First Great Schism

Concurrent

The Devouring^[2]

First Great Schism

Outcome

Jedi victory^[4]

Major battles

Combatants
Jedi Order^[4]	Legions of Lettow^[4]

Commanders
Awdrysta Pina^[4]	Xendor^[4] Arden Lyn^[4]

The First Great Schism was the first of the Great Schisms between followers of the Jedi Order and those who refused to follow the Jedi hierarchy's dictates. To its contemporaries, it was a conflict without name. Later historians named it the Great Schism, until the Second Great Schism necessitated referring to the initial conflict as the First.

Origins

"It seems too easy to blame everything on Xendor and the dark side. Maybe we… maybe the Jedi were partly to blame, too."

―Danzigorro Potts^[4]

For over ten millennia, a society of Force-wielders called the Je'daii Order had lived in relative peace on the Deep Core world of Tython,^[7] when some of them relocated in order to step outside the growing sphere of influence of the fledgling Galactic Republic and founded the Jedi Order. They made their new home on Ossus in the Outer Rim.^[5]

Already at this point, the Jedi Order had grown doctrinaire in its practices and, according to some, too rigid to allow growth. Such an opinion was held by the Kashi Mer Jedi Knight Xendor who was exiled from his homeworld for embracing the darker aspects of the Force and wished to study Bogan more. He had grown vocal in his criticism of what he perceived as the Jedi Order's increasingly exclusionary ways about using the Force, and petitioned the leaders of the Jedi Order to be allowed to depart Ossus in order to create a new academy. There, he hoped to teach and study alternative traditions of the Force, such as Dai Bendu, the Palawa, the Way of the Dark and the Protectorate of the Hidden, to name just a few. The leaders of the Jedi Order refused Xendor's request, but he exited in defiance despite their decision. He found a supporter in a young Steel Hand of Palawa named Arden Lyn who shared his views and was dissatisfied with the Jedi Order embracing the philosophy of the Caamasi people.^[5]

Schism

A new academy

Xendor and Lyn departed Ossus to establish a new academy on Lettow. They were not the only ones to defy the dictates of the Jedi Order; increasingly larger groups left Ossus to join Xendor's new group and study mysteries of the Force that had been forbidden to them under the Jedi Order. Eventually, Xendor's followers came to be known as the Legions of Lettow.^[5]

The newcomers to Xendor's academy pledged their allegiance to him and to the protection of their new order. They swore to defend their right to pursue knowledge of the Force without the oversight of the Jedi hierarchs, deeming them unfit to dictate which avenues were correct and which were forbidden.^[5] Members of the Legion embraced the dark side of the Force, rejected the idea of order and structure and celebrated their freedom by giving in their passions and emotions and touching the power of the dark side.^[5]^[4]

Open war

Sources are divided on which side started the war. According to some historians, it was the rageful Xendor and his army who attacked the Jedi Order,^[8] while others, including Arden Lyn, say it was the Jedi who declared war against the Legions and raised an army first.^[4]^[5]

One of the first battles was fought on the Jedi capital world Ossus. Claiming to wish to end the conflict early and prevent it from spilling into the Republic, Xendor led the Legions in an attack on Ossus. Their attack failed, and the war continued unabated.^[5]

Lyn claimed, millennia later, that Xendor tried to alert the young Republic to the threat he believed the Jedi posed to them: that they would guise themselves as protectors and guardians while they secretly schemed for power. In this, too, Xendor failed, and the Legions failed to gain any traction in the Republic against their Jedi enemies.^[5]

The conflict spread across a number of worlds as it intensified. War spread to Chandrila, Brentaal, the Republic capital Coruscant, and Metellos as well, before a significant battle on Columus. At Columus, Xendor engaged the Jedi Awdrysta Pina, known by his nickname Green Blade, and was slain in single combat.^[5]

Lyn would later muse that both she and Xendor had admired Pina as a free thinker, one who preferred to travel to unknown places in search of mysteries of the Force unknown to the Jedi Order. Ultimately, however, Pina believed that the order and structure were the foundations of civilization, so he stood with the Jedi rather than with Xendor.^[5]

The Jedi forces commanded by Pina held a unique advantage over the Legions which even Lyn was forced to admit: their dedication to order allowed them to subsume their individuality into a larger collective and fight as one—not unlike the Force ability known as battle-meld. Xendor's followers refused to embrace any such tactic, believing it insectile and an affront to individuality.^[5]

Extermination of the Legions

Victory over Xendor, however, was not sufficient for the Jedi to declare victory in the war. Instead, forces under Pina were sent to Lettow to attempt to exterminate the last of Xendor's followers. A fierce battle was fought, allowing just enough time for the last survivors of the Legions to flee beyond the boundaries of Republic space.^[5]

Lyn was eventually cornered by Pina on Irkalla, after fleeing into regions of space unknown to all but Xendor. The two engaged in a duel in which she was disarmed. Unwilling to concede defeat, she channeled her strongest emotions—rage and sorrow, love for Xendor, and despair over what she believed had been unfairly taken from them—through the Kashi Mer talisman, destroying Pina's sword and mortally wounding him in the process.^[5]

In his dying breaths, he drew on his own unique Force talent, Morichro, to defeat Lyn. The spell, in essence, placed her into a deep stasis. She would not be resuscitated until the Imperial Era, 24,496 years later.^[5]

Aftermath

The Jedi Order withdrew to Ossus in the Great Schism's aftermath. Thereafter, few in the Core Worlds gave the Jedi much thought, though unbeknownst to them, the Jedi acted as the Republic's secret defenders on the Rim, working quietly to check the ambitions of the Hutts towards vulnerable colonies in the Slice, and keeping the militaristic states of the Tion Cluster divided. They did not declare themselves to the Republic again until the Tionese War, nearly 500 years later.^[5]

Behind the scenes

In the comic book Tales of the Jedi - The Golden Age of the Sith #0, published on July 31, 1996^[9] by Dark Horse Comics,^[10] a young Jedi, Odan-Urr, conveys tales of the Sith to Master Ooroo, recounting that "Dark Jedi" of "the First Great Schism of the Jedi Knights" were "defeated after a century of bloodshed" and that the "Jedi Exiles", noted as such in the text of issue #0, subsequently "forged the Sith civilization into a new empire ".^[11] In 1996's Tales of the Jedi – The Golden Age of the Sith #2, the ghost of Marka Ragnos recounted how this "Great Schism between the Dark Side and the Light turned Jedi against Jedi."^[12]

"The Emperor's Pawns", a collection of biographies written by Abel G. Peña and published in Star Wars Gamer #5 (2001), implied that Xendor and his lover Arden Lyn started the First Great Schism some "250 centuries" prior to her reawakening,^[13] which would place it circa 25,000 BBY. On June 29, 2006, Abel revealed that he had exorcised portions of his article, "Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties" related to a Second Great Schism involving the Sorcerers of Tund in 10,000 BBY.^[14]

The lore about the First Great Schism from Tales of the Jedi – The Golden Age of the Sith #0 and the date from The Emperor's Pawns were restated by the timeline at the beginning of The New Essential Guide to Characters (2002) as well as in the beginning of Naga Sadow's entry.^[15]

The New Essential Chronology (2005) revealed that the Jedi Exiles lived around ~7000 BBY, along with the fact that the "century of bloodshed" mentioned in Tales of the Jedi: Golden Age of the Sith is the same event as the Hundred-Year Darkness (said to be a separate event in the timeline in the beginning of The New Essential Guide to Characters) and that it followed a "Second Great Schism", while the "First Great Schism" was retconned to be a separate event.^[16] In spite of this retcon, Star Wars: The Ultimate Visual Guide: Special Edition, which was published in May 2007,^[17] and Star Wars: The Ultimate Visual Guide: Updated and Expanded, which was published on April 30, 2012,^[18] say that the Exiles turned to the dark side "in the early years of the Old Republic."^[19]^[20]

When asked about this retcon, Daniel Wallace, author of The New Esssential Chronology, said it was because of "LFL internal documents" dating Dark Jedi contact with the Sith species at ~7000 BBY.^[21] On January 11, 2006, Leland Chee said that this retcon was to "correct the the [sic] original discrepency of the timing of the Great Schism introduced by The New Essential Guide to Characters."^[22] On June 30, 2006, Abel G. Peña stated that he "didn't quite understand this realignment of the origins of the Sith."^[23]