Okemi was a male Sith Lord during the days of the Golden Age of the Sith Empire. One of Marka Ragnos's most powerful disciples a century before the Great Hyperspace War, he was eventually driven to rise up against his master by Ragnos' fallen enemy Lord Simus. Simus, however, had used Okemi's own ambition as tool to return him to the good graces of the Sith Council and betrayed the nascent rebellion to Marka Ragnos. The rebellion was quickly defeated and Okemi was forced to flee Ziost with those followers that remained. His flight eventually lead him to Antei, where he settled and declared himself a king. Using dark rituals, he prolonged his life, coming to be hailed as a god.
After ruling for thousands of years, Okemi would be joined by two powerful Force users named Tiamat and Ferran. Okemi formed the Star Chamber with these two, ruling over Antei as the Triumvirate. For years they presided over the embryo of a new Sith Empire. They reigned for a thousand years, but eventually the Star Chamber would fall, destroyed by their folly.
Millennia passed before the Brotherhood arrived on Antei. The arrival of the Dark Lord of the Sith stirred Okemi’s husk, and his preserved essence spread across the Brotherhood like a plague. He was finally laid to rest when Lord Firefox destroyed his essence with Ferran’s legendary sword, Son’Jiatt.
Biography
Rebellion
- Main article: [[Okemi Uprising|Okemi Uprising]]
Okemi lived circa 5,100 BBY, 1,800 years after the Sith species was subjugated by the Exiles. By the time of Okemi's birth, most Sith descended from these fallen Jedi, but his bloodline was one of the few still remaining of pure Sith blood. He served Marka Ragnos as one of the Sith Lord's most powerful apprentices, having helped Ragnos secure his power base following his assumption of the mantle of Dark Lord. As Ragnos's reign wore on, Okemi began to see other of the Dark Lord's lieutenants elevated to levels above his own station, given positions on the Sith Council before Okemi himself finally was granted a seat. A simmering anger began to build in Okemi, an anger that did not go unnoticed by the fallen Sith Simus.
Ever since Simus had been beheaded by Marka Ragnos in their deciding duel to determine the next leader of the Sith Empire, Simus had been searching for a way back onto the Sith Council. Knowing firsthand the depth of Ragnos's power, he realized that only by pleasing the Dark Lord could he once again ascend. He saw Okemi's growing unrest as an opportunity to return to his former position of power. Working slowly, he ingratiated himself with Okemi over the course of months, eventually becoming a close advisor. He carefully nurtured Okemi's anger over the perceived slights of his fellows, the lack of reward for efforts on Ragnos's behalf. Okemi began to see himself as more powerful than Ragnos and set about fomenting rebellion against his former master.
By 5,050 BBY he had built a powerful alliance made up of lesser Sith Lords, prominent Kissai priests, and legions of Massassi warriors. Simus, as his closest advisor, was aware of all of Okemi's plans. From the beginning, Simus had used Okemi's rebellion as nothing more than a stepping stone to his own elevation. On the eve of their strike, Simus betrayed Okemi to Marka Ragnos, giving the Dark Lord all of their plans as well as a list of all of the rebellion's leaders. The forces of Marka Ragnos struck swiftly, crushing their opposition before the insurrection could begin.
As the conflict raged, Okemi was left stunned at how the tide of battle was turning against him. However, before Marka Ragnos could find Okemi, Simus found his erstwhile ally first. With his guards outnumbering Okemi's forces, Simus took the opportunity to gloat. Knowing from personal experience that living on after a fall from power would be far worse than death, he told Okemi to flee before Ragnos could find him. Seeing his vision for the future collapsing around him, Okemi realized that discretion was the better part of valor. Taking with him those few followers he could gather to him, he made his escape in hopes of one day rising again. As Okemi left the surface of Ziost, heading for parts unknown outside the reach of the Empire, the remaining traitorous forces were eliminated. Simus's plan had worked masterfully, leaving the Sith to take Okemi's place on the Council.
God King of Antei
Okemi knew that he had to leave the boundaries of the Sith Empire completely, only by moving beyond the reach of Marka Ragnos could he survive. Few members of the Empire had ever left Sith Space, the Stygian Caldera having proved too great a barrier to traverse. Okemi would find the Caldera to be just as impenetrable as others before him. Attempting to navigate a hyperspace course through the Caldera, Okemi was violently pulled from hyperspace deep within the depths of the nebula. As if by chance, a star system lay before his ship. With his hyperdrive damaged, Okemi set course for a habitable planet within the system: Antei.
Okemi saw Antei as the perfect world upon which to hide from Ragnos and the Sith Empire while rebuilding his strength. Its location within the Caldera made finding it nearly impossible, cloaking him from his enemies. Inhabited only by a primitive, pre-hyperdrive civilization of Near-Humans, there were none who could seriously challenge Okemi and his followers for rule. The Sith Lord began a campaign to subjugate the Anteians the moment he made planetfall, much as the Exiles had subjugated the Sith nearly two millennia before.
Following a long and bloody campaign, during which he brought the planet's entire population to heel, Okemi proclaimed himself King and began to forge the Anteians into a theocratic culture mirroring the Sith. Great temples were constructed in his honor, entire cities sprung up as he forged an empire of his own, however isolated from the rest of the Galaxy it may have been.
Having built his empire, Okemi turned his attention to maintaining his rule over it. He devoted his life to studying the technique of using the Force to drain the life essence from others, becoming powerful enough in its use that it became a means to prolong his own life. The stronger in the Force the victim was, the more benefit Okemi saw from the draining. At first he began with his own comrades, those Sith that had followed him from Ziost, before moving on to Force sensitives in the native population. His seemingly eternal rule eventually lead him to be seen as a god by his subjects.
The Star Chamber
A thousand years of Okemi's feedings had culled many of the Force sensitive bloodlines from Antei's population. This forced Okemi's attention outward, for while Antei had been forgotten by the rest of the Galaxy since Okemi’s exile, Okemi had not forgotten them. He had felt the great tremors in the Force caused by the Great Hyperspace War decades after his arrival on Antei, and felt something yet worse a millennium later as the Great Sith War carved a path of destruction across the galaxy. As the war reached its climax in 3,996 BBY with the defeat of the Sith, Okemi knew that many of the defeated would be fleeing before their enemies. He began to experiment with Force rituals to allow him to project his consciousness beyond the bounds of the Caldera in order to draw some of these Force users to him, but his efforts delivered mixed results. Only able to impart vague desire on most minds, he drew the more some of the defeated Force users to him to serve as stock to strengthen the bloodlines of Antei.
One of the first of these was Tiamat, a Krath sorceress from Empress Teta. A gifted seer, Taimat had been one of Aleema Keto's apprentices and had fled known space after the defeat of Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma. Okemi influenced Tiamat, drawing her to Antei through dreamlike visions. Upon her arrival on lost world around 3,990 BBY, Tiamat encountered a thriving civilization; a mix of Sith, Human, and half-breed alike; all centered on its one true God-King: Okemi. At first, Okemi saw the newcomer as a powerful source of Force energy to use in his rituals and a novelty, bringing news of the outside world. However, in time, Okemi came to realize she was more than a mere tool, but was a powerful Force wielder in her own right, a worthy ally. Guided by portents in the Dark Side, Okemi accepted Tiamat into his order and the two formed an alliance of power.
As other Sith drifted to Antei and into their grasp, Okemi and Tiamat began to realize that their alliance was incomplete. The other refugees that arrived were not their equals, and while they would serve as reservoirs of Force energy for their rituals, they brought little else. Tiamat's visions eventually brought forth the image of a third member of their order: an assassin named Ferran. A powerful warrior of the Mecrosa Order, Ferran had spent the better part of the previous six years fleeing before the Jedi purge of Sith teachings from the Tapani Sector known as the Cleansing of the Nine Houses. Between their shared power, Okemi and Tiamat were able to direct Ferran's flight and lead him to Antei in 3,987 BBY.
The Sith King and Krath Sorceress accepted the newcomer into their company, the three forming an alliance known as the Triumvirate and laying the foundations of the Star Chamber. The Triumvirate brought together a vast background of dark magics: Ferran brought with him the teachings passed down by the Mecrosa, from Viscountess Mireya of Vjun, and those of Alaiedon and Son’Jiatt; Taimat brought the teachings passed down by the Krath, from the Ketos and Freedon Nadd; and finally Okemi with the teachings passed down by the ancient Sith, from the Jedi Exiles, Xendor and the Legions of Lettow, and those of the all but forgotten empire of the Rakata. Okemi also shared the secrets of the dark Sith magics that had allowed him to feed off the life essence of his followers, and the three ruled together for another thousand years.
Downfall
- Main article: [[Obscuration|Obscuration]]
As the years went on, Okemi felt the chaos of the galaxy. The Old Sith Wars, Great Galactic War, time and time again the Republic was pushed to the brink. It was only after the final defeat of the resurgent Sith Empire that Okemi felt it might be time for him to gather the remnants of the Sith to him, finally reclaiming the rightful place that had been denied to him through Simus's treachery thousands of years before.
There was only one thing that stood between him and his goal: Okemi had come to realize the Force that he drained from his followers to sustain his life was having less and less affect on him as time went on. While he had prolonged his life, Okemi had never achieved true immortality. Knowing that his goals could never be reached unless he did so, he realized that the key lay within the rituals of Lord Vitiate. A contemporary of Okemi's from the days before his exile, Okemi knew that Vitiate had achieved immortality itself and ruled as Emperor over a vast and sprawling Empire. With the sorceress Tiamat ever by his side, Okemi threw himself into communing with the Dark Side to try to divine the Emperor's secrets. It took them decades, but eventually they uncovered the arcane knowledge required. Vitiate had gained immortality by stripping the Force from the entire planet of Nathema, including from the 8,000 sith lords he had convinced to assist him. Okemi was given pause at that, knowing that his immortality would do him no good unless he had world and armies around which to rebuild the Sith Empire.
Tiamat, however, advocated a different source of power: The star Ante itself. The ritual would be focused on Antei’s primary star, Ante. It was to create a conduit to the near limitless energy offered by Ante’s churning nuclear furnace that could be channeled directly through Tiamat’s understanding of the Dark Side of the Force to fuel their immortality. It would likely shorten the life of the star, but the consequences of taking away a portion of the billions of years the star would burn were not something that the Sith King would need to concern himself with. Ferran, on the other hand, thought the idea nothing short of madness. He was well aware that Tiamat's former master Aleema Keto had met her own end trying to harness the power of a star. The Krath leader had tried to manipulate the stars of a dense stellar cluster, resulting in a massive supernova that left the devastated Cron Drift in its wake.
The trio debated endlessly, the sorceress and assassin both trying to convince the God-King of their wisdom. Eventually, seeing the weakened state the Republic was in due to the political chaos in the decades following Coruscant's defeat in the Seventeenth Alsakan Conflict, Okemi cast the deciding vote in favor of Tiamat's plan. Okemi’s decision proved to be his greatest folly. Ferran refused to give in to the others' insanity, and knew the ritual would only destroy everything they had built over the last thousand years. Inside the main dome of the Star Chamber, Tiamat began the ritual. Ferran felt he saw in her an inability to harness the power of the sun as she had claimed. Before Okemi could stop him, Ferran plunged his sword Son’Jiatt into Tiamat’s heart, shattering the ritual and killing both himself and the sorceress; but also transforming Ante into the Dark Star and devastating Antei. However, unlike his fellow triumvirs, Okemi did not perish with his Empire.
The ritual, though incomplete, had served to preserve the essence of Okemi within the Star Chamber, even as it was buried in the upheaval of Antei. It is unknown if what remained was truly the mind of the ancient Sith Lord, or merely a final imprint of his maddened rage at the moment of his death. Whatever the case may be, the consciousness slumbered deep within the world it had built.
The past never sleeps...
What remained of Anteian civilization collapsed and the Star Chamber was forgotten, along with the slumbering remnant of its former God-King. Okemi slumbered alone for nearly three millennia, before the rediscovery of Antei by Trevarus Caerick. The arrival of the Brotherhood–led by Lord Firefox, then Dark Lord of the Sith– stirred Okemi’s remains; but it was not until the system wide genocide of the Antarans led by the Dark Council that the lingering essence of the ancient Sith Lord fully reawakened.
As work continued on excavation around the site of the Brotherhood’s new Dark Hall, the workers discovered a shaft leading hundreds of meters beneath the surface. It seemed to lead to ruins much older than those above ground. Convinced that the original Star Chamber had been discovered, Caerick halted all excavation and dispatched his newest apprentice, Teras Korlyn, to investigate. There Korlyn made contact with Okemi. However, the maddened essence of the Sith Lord was too much for Korlyn to withstand, and he was infected with the same rage and madness that had once torn the Star Chamber apart.
History repeated itself, driven both by Okemi’s own lust for revenge against the lords of the Sith, and the raw madness spawned in the Force by his past misdeeds. The madness of the God-King infected many of the most powerful of the Brethren, including Lord Cotelin. They served as the primary hosts, spreading Okemi’s dark presence across Antei. With Lord Firefox away on Muunilinst, Cotelin concealed all existence of the plague; closing all hyperspace lanes in and out of the system, and infecting all visitors on Platform Vorago, which stood just outside the Shroud as a gateway, and was maintained by Clan Tarentum.
Okemi's body, the physical anchor of his essence, remained hidden in the underground ruins as the ancient war of the Star Chamber repeated itself. The plague spread throughout the Brotherhood; sowing discontent and sparking civil war between the Clans, further spreading itself through the bloodshed. Okemi’s folly threatened to consume the entire Brotherhood before burning across the Galaxy then the Galaxy as the ancient Sith's madness multiplied in the shadows.
Like flit-gnats, from across the Galaxy the infected swarmed to Okemi on Antei, leaving their Clans behind to prepare for war. Back at Antei, the plague had swept the Dark Hall and Shadow Academy. Several Dark Councillors had been forced underground, vanishing among the countless ordinary denizens of Antei, while Cotelin maintained a tight communications blackout. However, the group managed to secure alternative transport off Antei; and were able to carry a message to Lord Firefox at Muunilinst, alerting the Dark Lord to the dire situation on Antei.
The war’s end game arrived with the Grand Master's return to Antei. On the steps of the Dark Hall, members of the Brotherhood battled one another; but the Dark Lord’s arrival caused the madness infecting many to take flight. Cotelin—who had become Okemi's primary vessel — did battle with Firefox, ultimately being bested and forced to retreat. With Okemi's pawn defeated, the path to the ruins of the Star Chamber was opened. There, the forces of the Brotherhood discovered Ferran’s tomb, and an inscription that spoke of the coming of the ‘Iron King’. Inside, Grand Master discovered Ferran’s blade, the Sword of Thunder’s Fury, Son’Jiatt.
There, deep within the crust of Antei, far below the seat of the new Dark Hall, Firefox at last discovered what was left of Okemi; consumed by the hunger for oblivion, blinded by power, driven to madness by the voices of the millions who had died in the Obscuration. The desiccated body held the summation of all the predations of the ancient empires, all the blood shed, and lives lost. With one thrust of Son’Jiatt, the first lord of the Star Chamber crumbled to dust, his long years finally at an end.