Pride of Lehon

The Pride of Lehon, known as the Shâsotrâhan in the Sith language, was a Rakatan ship of the Infinite Empire that was commandeered by a group of heretical Kissai priests in the aftermath of the 27,700 BBY invasion of Korriban and used to transport the group to the distant planet of Tund.

At some point prior to 27,700 BBY, the Rakata of the Infinite Empire discovered the dark side Force nexus of Korriban in the Outer Rim and encountered the native Force users known as the Sith. The exact nature of the two species's initial relationship was a point of contention among scholars of later millennia&mdash;some claimed the Rakata successfully enslaved the Sith for a time under the rule of Predor Soa, while others posited that the Rakata had attempted to woo the Sith into willing cooperation with gifts of technology and advanced knowledge about the dark side of the Force.

Regardless of the specifics of their diplomatic relationship, the Sith and Rakata had come into conflict by 27,700 BBY during the reign of Sith King Adas. Mustering an invasion fleet composed of the Pride of Lehon and a number of other Rakatan ships, the Rakata attempted to conquer the planet with the aid of several traitorous Sith sympathizers known as the Infernal Council. However, despite their great numbers and greater technological prowess, the Rakata were sounded rebuffed by the Sith and driven from the greater Horuset system in defeat. As a result of their hasty exit, the Rakata were forced to leave behind a number of damaged vessels and weapons on Korriban that were commandeered by the Sith.

Though the Sith were successful in casting out the Infinite Empire, their victory had come at a great cost. King Adas had sacrificially given his life during the invasion to ensure a complete tactical victory for his people. As it had only been his sheer strength of will and power in the Force that had held together the disparate Sith tribes on Korriban, the Sith began fighting among themselves for supremacy not long after his death. Countless Sith Overlords laid claim to Adas's mantle as Sith'ari and engaged in protracted civil wars with each other that devastated Korriban's surface and forced the Sith to began relocating to Ziost and other worlds inside and outside the Stygian Caldera.

One particular group of Sith belonging to the Kissai priest caste earned the ire of the mainline Sith for interpreting the death of Adas at the hands of the Infinite Empire as a sign from the Force to reject the dark side and embrace the monist Unifying Force teachings of the Rakata. Decried as heretics and banished from Korriban, these Rakata sympathizers took possession of the abandoned Pride of Lehon and a number of other Rakata artifacts like the Korriban Forcesaber before setting out from their species's ancestral homeworld. They utilized the Pride ' s Forcedrive to latch onto the signatures of inhabitable Force nexuses, trusting in the Force to lead them to a new home.

The exiles eventually found their way to a remote region of space far from the Stygian Caldera that would in later millennia be known as the Centrality sector. Here, lost on the northeastern borders of a starless void called the Open Sea, the Kissai found an uninhabited verdant Force nexus of jungles and rivers to which they gave the Sith name Tûnd. They parked the Pride on a small hill set in a jungle clearing and used the vessel as a temporary home while they went about clearing the surrounding jungle. As the settlement of Sith Landing began to take shape around the starship, the Pride was subsumed beneath a pyramidal hangar taking the appearance of a Sith temple.

The Pride served as the Tundan Sith community's only reliable means of transportation off-world, and as such was only used for missions deemed critical to the population's survival. Despite their best efforts to preserve the Rakata vessel, the Pride eventually fell into a state of disrepair due to its owners' unfamiliarity with Rakata technology and a lack of requisite replacement parts. It became little more than a glorified museum ship in the years that followed, though the Tundan leadership continued to dispatch Zuguruk engineers to its hangar at intermittent intervals to undertake unsuccessful restoration efforts on the ancient starship.

Following the arrival of the Human Dark Jedi Exiles to Korriban and the subsequent formation of the Sith Empire in 6900 BBY, the heretical pureblooded Sith population was joined on Tund by a number Sith-Human half-breed colonists from the Stygian Caldera. Though intermittent conflict was not uncommon, the formation of the presiding House of Tund[sw] from the pureblooded and half-breed nobility ultimately brought about some semblance of peace on Tund between the disparate factions of Sith.

Though the half-breeds had travelled to Tund aboard a small fleet of personnel carriers, they had not brought a Sith dreadnaught or Derriphan-class battleship capable of defending against pirates operating in the vicinity of the Open Sea. At the request of one governing Sith Lord of Tund, the Tundans undertook an extensive restoration effort aimed at recommissioning the Pride of Lehon as a spaceworthy vessel capable of serving as a battleship of the de facto Tundan defense fleet. Its Forcedrive was replaced by a conventional Sith hyperdrive, allowing for the removal of its extensive storage racks previously used to store sentient Forceful fuel. The resultant empty space allowed the Pride to serve in an ancillary capacity as a personnel carrier capable of transporting up to a thousand extra passengers with room to spare.

The Pride of Lehon is offhandedly mentioned on page 110 of The Essential Atlas as a possible means by which the starwars:Kissai heretics may have traversed the great distance between Korriban and Tund in an era before the Sith possessed hyperspace-capable vessels of their own.


 * The Essential Atlas