Antei System

The Antei System is actually a composite of two star systems, Antei and Antares.

Statistical Data

Type: Composite
Major Stars: “Dark Star” (Ante), Antares
Number of Planets: 10
Number of Moons: 12
Size: ø75AU
Native Sentient Species: Minaquoi, Rexan
Exports: Ore, gems, gas
Imports: Foodstuffs
Government: Oligarchy
Population: 3,649,100,500
Distance from Coruscant: ~10 Kilo Parsecs
Distance from Nearest Neighbor (Orian System): ~700 Parsecs

History

The Antei system is one of the galaxy’s greatest enigmas. Located between the Hydian Way and the Daragon Trail the system is cloaked within an anomaly known as the Shroud. The Shroud is a nebulous cloud of ionized particles that prohibits hyperspace travel in and out of Antei. Legends labeled the Shroud as a source of evil from which no ship ever returned.

In truth, the Dark Shroud and the Antei system are rife with the Dark Side of the Force. Approximately five thousand and fifty years before the Battle of Yavin, an exiled Sith Warlord named Okemi discovered the sector on the outskirts of the Sith Empire. Guided to the system by the Dark Side of the Force, Okemi established his seat of power on Antei, the fourth planet in the system of the same name.

On the planet of Antei, Okemi and his followers discovered temples built by the first inhabitants, a race of sentient near humans. Okemi and his Sith followers subjugated this race, and turned them into a society of slaves, much as his own Sith had been subjugated by human Dark Jedi. For over fifteen hundred years, the Anteians built temples to honor their Sith Gods and established a potent aura of darkness throughout the system.

In approximately 3950 BBY, the sorceress Tiamat, following her force-fueled dreams, discovered Antei. Tiamat was amazed at the wealth and immense power Okemi had created over the past millennia. The original native species had bred into the Sith populations and a world-wide civilization with Okemi as its theocratic head had formed. Guided by portents in the Dark Side, Okemi accepted Tiamat into his order and the two formed an alliance of power.

The alliance was not complete, however, until Okemi and Tiamat reached out to an assassin of terrible power named Ferran. Ferran was a Sith Cultist from the Mecrosa Order, his life devoted to the art of assassination. Traveling from his home of Corellia, Ferran joined Tiamat and Okemi and the Triumvirate was born. Together they would create a temple, housing a chamber that would later be known as the Star Chamber. The Triumvirate would expand their power from the planet of Antei to the other planets in the system.

The Star Chamber stood as the center of their power, augmenting their ability in the Force and granting powers beyond imagination. The Triumvirate basked in their glory until around the year 2950 BBY when Tiamat lost control of a ritual designed to harness the power of stars. Ferran opposed the ritual from the start, believing it to be too dangerous. However, Tiamat plied Okemi with her wiles until the ancient warrior gave his consent.

The ritual itself 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. Unfortunately, for her and the rest of the Triumvirate, her attempt at manipulating forces on the cosmic scale failed miserably.

No one knows what exactly caused the ritual to fail. Many say that Tiamat was too weak to control the forces she meddled in; others say that Ferran’s attack caused an otherwise successful ritual to fail. It is known that once opened, the sorceress found she could not control nor close the gateway to Ante’s burning heart. Unchained from the universe’s governing principles by the witch’s dark magic, the star became a monster with fuel and energy enough to rend the very system. Ante burned the remainder of its life’s fuel at a maddening rate to escape Tiamat’s desperately failing grasp. Were it not for the witch’s hold, the star would have burned its children to ash. However, there is evidence that suggests Tiamat had begun to regain her hold on the ritual and that it was Ferran’s panic that destroyed the Triumvirate.

Having been betrayed by Okemi and Tiamat, Ferran was already fueled by the rage of indignation. Seeing the ritual begin to fail, he slew Tiamat and the Triumvirate’s world came down around them. The Assassin relished his short-lived vengeance, and met his fate with sword in hand.

As it were, in the brief minutes of Tiamat’s failing control, Ante consumed its store of fuel in its desperate attempt to escape the witch’s grasp. The cosmic struggle between the two magnates of power resulted in the release of devastating waves of energy that pulsed outward from the chamber, violently realigning the landscape of Antei and the other Anteian planets. As Tiamat regained some measure of control, Ante rapidly cooled; the vast majority of its power was gone. All that remained was a black dwarf star, no longer capable of emitting visible light or heat.

At the focal point of the disaster, the Star Chamber was utterly destroyed. As the shockwave spread from the temple outward, Antei suffered far more than any of its siblings. Its lush jungles were scorched from the land, its once-grand structures vaporized, and its seas boiled. What once was a lush and temperate planet, now only rock and char remained.

But Ante, now the Dark Star, was not done.

The Great Darkening befell the Antei system as it reeled from the transmogrification of its patron star. A great cloak of night fell over its worlds that threatened all life with extinction. Be it the universe’s nature to seek balance, or a last bid to destroy that which dared to meddle, it is not known, but the system survived. As the mighty star darkened and began to relinquish its throne as lord and benefactor to the system, the nearby star of Antares, a super-giant, began to exert its natural will on the unstable Antei system drawing it inexorably to itself.

Over the course of the last 3,000 years, Antares system slowly drew the Antei system into proximity with itself. The two stars now form an unholy binary with no equal throughout the rest of known space. Over the millennia, nature ground many planets that once existed within the two systems to dust, pulverized as the massive cosmic wheel churned ever-onward despite the meddling of those who would seek power beyond all reason. Rumor begets that this process is what made the “Shroud” that now covers the two systems.

Legend refers to these titanic events as the Obscuration.

The two systems now exist chaotically, though apparently stably, whose great discs now form an “X” intersecting at the binary of Antares and the Dark Star. Whereas Ante once provided the gift of light, and subsequently life, the sire Antares now makes that grant. Both light and darkness now exist within Antei symbiotically. Antares’ power is immense; the super-giant star possesses vast resources of fuel to foster the continued life of all inhabitants, both new and old. However, despite the dominance of the Antares star, those that know of the binary system refer to it as the Antei system. This is largely due to the incorrect legends that once told stories of Antei pulling in the Antares system, rather than the reverse of that.

Scholars within the Brotherhood debate whether the merger that initiated with the Obscuration is complete and fully-stable, or whether its delicate balance could falter and again plunge the worlds of the Brotherhood into chaos. They all agree, though, that any further devastation is lifetimes away.

In 18 ABY Antei was rediscovered by a team of Sith explorers working with Krath researchers under the direction of Grand Master Firefox. In strange visions, Firefox saw the Shroud. Prompted to explore, he dispatched teams to the farthest reaches of the Sith Empire. When the team discovered the Antei system, he ordered the long awaited Exodus, resulting in the Second Civil War of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood.

Since the rediscovery of Antei, the Brotherhood has devoted itself to the recreation of the Star Chamber and the pursuit of absolute power.