Darth Nihilus

"'I am...death incarnate.' -Darth Nihilus"Darth Nihilus, also known as Mitatsu on the original Earth before 19 BBY, was an unimaginably powerful and ancient Sith Lord who was prevalent during the Dark Wars and the Black Fleet Crisis. Born on Malachor V sometime before 3960 BBY, he grew to become moderately successful in life, fathering many children with his wife before Revan created and ordered the detonation of a superweapon known as the Mass Shadow Generator over the planet during the Mandalorian Wars, ravaging and killing almost all life, including his family, on the world and turning who would become Nihilus into a Wound in the Force. He lost the will to live as a result and yet gained an unsatiable hunger for the Living Force as a result of both his afflictions and the artifically-created mass shadows over the planet, and joined what would become the Sith Triumvirate before turning on its leader, Darth Traya, alongside his fellow Sith, Darth Sion, and, after the Jedi Civil War, began a crusade to exterminate all life in the galaxy to feed his hunger, resulting in the near-annihilation of the Jedi Order, before being seemingly slain by the Jedi outcast Meetra Surik, his former apprentice and, to some extent, adopted daughter Visas Marr, and Canderous Ordo, Mandalore the Preserver, over Telos IV.

The Dark Lord survived, however, thanks to his tenacious grasp on the Dark Side of the Force, which sustained him as he floated through the cold void of space for over three centuries before reaching a large asteroid. Over the next millennium, he toiled within the behemoth, carving out a void in the rock where gravity was essentially nonexistent, and built a massive shipyard and cloning facility inside and around the void. He then began abducting several infant Force-sensitives to indoctrinate, train, and turn them into the undead as his new Sith army, before locking them and himself in cryostasis and transferring his consciousness to the asteroid, arriving at the original Earth, over Japan, in the next century. The sentient asteroid agreed to spare the nation, and by extension, the planet, in exchange for a female human sacrifice to be delivered to him every seventy-four years, in a process which would become known as the Ritual. The Japanese called this new deity Mitatsu, and worshipped him as a god. In 23 BBY, or 2019 A.D., however, things turned south for the Sith, as a young D-Pai named Hisone Amakasu, with her Organic Transformed Flyer, Masotan, successfully devised a way to complete the Ritual without a sacrifice, which caused Nihilus to begin painfully starving again for the next three years of the subsequent Clone Wars. This, and the Confederacy of Independent Systems experimenting within Mitatsu to reactivate the ancient shipyards in order to quickly turn out Dark Side-infused warships and battle droids, drew the Sith Lord to his breaking point.

At the climax of the Battle of the Pacific in 19 BBY, which saw a coalition of the Galactic Republic, Reich der Festen Hand, Japan, and the United States of America assault Mitatsu with a massive fleet, and Hisone, now a soldier for the Grand Army of the Republic, and alongside her lover Haruto Okonogi, overpowering and defeating her captor General Grievous, Nihilus decided to reveal himself to the galaxy, unleashing his forces on all of the participants of the battle, and subsequently wiping out all life on Earth, including Hisone's close friend Nao Kaizaki, which marked the beginning of the Black Fleet Crisis. The Dark Lord then severed all contact with the Republic and Confederacy's forces locked in the brutal Outer Rim Sieges by leading a campaign to severely cripple the HoloNet network, and began depopulating and devastating entire worlds, including Telos IV. The Republic and Confederacy agreed to form an alliance to deal with this new threat, as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, in reality Darth Sidious, saw Nihilus as a grave threat to his New Order. Mitatsu itself was destroyed shortly afterwards, but by then Nihilus already had quintillions of warships and soldiers, and established shipyards and cloning facilities aboard countless, massive, almost entirely automated space stations constructed beyond the Galactic Rim, known as the Rim Installations, to consolidate his forces for a new crusade: to conquer the known universe and establish his own vision of a New Order.

The Republic-Confederate alliance was dubbed the Second Eternal Alliance shortly after its formation, and suffered a series of early defeats but started to gain traction before Nihilus' Black Fleet suddenly vanished into hyperspace eleven months into the Crisis. Two days later, Clone Squad Delta discovered that the bulk of his fleet was hidden in the Unknown Regions, while the Rim Installations constructed massive armadas consisting of untold numbers of warships, and all of these fleets were awaiting Nihilus' signal to annihilate the Alliance in one swift stroke. Armed with this information, and now more desperate than ever, the Second Eternal Alliance goaded Nihilus into returning to his homeworld of Malachor V with his flagship, the Mega-class star dreadnought Harbinger, and its sizable escort of Terminus-class destroyers, Harrower-class star destroyers, and Resurgent-class battlecruisers, knowing his death would render his undead soldiers useless. There, the Alliance ambushed his forces with a massive all-or-nothing assault fleet, and sparked the Second Battle of Malachor V in 18 BBY, which saw the deaths of Masotan, Raum Vilage, and Captain Rex at the hands of the Dark Lord himself. Desperate to end the Alliance's threat, Nihilus constructed a miniaturized thought bomb in the palm of his hand, but as he was about to deploy it, Hisone attacked him in hand-to-hand combat and chipped off a piece of his mask. Tossing her aside, Nihilus detonated the bomb, but it misfired, reducing his left arm to bone as the cloth, armor, and flesh melted off from the intense energy. The fragment Hisone acquired fused with her armor, briefly and painfully transforming her into the entity Darth Sorrow as she wiped out Nihilus' forces. She then grabbed the late Raum's crossguard lightsaber and impaled Nihilus through the right eye socket of what remained of his mask after he impaled her in the chest, ending his threat to not only the galaxy, but the entire universe once and for all, at the cost of her own life.

Early life
"'Eons ago, I lost everything.' -Darth Nihilus to Hisone Amakasu"Before he would become the being that became a grave danger to the very freedom of the universe, the Force-sensitive young man who would become Nihilus lived peacefully and happily on Malachor V. He managed to acquire a job with a high income, lived in a magnificent estate, and later on took a beautiful woman as his wife and fathered many children with her, whom he loved dearly. That all changed at the conclusion of the Mandalorian Wars.

War, ruin, and madness
In 3960 BBY, the being who became known to history as Revan arranged a trap above the planet to destroy the Mandalorian warfleet and bring about a conclusive end to the Wars. In the utmost secrecy, he had the Mass Shadow Generator constructed and delivered to Malachor V's orbit alongside a massive Republic fleet, which clashed fiercely with the Mandalorians'. His general, Jedi Master Meetra Surik, ordered the detonation of the Generator, and watched in horror as the majority of the Mandalorian fleet, alongside some of the Republic's own, were ripped out of orbit and collided with the planet as a massive gravity vortex consumed the entire world, fracturing it to its core. Out of options, the surviving Mandalorian warships promptly and quickly transmitted an agreement to an unconditional surrender.

The war was over, but the devastation was far from it.

The first step the man took out of his family villa was one of pain, suffering, guilt, and overwhelming grief. His entire family--his sons, his daughters, and his wife--were either crushed to death by debris or ripped apart by the extreme gravitational forces. And he, too, was injured, a gaping, open red scar stretching from his left shoulder to his right thigh, and his skin turned black with open cuts, whose pain they caused him were worsened by the effects of the artificially-generated mass shadows above. The grief, pain, and sadness turned into an overwhelming feeling of a void of emptiness within him, which then progressed into an intense "hunger": a desire to fill that void. After unintentionally killing a crazed survivor, a previously successful but arrogant actor who was wearing a mask as part of a costume, in self-defense and draining the Living Force from his dying body, while he felt guilty about this act, it, for a while, relieved him of his pain, and made him feel complete again.

The emptiness soon returned, however, this time more intense and relentless. When another survivor and his distraught fiance approached him to investigate the commotion, he tearfully begged them to stay away, but in doing so shot a powerful stream of Force lightning from his fingers while making gestures, vaporizing the couple as he devoured their spirits, their essence travelling through his body in bright, colored streams. Once again, he was temporarily relieved of his suffering, but knowing it would come back, and driven mad from the trauma that had broken his heart, mind, and soul that day, he picked up the dead actor's mask and donned it, giving himself a dark persona and becoming completely immersed in the Dark Side of the Force, in part a coping mechanism, but also to hide his identity as he, in essence, carved out a new life: one wrought with death.

Sith Triumvirate
Within a month, the Wound in the Force that the man had become had killed every plant, animal, and sentient still left alive on Malachor V, consuming the Living Force within them. Yet the hunger kept returning, more severe than the last every time, and he sought more of the Living Force. He was eventually discovered by the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Traya, who had sensed him. She took him under his wing, alongside another Sith prodigy known as Darth Sion, and christened him Darth Nihilus, Lord of Hunger, while teaching him how to use his hunger to gain more power from deceased Force-users and how to devour entire worlds if he wanted. Together, they formed the Sith Triumvirate from the remains of Darth Malak's Sith Empire, and began a mission to destroy the Jedi Order. Soon, however, the alliance was already becoming fragile, with Traya now perceiving Nihilus' hunger as a detriment to their cause, as he casually consumed countless worlds' populations, including many Force-users, and rapidly and dramatically grew in strength in the Dark Side, eventually surpassing hers. The trio's ideas on how to destroy the Jedi also became divided, with Traya preferring a methodical yet lengthy approach, and Nihilus and Sion seeing the pointlessness of not exterminating them outright.

Eventually, in 3955 BBY, Nihilus and Sion cooperated to defeat and cast aside their former teacher, confronting her in the Trayus Core, an academy Traya had built on Malachor V. Combining their powers into one, they worked together to cut her off from the Force, stripping her of her powers before finally casting her out into exile and taking over and sharing control of the Core. The ensuing power vacuum once again divided and fractured the Sith forces, as Sion and Nihilus went their separate ways for four years; Nihilus ripped an entire armada of dead ships out of the mass shadows over Malachor V, making a Centurion-class battlecruiser his flagship and dubbing it the Ravager, and crewed them with essentially zombies whose spirits he had drained to the point of them barely being sentient and alive, and lurked in the fringes of known space to draw as little attention as possible as he set about on his quest to devour entire star systems and increase his power. Meanwhile, Sion simply killed as many Jedi as he could find. When the two reunited, they brought together the fractured Sith forces and began to restore the Sith Empire.

Ditching the mortal vessel
At some point before depopulating Katarr, Nihilus began to realize that his immersion in the Dark Side, as well as his intense hunger, was eroding his physical body, which meant death within three weeks. To counter this, Nihilus simply used the Force to rip his soul out of his body, encase it in a specially-designed, eerily human-like robotic endoskeleton and his mask, and applied synthetic flesh and skin and fused his armor to the skeleton, thus allowing the Dark Side to rapidly consume his now dead body, while he continued to devastate large portions of the Galactic Rim.

Scourge of Katarr and adopting Visas Marr
"'For shame, Atris, willing to let thousands of innocents and your own die, just for the chance to destroy me. I thought a Jedi Master of all people would've been above that.' -Nihilus, addressing Atris through the Force"In 3952 BBY, a Jedi Master by the name of Atris organized a large gathering of Jedi, practically the rest of the entire Order, on the Miraluka colony world of Katarr, in hopes that she would goad Nihilus, who she sensed as a dark presence terrorizing the galaxy, into invading the planet to devour their essence so that she and the Jedi could destroy him. Nihilus took the bait as Atris expected, his flagship dropping out of hyperspace just outside the world's atmosphere, and gave Katarr a destructive surprise; he addressed Atris and the colony through the Force, shaming her for putting the lives of thousands of Jedi and innocents in danger just for the chance to destroy him, which turned the group against her as she fled the planet and threw the colony into mass panic, giving everyone there an overwhelming sense of anger and fear. When his shuttle landed, he casually walked out onto the grassy plains of Katarr, a walking distance away from the colony, holding a recently-constructed miniaturized thought bomb in his hand. With a snap of his fingers, the bomb detonated, mildly damaging his shuttle but wiping out the entire colony as the spirits of the massacred Jedi and civilians flowed into his waiting body, as he absorbed their essence and was now possibly on the verge of becoming the most powerful being in not just the known galaxy, but the entire universe.

As he took a calm, serene stroll on the obliterated surface of the planet and through the destroyed buildings of the colony, the Dark Lord felt something else, something he had not felt in a long time: peace. His hunger was now fully sated, and the emptiness within him was gone; it would be centuries before the void of emptiness resurfaced to the great magnitude it was at before. He then sat down on the edge of a collapsed wall, finally able to appreciate serene silence in true peace.

At some point during his time on Katarr, Nihilus realized his true calling: to control and to bring order and peace to the known galaxy, and eventually the universe itself, with himself at this New Order's center. His new fetish was total and absolute domination and control. "'Come, sit with me, young one. Beautiful, isn't it? Being able to finally appreciate the sound of silence in all its majesty in peace? No distractions. No war. No shrieks of pain, or loss, or grief. No emotional unrest. Just peace, and silence, as all should be in an orderly universe.' -Nihilus to Visas Marr, before lulling her to sleep with the Force"As he indulged himself in what seemed like an eternity of peace, he sensed something moving among the rubble: a young, injured Miraluka woman named Visas Marr. He beckoned the girl to sit with him, lulling her to sleep on his shoulder with the Force. He then brought her aboard the Ravager some time later. Days later, she awoke, completely healed, with the Sith Lord personally bringing her sustenance to restore her strength. Visas asked why the wave of death spared her, to which Nihilus replied simply by showing her a vision of the past, present, and future galaxy as he saw it: innumerable beings unable to feel the Force, being crushed under the boot of sentient life itself, and countless, devastating wars coming and going as a result, including one fought with mass-produced armies on both sides; one seeing an Empire brought down by its own arrogance, lust for war and power, and a small resistance force; one that pitted two opposing sides against the previous regime's restored leader; one that saw the hapless galaxy face off against terrifying war machines that looked like they had been organs torn from bodies; and two, final wars, where two empires and a Jedi-led faction fought for control of the galaxy, with no sign of peace.

The vision was so intense, shocking, and terrifying that it permanently blinded Visas to the Force, scorching her vestigial eye sockets and rendering her unable to see through the Force. Nihilus then told her that he could prevent these wars and do much more than any galactic government had been able to, but that sacrifices were necessary and that he needed help. Thus, Visas agreed to be trained as his Shadow Hand, and Nihilus adopted her to fill the emotional void that manifested when he lost his family to the Jedi, though historians are still vehemently divided on how genuine, positive, one-sided, or outright toxic this relationship was.

Downfall of a regime and a temporary death
One year after the Scourge of Katarr, Nihilus sensed a disturbance in the Force, his hunger having somewhat resurfaced, and dispatched Visas to defeat and bring the source to him. This disturbance was Meetra herself, having been exiled from the Jedi Order for her controversial deployment of the Mass Shadow Generator, who was taken in and sent by Darth Traya, now Kreia, to enact her revenge on Sion and Nihilus. Meetra defeated Visas, who was impressed by her prowess in battle. Visas then begin to question how truthful Nihilus' vision was, and if it was twisted with lies by the Dark Lord himself. Taking advantage of her doubts, Meetra swayed Visas to the Light Side and took her as her own, informal apprentice. Soon after, Meetra sent a clan of the Mandalorians, led by Mandalore the Preserver, to Dxun, to stop a Sith ritual that would influence the Onderon Civil War in Nihilus' favor. Though the ritual was ultimately completed, the practitioners were all killed.

On Onderon, General Valku, who was allied with Nihilus' forces, led the Onderon Separatists and Sith soldiers into the capital city of Iziz and into the Palace, the headquarters of the Royalists. Ultimately, however, Nihilus' plans for Onderon were cast aside when, with Meetra leading the defensive charge, the Royalists were ultimately victorious in the war, and Valku was summarily executed for treason. It is unknown what Nihilus planned to do with the world had the Separatists won, but he likely would have used their trust in him against them, taking them by surprise and devouring the planet as he had done to countless others.

Some time later, Valku's former subordinate, Colonel Tobin, informed Nihilus that there was a Jedi Academy on the world of Telos IV; this was all a ruse orchestrated by Kreia, as when his armada jumped out of hyperspace to approach the planet, he was ambused by Republic and Mandalorian forces, sparking a large naval battle over Telos IV. Too late did the Sith realize that except for his old foe Atris there were no Jedi or Force-users on the planet, but his desire to quell his once again rising hunger drove him to attempt to devour the world anyway. "'Visas..please...come to your senses. I gave you purpose in this universe. The Jedi are nothing more than power-hungry, pretentious liars. They're using you as a tool, and when they get what they want...they'll cast you aside. Unlike them...I saw you as my child. I loved you.' 'Maybe so...but I can't let you enslave this same universe.' -Nihilus and Visas Marr's final exchange"During the battle, the Ravager was boarded by a Jedi-led Mandalorian strike team, where Canderous Ordo and his troops planted proton bombs at the weak points of the ship's hull before joining Meetra and Visas on the bridge of the warship, where they dueled the Dark Lord. After the trio bested him after a lengthy and arduous duel, Nihilus made one final, heartfelt plea with Visas, telling her that the Jedi were liars and warmongers. The words did not seem to stick with the Miraluka, who slashed his chest with her lightsaber, apparently striking him down. Before leaving the doomed warship aboard their shuttle, however, Visas briefly removed Nihilus' mask, wanting to see the face of her former master; what she got instead was an intense aura of Dark Side energies, likely raw anger at being betrayed, which lashed at her chest, injuring her as the trio evacuated the ship. They then watched the Ravager go down in a mighty explosion from a distance, and soon after the combined might of the Republic and the Mandalorians destroyed what remained of his armada, the zombies crewing the Sith warships still being able to fight despite the Sith Lord's perceived death, which should have caused them to enter a catatonic, immobile, and mute state.

Waiting and working in the shadows
Unbeknownst to the Jedi, Nihilus survived the ordeal, thanks to his firm grasp on the Dark Side, bearing the mark of the would-be fatal lightsaber slash across his chestplate. The explosion of his flagship however blew him far outside the Telos system, and far from any form of civilization. Despite losing contact with his fleet, he quickly deduced that the Mandalorians, Republic, and the Jedi bested his ships, whose crews, while still able to operate the ships as long as he was alive, were forced to fight on without his guidance. The mark on his armor proved to be a tragic reminder to Nihilus of the fate of Visas, possibly the only person he loved and cared for. In his eyes, she was turned against him by the Jedi, manipulated and told that the vision he graced her with was all built on lies (galactic history would later prove the vision to have had an overwhelming amount of truth to it), then taken in by them to be further used as their tool.

This, combined with his crusade ultimately failing at the hands of the Republic that took everything from him, drove Nihilus even further into the Dark, stripping him entirely of most of his emotions, except for hatred and rage; from then on, he was apathetic towards others at best. His intense hunger also began returning again, which would plague him for eons.

Nihilus continued floating aimlessly among the black, cold, airless void of space for over three centuries, becoming oblivious to, or perhaps even intentionally ignoring, the Great Galactic War and subsequent Cold War that was waged by the Republic and the Reconstituted Sith Empire, his hunger by this point returning in full force and becoming the only concern on his mind, as the Dark Lord himself had lost all hope of completing his grand scheme. It was then that he approached a massive, seventeen kilometer-long asteroid, somewhere in the Fath sector. Using the Force to safely land on the giant rock, Nihilus observed the object and, burrowing deeper into it with Force lightning, discovered a massive, hollow area within. A wave of maniacal hope and ambition washed over the Sith, as he realized that all was not lost.

For the next thousand years, as the Dark Lord Valkorion's Eternal Empire invaded the galaxy and was subsequently defeated by the First Eternal Alliance before the Republic and Sith resumed war with both each other and the Alliance, and despite his raging hunger, Nihilus meanwhile worked tirelessly within the rock, performing Sith alchemy to craft the nearby asteroids into material and electronics, and beginning construction of a massive internal shipyard and cloning facility, carving out the hollow area further--as he now had a vicious determination to triumphantly return to the galactic stage--to the point where gravity effectively ceased to exist in the void within, and the only thing holding the superstructure together was ultimately the Dark Side itself. At last, the project was complete. Nihilus rewarded himself by luring a Sith convoy, which consisted of Harrowers and Terminus destroyers led led by a Sith Warrior, to his location through the Force, before devouring its crew, defeating the warrior and devouring him as well, uploading the ships' designs to the shipyard's main computer, and began turning out thousands of warships, starfighters, and ground vehicles within a week, using the Force to create several pocket dimensions within the asteroid in order to safely store what would become an unimaginably vast armada until the time was right.

As a result of the intense presence of the Dark Side, the asteroid itself became deformed, growing extremities and appendages before eventually resembling a large, carnivorous fish with glowing, yellow eyes. Although Nihilus himself was mystified by this growth, he knew that it would not become an obstacle to his plan, and so ignored it; if anything, it would later serve its purpose perfectly as a disguise.

At some point, Nihilus began developing two of his own ship designs, which would later become the Resurgent-class battlecruiser and the Mega-class star dreadnought, both being considered technological marvels well into the 30s ABY but the latter becoming particularly unprecedented even eons after the first model was constructed, possessing the ability to construct its own ships within its massive hangar bays and even entire shipyards if the crew so desired. Constructing several thousand Resurgents and an unknown number of Megas, naming the first three each the Supremacy, Death's Servant, and what would become his personal flagship, the Harbinger, he stored these warships along with the others in the pocket dimensions he created.

Nihilus now had the mechanized driving force for his new army, but he still needed men to man these vehicles and serve alongside them. "'You have served your purpose well, young ones. You have but one, final task: embrace your deaths, and give yourselves fully to the Force, and you will propser in the afterlife.' -Nihilus to the abducted children, before slaughtering them all"Using the shipyard to construct a small, specialized ship with cloaking technology, Nihilus used this starship personally to travel across the galaxy to abduct Force-sensitive children from numerous star systems, with the alarming rate of disappearences being blamed on the galaxy's collection of violent criminals, as the Dark Lord anticipated; some of the victims of the abductions were less than two years old. Using these children as the templates for his new army, he fabricated and spread a cult-like religion among the children with himself at its center as a means to brainwash and prevent them from finding any means of escape, justifying his actions, including cloning them, with bogus sermons claiming that he was the physical embodiment of the Force, and that the Republic and Jedi were demons, and that all of them would serve the higher purpose of cleansing the galaxy of these "evil forces". Employing the Dark Side to ensure that the clones emerged fully-grown to adulthood from the vats without any mental or physical abnormalities, Nihilus then slaughtered all of the children, telling each one of them that they had served their purpose well. Giving each clone a set of specially designed Sith armor, a red-bladed lightsaber, and a shieldblaster, he trained the first batch personally, then had that batch train the next, and so on. Nihilus had a grand total of several quintillion of his very own Sith clone soldiers enter the pocket dimensions after each batch's training was complete and board their assigned vessels, before turning them all into undead, extremely loyal slaves and locking them and himself in cryostasis, transferring his soul and mind to the asteroid.

Earthbound
"'Worry not, your nation, and your world, will be spared...if you hold up your end: deliver to me a sacrifice, in the form of one of your women, every seventy-four years.' -Nihilus to the ancestral Japanese population"The asteroid then wandered the reaches of space for a century, as Nihilus was seeking out an optimal staging ground from which to restart his crusade, when he reached the inhabited planet known as Earth, in the Sol system. Entering its atmosphere, the Dark Side energies protecting the rock from the effects of friction, the asteroid arrived over an isolated, feudal island nation calling itself Japan. Starfighters of a sophisticated and unique design rained down from the asteroid, the horrible shriek of their engines piercing the ears of many, as the ancient and honorable samurai defenders of the country readied for battle, believing the end of the world was upon them all. The asteroid spoke directly to the ancient rulers of the nation in a clear, booming voice, promising to spare Earth from destruction if he was brought a human female sacrifice every seventy-four years. The ancient Japanese people swiftly agreed, and sent what would become known as the Organic Transformed Flyers--towering, sentient dragons from an ancient society that long ago formed a pact with the Japanese, promising military protection from outside forces in exchange for their species' preservation and being kept hidden from the public eye--to greet the new being. Nihilus combed through the dragons' ranks, hand-picking the only four that could interact with the Dark Side of the Force: Masotan, Norma, Futonomo, and Akemi. He then instructed that these dragons guide "him" during every sacrificial ritual to his next resting place in the Pacific Ocean, in a process which would become known as simply the Ritual.

Thus for eons, Nihilus had both a source of sustenance and his chief desire: control. Though he had not yet achieved his ultimate goal, he gained a steady stream of beings to devour, including Yae, lover of the former OTF pilot, or D-Pai, Sada Hinomotohe, and he effectively became the puppetmaster of Japan, influencing their various actions throughout Earth's history, including the many war crimes and atrocities they would go on to commit during the Terrestrials' Second World War; meanwhile, the Japanese were at the complete mercy of their new "god", naming him Mitatsu and worshipping him as one.

And for then, that was enough.

Flashpoint: 23 BBY
As the next seventy-four years of patience came to an end, Nihilus rose from his resting spot, comfortably waiting for the next sacrifice's arrival: Natsume Misumi, who had trained as the next miko, or priestess, for her entire life, simply to be devoured by the Dark Lord in disguise. But fate had other plans.

His first reason for concern manifested when a young Japan Air Self-Defense Force sergeant, Hisone Amakasu, with her OTF Masotan, disrupted the Ritual by landing in the altar area and, unwilling to let anyone die, convinced her and the other practitioners, including her future lover Haruto Okonogi, to leave Mitatsu. Then, Nihilus became alarmed when the Force-sensitive OTF squadron successfully flipped Mitatsu over on its side without a sacrifice. However, he knew that the rock could not descend without a sacrifice. Hisone valiantly offered her life in place of Natsume's, completing the Ritual. As the caustic fluids within Mitatsu rose up in a great blast and rained down on her, Masotan stayed behind to protect her, his skin being naturally resistant to the liquid, affirming his loyalty and bond to his pilot despite her tearful objections.

The Sith quickly ran out of options; he would now devour Hisone and Masotan both. Unfortunately, despite several repeated attempts to consume her and the OTF over the next three months, they escaped alive and reunited with Haruto, who was also searching for them on the grassy surface of Mitatsu. On top of this, the then nascent Confederacy of Independent Systems dispatched several Vulture droid probes across the galaxy to survey planets for potential transformation into factory worlds, with one of them dropping out of hyperspace in the Sol system and landing on Mitatsu itself; Masotan promptly destroyed the drone when it arrived in protection of the newly-declared couple inside his innards, but its lifeless husk released several small exploration droids, similar in appearance to the infamous buzz droid, which then discovered the gravity-less void and the shipyards within the rock and transmitted its coordinates to the Confederate fleet, which arrived to begin Project Star Forge: a lengthy attempt spanning almost the entire subsequent Clone Wars to reactivate the factories via capturing the four Force-sensitive dragons and hooking them up to a device that channeled the Dark Side from them to the facilities, which was ultimately successful. "'I want the dragon and its pilot hooked up to that machine, immediately! Today is a good day for the Confederacy!' 'Yes, sir, right away si- woahahyyYAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!' -General Grievous and a B1 battle droid, just before the droid was flung around in the void and violently thrown down into the bottom of it, one of many examples of Nihilus' unseen attacks"Throughout the Clone Wars, Nihilus became absolutely furious, seeing an outside party commandeer his technology he intended to use for his war, and began painfully starving once more as a result of the botched Ritual. He also let the Separatists know of his disapproval of their project in not-so-subtle ways; random pieces of technology important to their cause would go missing, and battle droids and organic officers alike would be flung around the facility, tossed off of cliffs and ledges, or be violently ripped apart by an unseen force. The political leader of the Separatist Alliance, Count Dooku, who was secretly plotting to use Project Star Forge for his own vision of a New Order after it was completed, assured his master, Darth Sidious, that these events were simply a byproduct of experimenting with the Dark Side.

Beginning of the Black Fleet Crisis
"'Eons ago, I lost everything. Then, you took my only source of sustenance and control away from me. And now you will, too, in time, know what that feels like, Amakasu. You fail to realize just how insignificant you are; you are a speck of dust in a massive storm, a grain of sand upon a beach, a single world amongst billions of galaxies! And now, you will suffer as I have!' -Nihilus to Hisone"In 19 BBY, after the Second Battle of Europe and Second Drago-German War, the Reich der Festen Hand evacuated and abandoned all of its holdings in fear of a Separatist preemptive strike and joined the Republic and what remained of the United States and Japanese Navy in a massive, all-out assault on the now-airborne Mitatsu, which was already turning out Providence-class assault carriers and battle droids infused with the Dark Side. During the battle, Haruto, now infused with the late fusion of Durge and Mnggal-Mnggal after a previous confrontation with them, managed to break Masotan and Hisone, now soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic, out of Grievous' control, as the trio then overpowered and defeated him and his massive prototype Variable Geometry Self-Propelled Mark III exoskeleton, with Hisone forcing a surrender at blasterpoint, recognizing the cyborg Kaleesh as the being who ordered the death of her parents.

What was supposed to end in a decisive Republic victory ended in a catastrophic disaster for all participants, as Nihilus, no longer able to bear his hunger and rage, revealed himself to the galaxy, launching his army out of his many pocket dimensions as he began to devastate the Republic and Separatist forces, wiping out Captain Rex's famed Torrent Company of the 501st Legion, which drove the clone captain to become an despondent alcoholic for almost a year. He then turned to Hisone, trapping her in a terrifying false reality to demonstrate her worthlessness in the grand scheme of the universe: the first vision he showed her was a violent dust storm painfully eating away at Haruto's flesh and bone, as her own suit's shields began to fail; the second saw her awakening on a peaceful, serene beach with calm waters, before being shot at, attacked, and slowly dragged down into the sand by an abberation of the damaged husk of the late General Kalani, containing her long-deceased superior and mentor Remi Kakiyazu's decaying corpse, that had risen up from the sand as an undead cyborg; the third and final vision saw her waking up in the vast, silent, intergalactic void, as a micrometeorite struck and ruptured her suit, causing her oxygen levels to drop rapidly. Ripping her out of this reality with the Force and back into the real world, Nihilus then told Hisone, as she tried to stand back up and brace herself, shaken physically and emotionally by the false reality, that she would suffer as he had, before walking up to her and casting her out into the vast ocean below with a powerful blast of Force lightning. "'I take it you saved your friend, allowing her to be spirited away.' 'Yes.' 'And what did it cost?' '...Everything.' -Nihilus and the dying Nao Kaizaki"Hisone survived her plummet, and was rescued by her close friend, Nao Kaizaki, and her OTF, a dragon named Roast disguised as an A-10 Thunderbolt II, as they joined the evacuation forces above, as Nihilus prepared to create a massive tsunami with the Force that would wipe out all life on the planet. Norma, Akemi, Futonomo, and their pilots--Elle Hoshino, Lilikos Kinutsugai, and Mayumi Hitomi--were caught in the waves before they could reach the Venators and Providences above. Knowing she would not make it to the ships, Nao had Roast grab Hisone with his claws and toss her into the waiting hangar of the Venator Guarlara, as the waves consumed them both.

Walking on the now dry, barren surface, Nihilus and his Sith soldiers scoured the area for survivors, before coming across a dead and mutilated Roast, and a maimed and dying Nao. Nihilus then simply asked her what the cost was of saving Hisone. Nao replied with a simple "Everything" before taking her last, pain-racked breath. The Dark Lord then absorbed her spirit, as he prepared to begin his conquest.

A string of defeats
"'Impossible...he's growing fully mature clones within days..most of them should've gone mad and rogue by now.' 'I know, Haru. He seems to be doing it anyway.' -Haruto Okonogi and Hisone, after seeing the cloning vats inside Mitatsu before committing sabotage and destroying the asteroid"The Black Fleet moved swiftly and destroyed the HoloNet communications network, severing contact between both sides and their forces who were currently locked in the brutal Outer Rim Sieges. Six months later, Nihilus and his forces, now dubbing themselves the Universal Empire, had violently depopulated and annihilated millions of star systems across the galaxy, including the Telos and Japrael systems. On Telos IV in particular, as he was hunting down the planet's citizens, Nihilus received a vision from Darth Sidious, who told him that he was making a grave blunder by resurfacing; Nihilus promptly told the Dark Lord that this was his Universe, not Sidious', to rule.

Nihilus then dispatched several Mega dreadnoughts to the area beyond the Galactic Rim to begin construction of the Rim Installations: massive, automated factories that would serve as staging grounds for the Empire's eventual conquest of the known universe. The Republic and Confederacy, along with the remnants of the United States, Japan, and the Reich, now forged into the Second Eternal Alliance, struggled to keep pace, suffering a series of early, devastating defeats, barring the successful destruction of Mitatsu a month into the new war.

At some point in 19 BBY, a Republic fleet was fleeing Death's Servant, a Mega-class star dreadnought, and managed to disable its hyperspace tracker, the undead admiral of the ship attracting the baleful eye of the Dark Lord; he was then ripped apart through the Force. "'Fire everything!.' -Nihilus while onboard Death's Servant, after seeing the two heavy starfighters drop out of hyperspace"Eight months into the Crisis, Jedi General Anakin Skywalker launched a daring raid on the dreadnought Death's Servant, after intelligence reports confirmed Nihilus would be onboard the warship, flying, with Haruto as his copilot and his astromech R2-D2, a prototype T-62 Starblazer-class heavy starfighter--which would become the predecessor to the T-65 X-wing used by the Alliance to Restore the Republic some years later--carrying an artificial event horizon generator, alongside Clone Squad Lightning's modified ARC-170, the Jagged Emerald. Despite the dreadnought and its escort's starfighter pilots' and gunnery crew's best efforts to blast the starfighters into flames, Anakin managed to fire the new weapon right into the vessel's bridge. Detonating it remotely, a resulting massive black hole engulfed and consumed the monster, as he, Haruto, and Lightning Squad, feeling that the end of the war was near with the Dark Lord vanquished, cheered wildly as they leapt into hyperspace before the black hole could take them with the dreadnought and its escorts.

With this victory being a huge morale boost to the Alliance, and finally putting their entire combined economic might behind the war effort, turning out fleets of Subjugator- and Bulwark-class battlecruisers and brand new warships like the Imperator-class star destroyer, among other unique designs, they slowly but steadily began a counterattack on a grand scale, recapturing and repopulating the Telos system, among countless others that were not already obliterated beyond repair. "'No...he can't..we vaporized him!' -Haruto expressing his shock at Nihilus' return"A week later, as Hisone and Haruto celebrated the safe delivery of their new, healthy son in the medical bay of the Venator Redemption, a small black hole appeared on the dorsal flight deck of the carrier, which began to tear the ship apart. Out of the hole stepped Nihilus, having survived the detonation of the event horizon generator, as he coldly made his way to the medbay, killing every soldier, nurse, and doctor that got in his way with ease, as two Harrowers and one Resurgent dropped out of hyperspace, launching starfighters and gunships to ensure that the trio could not escape the doomed vessel."'My Lord...it seems they have escape- ACKK! ' -One of Nihilus' Sith soldiers, before being executed for his ineptitude"Hax, Nipper, and Dennis of Clone Squad Lightning directed the new parents to the ventral hangar of the ship, where they fled into hyperspace aboard a Consular-class cruiser, just as Nihilus and his troops entered the same hangar bay, just in time to watch them escape. One of the soldiers commented on their escape, causing the Dark Lord to use the Force to impale the trooper with metal shrapnel out of irritation.

Three months later, the Second Eternal Alliance was making progress in beating back the Universal Empire's forces when Nihilus' ships suddenly and abruptly leapt into hyperspace, with no clear explanation or reason as to why. Two days later, Clone Squad Delta, a clone commando squad, searched the Empire's abandoned fortress world of Korriban for any sort of clues. After Fixer sliced into the base's main computers, the squad discovered and relayed back to the brass that the bulk of Nihilus' fleet, which itself consisted of quintillions of ships, was hidden in the Unknown Regions, and that the galaxy was practically surrounded by untold numbers of Megas, Resurgents, Harrowers, and Terminus destroyers, all awaiting the Sith Lord's signal to wipe out the last remnants of both the Old Republic and the Confederacy in one blow before moving on to the rest of the universe. They also discovered that if Nihilus were to die, his undead servants would go with him, turning them into mute corpses."'Generals...let's go rip the innards out of that Sith!' -Captain Rex, after being broken out of his depression"Hisone, Haruto, Masotan, Anakin, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, after convincing Kaleesh cyborg Raum Vilage to come out of a self-imposed exile on Ilum, and breaking Rex out of his drunken, confused stupor, were then sent by the now desperate Alliance to Malachor V to goad Nihilus into returning to the planet, as Anakin's high midichlorian count was sure to draw the Dark Lord out of hiding. And this worked--Nihilus, along with his flagship Harbinger, and a considerable escort force of Terminus destroyers, Harrowers, and Resurgents, arrived above the planet, with the intent of consuming the young Jedi.

Endgame
"'After I devour you, Skywalker, and after we annihilate your futile Alliance, my Empire will send its fleets out to devastate the entire known universe, leaving only the bare minimum of life left. The Ritual will be reestablished, and the Empire, under my rule, will flourish in this new, orderly universe.' 'Born out of innocents' blood.' 'You won't be alive to have a say in the matter. And they will have no choice but to bend the knee.' 'Well lucky you, we're all kinds of stubborn.' 'I'm glad; life teeming with the Force is now willingly sacrificing itself to me, thanks to you.' -Nihilus and Anakin Skywalker"Nihilus initially attempted to convince the group, especially Raum and Hisone, into joining his side, promising them immense power. When they refused, he gave them an ultimatum, telling Anakin that his Empire will conquer the rest of the universe after it is finished with the Second Eternal Alliance, before drawing and igniting his lightsaber. The Jedi and Raum did the same with theirs. Hisone began to board Masotan before the dragon spit her out, charging towards Nihilus himself despite Hisone's tearful objections, swallowing the Sith Lord and being subsequently blown in half from the inside, his flesh and Starblazer-class power armor being torn asunder and reduced to a char. "'Come on...hold it back...just a little- ah, fuck it!' -Raum Vilage before letting himself fall to the Dark"As the group stood in shock, Raum pushed them back with the Force, having now allowed the Dark Side to overtake him and snuff out whatever Light remained. The two Sith then fought an intense duel, blasts of lightning streaking across the sky before clashing their sabers together, with Raum managing to hold his ground for longer than Nihilus expected, before eventually having his defense broken as he was stabbed in the abdomen. "'I have..seen the future...Dark Lord...your Empire...will never come to pass.' -Raum's final words"Raum then told Nihilus that through precognition, he learned that the Dark Lord's plans for the universe would ultimately fail, to which he replied by simply tearing the Kaleesh in half, killing him. As the group is demoralized, and as Nihilus' soldiers, light assault speeders, walkers, and starfighters deployed to the surface, he sensed several large masses exiting hyperspace, and so did the Jedi. Above the group, one by one, among various other ship classes, several Imperators, Venators, Bulwarks, Providences, Recusants, Munificents, Arquitens, Victorys, Subjugators, Dreadnaughts, Lucrehulks, Captors, and new designs like the America-class star carriers, Gifu-class multirole destroyers, Fuhrer-class battleships, and Landkreuzer Deployers all appeared in the atmosphere of the planet. The newly-arrived Alliance armada then began launching starfighters, including the recently-introduced T-62 Starblazer-class and the brand new American-designed F-41 Broadsword heavy starfighters, and deploying every ground soldier and surface vehicle they had: among others, clone troopers, battle droids, Blaze troopers, droidekas, STAPs, BARC speeders, AT-TEs, AT-ATs, AT-XTs, TX-130 Saber-class fighter tanks, AATs, HMPs, OG-9s, HAVw A6 Juggernaut and MTT landships, Hailfire droids, Persuader-class tank droids, LAATs, F-35 Lightning IIs, A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, F/A-18 Hornets, M1 Abrams tanks, prototype D77-TC Pelican dropships, what remained of the Marines and Army, supersoldiers encased in advanced power armor, F-15Js, Type 10 Hitomaru tanks, Tiger/rtf tanks, Raubtier walkers, Blitz-Falke RA/Ts, and the massive, eight-hundred meter-long Elefant-class Landkreuzer walkers. Nihilus looked at the Alliance's battalions in shock; history had repeated himself, and he once again fell into an ambush. The desperate fight for the universe had begun."'However ingenious your trap was, it will all be in vain.' -Nihilus to the forces before him"The two armies then dropped all pretenses and charged at one another, the shrieks of the undead soldiers and the Mandalorian war chants of the Fett clones almost drowning out the sounds of the battle itself. Nihilus himself tore through clones, non-clone soldiers, and battle droids alike, as he headed for his target: Skywalker. However, the Jedi was waiting for him, coordinating with Obi-Wan, Sidious and Dooku, among several other Jedi Knights, to attack the Sith Lord in full force. Thus, Nihilus was forced to fight several Jedi at once, as Sidious unleashed a powerful volley of Force lightning on him, cackling maniacally as he told him that this was his universe to rule. "'Open fire on my position!' 'But my Lord, you'll be caught in the blas-!' 'Just do it!' Nihilus to the crew of the Harbinger"Overwhelmed, Nihilus ordered the Harbinger to fire on his position, which knocked Sidious back as his robe unfurled briefly to unwittingly reveal his true identity to a single Jedi Knight: the Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine. The blast of the Harbinger's cannons devastated large portions of both his and the Alliance's armies, yet the Alliance still fought strong, now on the verge of prevailing over his forces. Desperate to end the Alliance's threat once and for all, Nihilus began to construct a thought bomb in his left hand, much like the one he deployed on Katarr long ago. Seeing what the Dark Lord was doing, Rex charged at him, seeking retribution for the loss of Torrent Company on Earth. Grabbing a lightsaber belonging to a killed Sith soldier, he dueled the Sith Lord briefly, slashing him across the chest before Nihilus impaled the clone with a piece of metal shrapnel before slashing his chest with his lightsaber, as the Captain went out in a blaze of glory. "'If you can get even a fragment of his mask, you'll gain the power to kill him, but you will die painfully, be corrupted beyond all redemption...or both.' -Obi-Wan to Hisone"Catching a glimpse of Nihilus' plan, an exhausted and beaten Obi-Wan explained to Hisone that acquiring a part of Nihilus' mask will enable her to finally kill him, but that the cost will either be death or irreparable corruption of her soul. Realizing what must be done to save the galaxy, and ultimately, the universe itself, Hisone shared one final kiss with Haruto, telling him to take care of their son before departing to face Nihilus alone.

Absorbing Rex's life energies, Nihilus managed to complete the thought bomb, the weapon's unstable energy causing it to emit bright streaks of light, but before he could detonate it, he was interrupted by Hisone, who engaged him in hand-to-hand combat, blocking his lightsaber blows with her armor's shields, as she managed to score a blow on his mask, before being tossed aside.

War of the gods and a final death
"'I am...death incarnate.' 'And I...am...ngh...The Dragon Pilot.' Nihilus and Hisone's final exchange"Nihilus then taunted Hisone, before snapping his fingers and detonating the bomb; it misfired, reducing the cloth, armor, and flesh of his left arm into primordial sludge that melted off from the intense energy, exposing the "bone" underneath. The sizable fragment that Hisone chipped off his mask--practically the entire left side of it--fused with her armor's faceplate as the Dark Side energies rippled up and down her body in great, glowing red streaks, as she began a painful transformation into the entity Darth Sorrow, large, dragon-like wings sprouting from her back, her eyes turning bright yellow and her skin turning black as coal.

Hisone Amakasu was no more. Sorrow had taken her place.

Her very first act after the transformation was complete was vaporizing Nihilus' entire Sith army on the planet with Force lightning, reducing everything--troops, walkers, even starfighters--into subatomic particles. Sorrow then ripped Nihilus' warships right out of the sky with the Force, sending them wildly careening into the planet's surface. Grasping the hull of the Harbinger with the Force, she cracked the Mega dreadnought in half, her power stemming from the pure, raw, unbridled rage and grief over the people in her life that she lost to the Dark Lord.

Grabbing Raum's crossguard lightsaber, Sorrow finally engaged Nihilus directly, meeting his attacks blow for blow, before Nihilus saw a small break in his enemy's defense, and impaled her in the chest, just as she impaled him through the right eye socket of his mask, finally killing the ancient Sith Lord once and for all, and releasing every spirit he had devoured into the Netherworld of the Force, finally putting them to rest. She later shared a bittersweet goodbye with Haruto before dying in his arms, as every soldier of Nihilus in the galaxy became mute, catatonic bodies as a result of his final death, with the Clone Wars concluding just days afterwards.

Legacy
Many years after his final defeat, the mere mention of Nihilus' name was still enough to evoke dread throughout the galaxy, especially on worlds that he had previously depopulated like Telos IV. The HoloNet network he had destroyed during the Black Fleet Crisis was eventually rebuilt before the end of the Clone Wars.

After his death, the only remnants of the Universal Empire left were the ghost fleets of untold numbers of ships both in the Unknown Regions and outside the galaxy, with droid sentinels still guarding the lonely Rim Installations, awaiting orders that would never come. These long forgotten relics of an ancient terror would then be unceremoniously destroyed by the extragalactic, technology-hating race known as the Yuuzhan Vong as they began their invasion of the galaxy.

Several decades after the Black Fleet Crisis and years after the fall of Palpatine's Galactic Empire at the hands of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, which then transitioned into the New Republic and after the Yuuzhan Vong's invasion the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, a militant, pro-Palpatinian Imperium group calling itself the First Order relocated to the Unknown Regions, discovering the vast fleets of ghost ships to still be fully operational and functional. They used some of this fleet as resources for constructing the massive superweapon Starkiller Base, which would go on to annihilate the Federation's capital planet and the entire Hosnian system in 34 ABY, while keeping the rest of the armada as their own and continuing to turn out ships and shipyards thanks to the survival of a single Mega-class star dreadnought, the ''Supremacy. ''Nihilus himself would have appreciated the irony.

Behind the scenes
Darth Nihilus' Legends story arc, including his origins and adoption of Visas Marr, was to some extent rewritten and expanded on in the Heartbreak timeline in order to evoke more emotion out of the reader, as well as to be somewhat more engaging, but otherwise remains relatively faithful to Legends' Knights of the Old Republic storyline.

The Second Battle of Malachor V was partly inspired by the final battle sequence of the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Avengers: Endgame.