Origin
Bane (originally Des, or Dessel) was raised on the planet of Apatros by an abusive father. From the age of thirteen, Bane worked in the cortosis mines that produced Apatros’ sole export: cortosis. Unbeknownst to Des, he used the Force various times during his early life, such as to kill his father and to sense an opponent’s moves in brawls. After enraging and humiliating a Republic soldier in a game of Sabacc, Des was assaulted while walking home from the card game. In order to survive, Bane turned the soldier’s own vibroblade against him, killing the soldier. With the aid of his friend Groshik, Des escaped the planet to avoid penalty from the mining company: ORO. Des joined the Sith army and became a member of the Gloom Walkers.
Creation
Bane was created by George Lucas and was first mentioned in the novelization of Phantom Menace. He would later have his story fleshed out gradually by various stories and then almost completely by Drew Karpshyn’s Darth Bane trilogy.
Path of Destruction
As a member of the Gloom Walkers, Des’ untapped Force potential came to good use. He was able to discern enemy movements, catch glimpses of the future and be incredibly accurate with his blaster. These skills elevated Des and his squadron to become elite, used only when lesser squadrons would not do.
However, when the Gloom Walkers were ordered to attack a Republic base in broad daylight – a suicide mission – Des knocked out his commanding officer and took command of the squadron. Thanks to Des’ Force skills, the Gloom Walkers managed to defeat the Republic when darkness fell. Despite this, Des’ commanding officer ordered him to be court marshalled and he was taken prisoner in the mean time. There, the Dark Lord Kopecz offered him a place in the Sith Academy on Korriban where Des could become a Dark Lord of the Sith. Des accepted and chose a new name for himself: Bane.
Bane excelled in his studies on Korriban, catching up to and exceeding many of his fellow pupils. However, after killing an opponent in the duelling ring and realizing he had been responsible for his father’s death through the power of the dark side, Bane began to draw in on himself. He found he could no longer tap into the rage that had once fuelled his power and, after suffering a humiliating defeat in the duelling ring at the hands of Sirak, was shunned by his fellow apprentices and his masters alike.
But when Githany – a former Jedi padawan whom had betrayed the Army of Light on Ruusan – arrived at the academy, she recognized Bane’s underlying potential. She decided to aid him regain his powers by teaching him everything she learnt so as to use him as a tool against Sirak. While secretly training with Githany, Bane was also being taught swordsmanship by the Sith Master Kas’im. Eventually, Bane once again challenged Sirak and, this time, brutally defeated him. The master of the academy, Qordis, allowed Bane to become fully involved in lessons once more but forbade him from learning from Githany or the archives. In protest, Bane left to learn from the ghosts of ancient Sith in the valley of the Dark Lords. But when he found nothing, he returned to the academy, vowing to return the Sith Order to its former might.
Upon returning to the academy, Bane was informed of every pupil at the academy’s promotion to Sith Lord and orders to join the battle of Ruusan. However, instead of joining the battle, Bane stole Qordis’ star ship and travelled to Lehon in search of knowledge. Here he found Darth Revan’s Sith holocron and spent weeks learning all he could from it.
When Githany had a vision of Bane seeking to destroy the Brotherhood of Darkness, she warned Lord Kaan who in turn ordered Kas’im to find Bane. Kas’im was instructed to try and persuade Bane to join the Brotherhood and kill Bane if he failed. Just as Kas’im approached Bane on Lehon, Bane found himself enlightened as he came up with the Rule of Two. The two exchanged a duel in which the outcome was Kas’im’s death and Bane returned to his stolen star ship, pondering his revelation.
Bane then pretended to have changed his ways due to grief over his former masters death at his own hands. However, not trusting Bane, Lord Kaan had Githany pretend to negotiate terms for his rejoining of the Brotherhood of Darkness while actually poisoning him. Bane survived the assassination attempt and rejoined the Brotherhood on Ruusan. Here he aided the Brotherhood in getting the Jedi out of their hiding places using an ancient Sith ritual taught to him by Revan’s holocron. He went on to pretend that his mind had been dominated by Kaan so as to fool them into using the thought bomb, a Force weapon capable of trapping the souls of every nearby Force sensitive forever. The Brotherhood used the bomb making Bane successful in becoming the only Sith in existence (to his knowledge).
Powers/abilities
Combat skill
Darth Bane has been noted as a master of Form V Djem So, backed up by Form III Soresu(which he taught to Zannah) and Form VII Juyo. With the mastery of these styles, Bane has engaged some of the best duelists of that time such as: Raskta Lsu, Sarro Xaj, Farfalla, Kas’im, and Zannah. He’s also mastered hundreds of sequences with the standard lightsaber, a saber staff and later dual blades.
Telekinesis
Bane, while still Dessel and without training, has killed with father by giving him a heart attack, supposedly with telekinesis. Later, after some training, Bane could easily choke out and kill other members of the Brotherhood of Darkness. The most noteworthy of these cases was against Quordis, the leader of the Korriban academy, whom he choked out and literally crushed with the Force. After a duel with Kas’im, Bane drew on Lehon’s nexus to collapse an entire temple with a burst of telekinetic power. He could also unleash powerful Force Waves; some have shreaded through entire campsites, send multiple Orbalisks flying back, and knocked back five guards and a table(the last while Bane was poisoned).
Lighting
The first time Bane used lighting – he managed to devestate and destroy an entire room. Later, he could use Lighting to such a magnitude that it could incinirate humans to the point that only charred corpses were left. He can even use lighting like a cocoon, encasing himself in it and defend himself from Zannah’s attack. Zannah was, from the impact, sent ten meters back.
Telepathy/Sense
Bane, while still an untrained soldier, sensed and shot down multiple opposing troops with his eyes closed and within seconds. His telepathic resistence was strong enough for Kaan to not affect his mind, despite the fact that Kaan capably mental dominated everyone else in the Brotherhood(save for Kopecz).
Other abilities
Upon studying from the ancient Sith Lords, Bane has mastered Force powers like:
- Essence Transfer: it allows one to transfer their essence to another host body
- Force Drain/Death Field: it allows one to drain the life force of one or more targets casually
- Healing/Dextify poison: allows a user to heal themselves and deafen the effects of poison
- Force Deflection: allows one to deflect various types of attacks, ranging from telekinetic to energetic
- Beast control: allows one to control a beast
Known masters
Known apprentices
Novels
Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction
Since childhood, Dessel has known only the abuse of his hateful father and the dangerous, soul-crushing labor of a cortosis miner. Deep in the tunnels of the desolate planet Apatros, endlessly excavating the rare mineral valued throughout the galaxy, Dessel dreams of the day he can escape — a day he fears may never come. But when a high-stakes card game ends in deadly violence, Dessel suddenly finds himself a wanted man.
On the run from vengeful Republic forces, Dessel vanishes into the ranks of the Sith army, and ships out to join the bloody war against the Republic and its Jedi champions. There, Dessel’s brutality, cunning, and exceptional command of the Force swiftly win him renown as a warrior. But in the eyes of his watchful masters, he is destined for a far greater role in the ultimate Sith plan for the galaxy – if he can prove himself truly worthy.
As an acolyte in the Sith academy, studying the secrets and skills of the dark side at the feet of its greatest masters, Dessel embraces his new Sith identity: Bane. However the true test is yet to come. In order to gain acceptance into the Brotherhood of Darkness one must fully surrender to the dark side through a trial by fire that Bane, for all his unquenchable fury and lust for power, may not be strong enough to endure…especially since deception, treachery, and murder run rampant among the Sith disciples, and utter ruthlessness alone is the key to survival. Only by defying the most sacred traditions, rejecting all he has been taught, and drawing upon the long-forgotten wisdom of the very first Sith can Bane hope to triumph — and forge from the ashes of that which he must destroy a new era of absolute dark power.
- Written By: Drew Karpshyn
- Published By: Del Rey
Star Wars: Darth Bane: Rule of Two
Now Darth Bane is ready to put his policy into action, and he thinks he has found the key element that will make his triumph complete: a student to train in the ways of the dark side. Though she is young, Zannah possesses an instinctive link to the dark side that rivals his own. With his guidance, she will become essential in his quest to destroy the Jedi and dominate the galaxy.
There is one who is determined to stop Darth Bane: Johun Othone, Padawan to Jedi Master Lord Hoth, who died at Bane’s hands in the last great Sith War. Though the rest of the Jedi scoff at him, Johun’s belief that there are surviving Sith on the loose is unshakeable.
As Johun continues his dogged pursuit of the man who killed his master, Zannah, faced unexpectedly with a figure from her past, begins to question her embrace of the dark side. And Darth Bane is led by Force–induced visions of a moon where he will acquire astonishing new knowledge and power—power that will alter him in ways he could never have imagined…
- Written By: Drew Karpshyn
- Published By: Del Rey
Star Wars: Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil
Twenty years have passed since Darth Bane, reigning Dark Lord of the Sith, demolished the ancient order devoted to the dark side and reinvented it as a circle of two: one Master to wield the power and pass on the wisdom, and one apprentice to learn, challenge, and ultimately usurp the Dark Lord in a duel to the death. But Bane’s acolyte, Zannah, has yet to engage her Master in mortal combat and prove herself a worthy successor. Determined that the Sith dream of galactic domination will not die with him, Bane vows to learn the secret of a forgotten Dark Lord that will assure the Sith’s immortality–and his own.
A perfect opportunity arises when a Jedi emissary is assassinated on the troubled mining planet Doan, giving Bane an excuse to dispatch his apprentice on a fact-finding mission–while he himself sets out in secret to capture the ancient holocron of Darth Andeddu and its precious knowledge. But Zannah is no fool. She knows that her ruthless Master has begun to doubt her, and she senses that he is hiding something crucial to her future. If she is going to claim the power she craves, she must take action now.
While Bane storms the remote stronghold of a fanatical Sith cult, Zannah prepares for her Master’s downfall by choosing an apprentice of her own: a rogue Jedi cunning and cold-blooded enough to embrace the Sith way and to stand beside her when she at last wrests from Bane the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith.
But Zannah is not the only one with the desire and power to destroy Darth Bane. Princess Serra of the Doan royal family is haunted by memories of the monstrous Sith soldier who murdered her father and tortured her when she was a child. Bent on retribution, she hires a merciless assassin to find her tormentor—and bring him back alive to taste her wrath.
Only a Sith who has taken down her own Master can become Dark Lord of the Sith. So when Bane suddenly vanishes, Zannah must find him—possibly even rescue him—before she can kill him. And so she pursues her quarry from the grim depths of a ravaged world on the brink of catastrophe to the barren reaches of a desert outpost, where the future of the dark side’s most powerful disciples will be decided, once and for all, by the final, fatal stroke of a lightsaber.
- Written By: Drew Karpshyn
- Published By: Del Rey