystal" thing has enormous logistical issues with pre-Darth Bane Sith. We don't, in fact, know if that was a Sith thing prior to the Rule of Two era of Sithism. That whole area is of dubious canonicity at this point; it's still SOMEWHAT canonical (Darth Bane still exists, there was still a period when the Sith numbered in the thousands, etc.) but Lucasarts has been real cagey about what does and doesn't count.

They probably didn't do it precisely the same way back then, although I would still submit that it would be seen as semi-heretical to promulgate a philosophy of partnership and unity with your lightsaber. The Sith have always been, in all the interpretations of them, super hierarchical and super narcissistic. It's a selfish, self-centered creed.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Well, it's partly the attrition problem, and partly the whim of repurposing Nick Fury's comment from Avengers.

>
>Honestly, it's entirely in keeping with Sith philosophy and it's a
>hell of a lot more interesting than "we bake our crystal in an oven."
>

True enough. Practically speaking, the main problem is that defeating somebody who has a lightsaber when you don't either requires Impressive Power, or Underhanded Sneakiness.

Personally, if I were an apprentice Sith with Impressive Power, I'd be tempted to tell my master's corpse that he was a complete SHOEHORN for suggesting the whole "get a lightsaber by killing a Jedi" idea. As for Underhanded Sneakiness, that's an assassin. Sith have been many things, but I don't recall them being particularly good at being assassins unless they're specifically trained for the role. (I could be wrong about that.)

The whole plan seems like a good way to either lose a perfectly good apprentice, or to get killed by your own apprentice. While I have no objection to canon Sith killing each other or dying of Suicide By Jedi, it's rather impractical from the Sith side of things.

Now, I suppose it's possible that the Sith who were successful at taking a lightsaber are the ones who went after padawans who had just finished building lightsabers, rather than Jedi Knights, and that the test is not only of power, but of whether or not the student is smart enough to take the loophole. It's still going to be hard on the supply of Sith, though.

Peter Eng
--
Replace any all-caps words with whatever REVERBERATING swear word you think fits.

The thing is, your master will (or ought to) regard that as a big win. You, his apprentice, defeated your master (who HAD a lightsaber himself) and assumed his mantle. That's great! You've fulfilled the Sith code and become the senior Sith lord. That's what he was training you towards for many years. Well done you.

>for Underhanded Sneakiness, that's an assassin. Sith have been many
>things, but I don't recall them being particularly good at being
>assassins unless they're specifically trained for the role. (I could
>be wrong about that.)

It's highly Sith-dependent. Some of them were sneaky as fuck, some were not.

>Now, I suppose it's possible that the Sith who were successful at
>taking a lightsaber are the ones who went after padawans who had just
>finished building lightsabers, rather than Jedi Knights,

Hell, you could go after a youngling, I suppose. Temple-era Jedi usually built their sabers even before they're padawans.

>It's still going to be hard on the supply of Sith, though.

From the perspective of Darth Bane, this is a bonus, not a drawback.

None of this is canon anymore, but... here's the thing. One of the big drawbacks of the Sith is that they kept murdering each other. They'd spent a few centuries rebuilding, then swarm out of Korriban or the Unknown Regions and try and build an empire, they'd have some enormous initial success... and then they'd turn on each other in an orgy of backstabbing and violence. Because they're Sith.

Even worse, from the perspective of someone who actually takes the Sith philosophy seriously, what would often happen is that numerous less-powerful Sith Lords would team up to take down a singular, more powerful Sith Lord, before fighting among themselves. Aside from weakening the Sith in general, that's offensive to the Sith worldview, which dictates that strong individuals rule and weaker individuals serve. The notion of strength through a unity of equals is repugnant to them; it's "the Force will free me" not "the Force will free us."

Enter Darth Bane.

Bane was Last Sith Lord Standing after they basically wiped themselves out. He wanted to break the cycle of them destroying themselves, but he also took Sithism seriously and didn't want to water it down. So he hit on the idea of bringing all power to a point. One master. One apprentice. The masters job, the masters responsibility to Sithism, is to train an apprentice who surpasses them. The apprentice slays the master, then repeats the cycle. Eventually, you'd end up with a being of ultimate will and power. Because there's only two, it makes it hard for the power to spread around.

Bane was very explicit about this; in his Sith writings, he basically straight-up says "one day, your apprentice is going to murder you. If you aren't okay with this, get the fuck out. Right now. You don't have the balls to be a Sith Lord."

So being "hard on the supply of Sith" isn't a bad thing from the perspective of Rule of Two-era Sith. The supply is SUPPOSED to be limited. The Rule of Two is an engine for creating individually powerful Sith Lords by constantly sorting the wheat from the chaff.

A lot of the things the Sith do are, as you say, HIGHLY impractical. But they're only highly impractical from a standpoint of "build a robust powerbase of like-minded individuals with strong institutions and links to each other undergirding it." That, from the Rule of Two perspective, is light side bullshit. It's not that it is wrong, it's that it is completely irrelevant to the goal Sithism is ostensibly pursuing.

-Merc
Keep Rat

There really should be more to the Jedi than choppy-choppy-stabby, after all.

Personally, I'd be more of the Master Oogway sort of Jedi. :)

May I suggest, this should be worded "Without my lightsaber, I will acquire an inconveniently large number of blaster burns"?

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."