Recent Star Wars tie-ins have added another dimension to the Sith's plans, suggesting they used the dark side to prey upon Jedi from afar. The Jedi believed the Sith extinct a thousand years before the events of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, but in reality their ancient enemies had retreated into the shadows to operate in secret. Darth Bane reinvented the Sith around the Rule of Two, establishing that there should only ever be two Sith at any one time, and he charged them with playing the long game - undermining the Jedi and the Republic in secret rather than overtly.
The Sith's actions during the millennia after Darth Bane remain a mystery. They certainly don't seem to have been especially successful at first, because by the High Republic Era - some 800 years after Darth Bane's defeat at the hands of the Jedi - the Republic was expanding across the galaxy, the light of the Jedi shining more brightly than ever before. Something clearly changed in the next two centuries, however, as the Republic became introverted and the Jedi retreated from the wider galaxy for fear of the dark. It's reasonable to assume the Sith played a key role in this, their unseen hand manipulating events; the Sith ultimately went into politics to beat the Jedi, recognizing the Jedi had completely abandoned the political arena, and they could operate there without any major risk.
Recent Star Wars tie-ins have hinted at an important Sith technique used to undermine the Jedi, however. Marvel's Obi-Wan Kenobi #1 features a flashback to when Obi-Wan was just a Youngling, and one of his closest friends left the Jedi after experiencing nightmares that called her back to the family she had been taken from - dreams she believed to be visions from the Force. Years later, Obi-Wan would recognize the "surge in darkness" he felt around Gehren when she was asleep as the one he had come to know in the presence of a Sith Lord - suggesting she was being preyed upon from afar. The recent anthology Tales of Jedi & Sith suggests this was not an isolated example, with Qui-Gon Jinn sensing an external force had seduced his former master Count Dooku to the dark side (and to the Sith). Looking to the Clone Wars, a short story focused on Barriss Offee - A Jedi's Duty by Karen Strong - suggests the Padawan sensed darkness moving through the Temple's halls. Barris ultimately lost faith in the Jedi and betrayed them in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, perhaps in large part because of the Sith subtly manipulating her sense of the Force. These three examples raise the possibility the Sith had used this approach on other occasions across the millennium.
The strategy would be a sensible one for the Sith. It would allow them to reduce the number of Jedi, identifying those who could be drawn away from the Jedi Order. Some may even have been subsequently groomed as Sith Apprentices, allowing a Sith Lord to find an apprentice without combing the galaxy. Others may have become targets for the Sith; tie-ins have established there is an ancient Banite Sith ritual in which a Sith Apprentice acquires the kyber crystal for their lightsaber by murdering a Jedi and taking the crystal from their blade. No doubt the Sith would take particular pleasure in encouraging a former Jedi to hunt down someone they had known for their crystal.
Disturbingly, the Jedi seem to have had no real sense this was going on - suggesting the Sith primarily operated upon Younglings, and even then tended to choose their targets with care. Only Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi appear to have noticed anything was going on, and they numbered among the most sensitive Jedi. It's likely the Sith used this approach to refine their ability to hide from the Jedi, one Palpatine would use to operate in plain sight when the Star Wars saga built to a head.
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