Sith Eternal

""Do not fear their feeble attack my faithful. Nothing can stop the return of the Sith.""

- -Darth Malus, to his followers The Sith Eternal is an organization of cultists loyal to the Sith religion who continued its beliefs and sought to resurrect the ancient tradition under the rule of Darth Malus, the undisputed Dark Lord of the Sith. The Sith Eternal are among the most loyal and numerous followers of the Dark Prince.

For millennia the Sith Eternal toiled in secret to create the largest and most technologically advanced fleet ever seen, with most if not all of its capital ships controlled by a highly developed artificial intelligence known as GEMINI. In addition, they trained an army of Sith Troopers that were indoctrinated to be absolutely loyal to the Sith Eternal. In order to fill their military's ranks, the cultists of the Sith Eternal raised hundreds of thousands of humans from Exegol as their own children, teaching them to revere the Dark Side of the Force personified by their Immortal Emperor, and to believe that the galaxy was theirs to rule by cosmic right.

Organization
The Sith Eternal are a vast cult of Sith loyalists that include both the actual Lords of the One Sith and their ordinary minions, encompassing a large range of sub-groups and lesser traditions such as the Knights of Ren, a mysterious order of dark-side warriors loyal to the Dread Lord. Based on the hidden Sith world of Exegol, Sith loyalists have been operating secrecy throughout galactic history. By the time of the New Republic, Eternal cultists had spread throughout the galaxy and into its various governments and organizations, while those of Exegol created an unstoppable armada comprised of hundreds of thousands of highly advanced starships and amassed a legion of fanatically loyal warriors. Even so, the existence of the Sith Eternal was a safeguarded secret, with even those in the upper echelons of the First Order unaware of their existence and operations.

The reach of the Sith Eternal is vast; their operation extended beyond the veil of the Unknown Regions, with Sith loyalists serving on the executive boards of Sienar-Jaemus and Kuat-Entralla. This allowed the cult to secretly funnel supplies and designs to Exegol through various intermediaries. For years, Sith loyalists toiled in secret to achieve the final stage in the First Order's long-gestating plan of conquest. Among their ranks were engineers, shipwrights, and enslaved labor responsible for the creation of thousands of warships and millions of starfighters.

As a cult, the Sith Eternal focused on spiritual matters in addition to their military goals. Steeped in rituals designed to mine the secrets of the Force, they delved into the nature of phenomena such as Force-bonds and dyads in the Force. They revered the power of the dark side of the Force and taught their children to do the same. Ultimately, the Sith Eternal coupled technology and the occult to bring forth unnatural embodiments of the dark side, thus furthering their quest to resurrect and perfect the ancient Sith tradition.

Military
While the First Order served as the military arm of Darth Sidious' secret Contingency, planted within the Dark Lord's mind by Malus himself, the Sith Eternal served as its hidden spiritual heart. The Sith Eternal maintained an enormous military force comprised of several smaller groups to act as their enforcers. The Eternal maintained their own Sith fleet composed of powerful Xyston-Class Star Destroyers and were operated by highly trained fleet technicians and officers of the Sith Eternal, who wore jet black uniforms with crimson trim around the sleeves, neckline, and breast lapels, and wore caps that displayed the Hex Charm of those loyal to the Sith religion. The Eternal's army were independent of the Imperial Military, and were both feared and respected by those who knew little of their inner workings.

The Eternal also employed billions of ground troops in the form of the elite red-armored Sith Troopers, who were considered to be the next step in the evolution of the already elite Stormtroopers. These Sith Troopers are incredibly mysterious, drawing their power from the dark side as their malevolent masters do, but only in the most rudimentary sense, using the ancient arts of the Sith to increase their strength, speed, agility, and perception to make them better soldiers and servants of the Sith. They are divided into legions of 5,000 troops each, mirroring the ancient battle standards of the Old Empires. Squads consist of ten troopers each and are configured into three triads, which consist of a Sith Trooper lance corporal leading two corporals. The Eternal also divide their troops into battalions, though how many troopers amount to such a unit and the nature of their command structure is a mystery.

They also make use of specialized Sith troopers who wear jet packs, allowing them a degree of mastery in aerial combat, who are also divided into squads comprised of ten troopers each, similar to their grounded counterparts.

This Sith cult counts among its ranks a number of smaller sects who worship the dark faith, including the enigmatic Knights of Ren, who serve as an elite squad of enforcers in service to the Dark Prince, alongside the Emperor's cybernetically-enhanced Sith Knights.

History
The Sith Eternal began thousands of years before the establishment of the Terran Empire and the birth of the most infamous incarnation of their Dark Prince, Damian Wayne. The Eternal originated as a hidden following of the disembodied spirit of their Dark Emperor, who resolved to perfect the Sith religion and its tenets in order to finally achieve his goal of galactic domination and eradicate the Jedi Order, beginning with a purge of all Sith who did not believe in Malus's vision for the universe, eventually leading to the defeat and dissolution of the last great Sith Empire of old, and the resurgence of the numerous Sith Orders that followed, including the New Sith Order led by Darth Ruin; the Brotherhood of Darkness founded Shere Kaan; and also the Order of the Sith Lords established by Darth Bane, all of which were being manipulated from behind the scenes by the loyalists of the Sith Eternal. From their hidden world of Exegol, the Eternal watched as the galaxy was lulled into a false sense of security as a result of the perceived extinction of the Sith, allowing them to operate with impunity and plot their eventual rise to power.

After millennia of manipulating the course of galactic history, the Sith Eternal came under the command of Varian Malicos, a teenage warlord who unified the warring tribes of Zakuul and combined its resources with that of the Eternal, allowing the Eternal's secret shipyards to operate a peak efficiency and produce a new Eternal Fleet that would serve as the unstoppable infinite armada of the future Empire they would build. It was later discovered that Varian was but the most recent incarnation of their ancient founder and deity, the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Malus himself. Sometime later, an extremely powerful Varderian Force-sensitive being known as Snoke unearthed an obsidian stone from an ancient Sith shrine situated beneath Darth Vader's Castle on Mustafar, which alerted the Sith to his existence, allowing the newly named Infinite Emperor to lure Snoke to Exegol and seduce him to the dark side through an ancient Sith ritual that enabled the Dread Lord to implant a sliver of his own essence within the alien explorer, corrupting him into a predatory servant of evil.

With Snoke under their master's control, the Eternal had him offer aid to the Imperial remnant that had fled to the Unknown Regions following their defeat at Endor, helping them map the uncharted hyperspace routes which only he and his enigmatic 'Attendants' could safely traverse, eventually becoming the Supreme Leader of the First Order, while his Sith puppeteers located and kidnapped a little girl named Rey, the secret granddaughter of the deceased Emperor Palpatine and raised her as a Sith.

Years later, during his tenure as Supreme Leader, Snoke would eventually seduce Anakin Solo to the dark side, who then became Kylo Ren, under which name he discovered a Sith Wayfinder that led him to Exegol, where he was offered command over a fleet of thousands of Xyston-class destroyers that he believed to be the true Eternal Fleet, unaware that the bulk of the armada remained hidden within a secret pocket dimension. He was also introduced to the adult Rey, with whom he formed a romantic relationship and conspired to betray Snoke, allowing Kylo Ren to become the new Supreme Leader with Rey as his empress, and eventual mother of his child: Adrian Solo. At some point, Anakin was redeemed and rejoined the New Jedi Order, but his mind was erased of all knowledge of Exegol, the Eternal, and even Adrian, who was returned to Exegol alongside the Knights of Ren, who raised him as one of their own after killing the demented Rey, the death of whom led to the release of her grandfather's spirit, which then inhabited a clone body created by and cared for by the Sith Eternal, who then led Palpatine to believe that he was their undisputed master.

While the Eternal resumed their secret role as the galaxy's unseen shadow masters, the First Order fell into disarray after the loss of both their empress and supreme leader, allowing a young officer by the name of Jagged Fel to reform the Order into the Fel Empire, with himself as Emperor.