Do you feel it? Do you feel the power of the Dark Side? The only real power! The only thing worth living for! -- Darth Bane

Darth Bane is a fictional character of the Star Wars universe, first appearing in the novelisation of The Phantom Menace.

Bane was a powerful Sith Lord who lived a thousand years before the Battle of Yavin, and was the last of his kind to survive the catastrophic Battle of Ruusan.

He had trained in the ways of the Force under the Sith Lord Qordis, but never completed his formal training. Bane believed he had the right to rule, and had little patience for traditional titles and hierarchies. He had a religious, even messianic view of the Force, a view which stood in stark contrast to the power-oriented creed of the time. In Bane's mind, only he could guide the Sith to their true destiny.

As such Bane often clashed with his colleagues in the Brotherhood of Darkness, particularly the weak-willed Lord Kaan , whom Bane despised, and considered a cruel coward. In retaliation, Kaan poisoned Darth Bane, and left him to die on the field of battle.

But Bane was stronger than Kaan thought, and fought off the effects of the poison long enough to find a cure. He returned to Ruusan to observe the preparations for battle, and mocked his colleagues for thinking like "dirt generals" rather than Sith Lords.

Shocked by Darth Bane's return, Kaan agreed to follow Bane's instructions to defeat the Jedi through the power of the dark side. The Sith joined together in meditation - and Darth Bane unleashed a wave of destruction upon the unsuspecting Jedi.

Sensing the smothering darkness in Bane's heart, however, the other Sith Lords broke the circle, intending to finish off the Jedi with more conventional tactics. Eventually, Kaan, driven mad by the glimpse he had received of the "true" power of the Force, unleashed a thought bomb - and destroyed every single Jedi and Sith on Ruusan.

All except one.

Darth Bane survived the cataclysm, and escaped to Onderon's moon, Dxun, where, after years of studying the Holocron of the ancient Dark Lord Freedon Nadd, he established a set of rules that were dominated by the pretense that there could only be two Sith active in the galaxy at any time: a master and an apprentice. No more would the Sith fight amongst themselves.

Eventually, Bane took his own apprentice, a young girl named Zannah , and set his new order in motion. Future Sith Lords were taught the virtues of patience, planning, and secrecy, and each was to take on the title of Darth, a tradition that had begun millennia ago with Dark Lords of the Sith, such as Darth Revan, Darth Malak, Darth Bandon, Darth Traya, Darth Sion, and Darth Nihlius.