In the Twilight days of the Sith Empire, during the Great War, a guild arose to fill the void. The Reapers were born of Strife and midwifed by Adversity.

 

The guild was initially founded as Darkness Rising by Yegrcoln, a young but ambitious Sith Sorcerer apprenticed to the Dark Council member Darth Imperius, known as Lei-Shen the Pure. At the time, Yegrcoln was a fairly junior member of the Guild Known as the Death Legion, led by its Emperor - Sithtodius. When Sithtodius banned Lei-Shen from the Death Legion on the false pretenses of spying and corruption on behalf of a guild known as the Dathomir Witches. All who spoke in her defense were also purged from Death Legion's ranks...including her loyal apprentice: Yegrcoln.

 

Alone and enraged, the young Sith dreamed of ways to strike back at Sithtodius and his Death Legion, eventually coming to the conclusion that he must create a guild to counterballance the power of the Legion. To do so, he sought out his master, Lei-Shen, who had exiled herself to her stronghold on the desert world of Tattoine. There, he learned why she had been banned in the first place...

 

"I had a vision," she began, "A new power is rising. A surge within the Force of such strength that it overshadows even the coming of Revan. It is the swell of the deep Leviathan just before it breaks the surface. I saw force-users true to neither jedi nor sith leading armies that swept over us all like scythes through wheat. They are coming...can you feel it? Their golden blades will reap Jedi and Sith alike... I watched friends and enemies fall to those golden blades, and then it was my turn. I am Darth Imperius of the Emperor's Dark Council. I have started and ended wars on whim, and crushed any that has ever opposed me. But despite all my so-called power, I too fell."

 

Yegrcoln learned that Lei-Shen had shared this vision with Sithtodius, who somehow took it as a threat from her that she intended to split and destroy the Death Legion. Yegrcoln begged his master to take up arms, to found a guild and fight back. But Lei-Shen had had enough of guilds, and her disillusionment was absolute. But Yegrcoln remained undaunted. Alone with a few brave volunteers, he founded Darkness Rising and eventually convinced his master that to invest in this guild might alter the fate of her vision...of her death. His plan would succeeded...

 

Desperate to protect the lineage of her controvercial teachings, Lei-Shen agreed to join him and he turned over the reigns of power to her, naming her Grandmistress of Darkness Rising. From that point on, Lei Shen, who later renamed her elite title to Archon, did everything she could to make the guild succeed.

 

Eventually, due to conflicts with other guilds that also bore Darkness in their name, Archon Lei-Shen decided that it was time to change the guild name, choosing the one thing in her mind that represented her answer to the coming stormfront that is the Knights of the Fallen Empire...

 

The Reapers.

 

Born in strife, midwifed in Adversity, the Reapers founding was met with challenges from across the Sith Empire. Imperator Yegrcoln focused his energies on building alliances with anyone at any cost in order to resist the Death Legion attack he was so certain was iminent. Unfortunately, this meant he pursued quantity, rather than quality. One day, he summoned Archon Lei-Shen to a meeting with representatives from Ascending Darkness (lead by Lords Arredos and Kuza) and Legacy of Darkness (Represented by Lord Zagg). Lei-Shen agreed to strike a deal with these organizations, but all was not to be well...

 

Days after the deal was struck, Lord Arredos of Ascending Darkness requested an audience with Lei-Shen, explaining to her that his position as second in command was tenuous. A day later, he was supplanted by Lord Kuza and ran to the Reapers for sanctuary. The Archon welcomed him, caring not at all for the consequences. Her actions would cause Ascending Darkness, seemingly agains all logic, to declare War upon the Reapers. Thier 'Empress', Cyrinity, did little to prevent the disrespect and outright harrassmant that Kuza and his lackeys lavished upon the Archon. But Lei-Shen, wisely, did not fight fire with fire. She recognized poison when she saw it. Indeed, before long Ascending Darkness choked on its own vitroil and fell apart, resulting in the Reaper's first 'victory' as a guild.

Despite the success, the venom that the memebers of Ascending Darkness had spread continued to undermine the Archon's efforts to strengthen her guild. In the weeks that followed, the Archon fended off death threats, challenges, and harrassment. But the seige upon her was unexpectedly lifted when a Bounty Hunter named Warwin of the Dxun Crusaders and the powerful Sith Lord Hadies of Legacy of Darkness sought an audience with her.

Warwin, a hunter famed throughout the galaxy, was influnced by Sithtodius of Death Legion to believe that the Archon and her Reapers were set upon destroying his guild. Their subsequent conversation lasted deep into the night, but resulted in a tremulous friendship and a loss of credibility for Sithtodius.

 

The meeting between the Arhcon and Lord Hadies was arranged by Lord Zagg, the same Legacy of Darkness delegate that had forged the initial relationship between his guild and the Reapers. The two Dark Lords greeted each other as eqauls, and soon forged a True Alliance between the Reapers and the powerful Legacy of Darkness guild.

 

All seemed well, but there was a problem growing within the Reapers that eventually drew the Archon's attention. Imperator Yegrcoln was perceived as weak by many of the more active Reapers, and his decisions were being called into question more and more. Additionally, he had begun whispering lies of treachery concerning two of her most favored Reapers, Lords Parthaax and his apprentice Natarux. Lei-Shen could taste her Imperators all-consuming fear and paranoia. Eventually, Squad-Commander Parthaax, Lei-Shen's former apprentice and very first recruit, challenged Yegrcoln to a Kaggath for the title of Imperator and the honor of serving as the Archon's strong right hand, voice, and extension of her will. Yegrcoln fled rather than face certain defeat, leaving the guild entirely and ceding victory to Parthaax, who was swiftly inducted and raised to the Rank of Imperator.

The celebration commemorating the new Imperator would be short-lived, however. Within days of his ascension, Archon Lei-Shen was summoned to Nar Shadda by Blessedrebel, the narrow-minded leader of a guild known as the Brotherhood, a little-known group of woebegone assassins who had taken in a poisonous new member...Kuza, refugee of the decimated Ascending Darkness. His evil quickly set to root in the minds of his new-found fellows, even goading Blessedrebel to demand an audience with the Archon and command, in her own stronghold, that she show some semblence of clemancy and respect toward Kuza simply to accomodate both of their fragile egoes. Lei-Shen had none to give, but that day on Nar Shadda, the Brotherhood was about different business. Escorted from the landing platform by an underling, Archon Lei-Shen found Blessedrebel in the heart of the floating stronghold...with Kuza at his side.. After a hollow attempt at posturing, the leader of the Brotherhood accused Lei-Shen in front of witnesses of attempting to infiltrate the Brotherhood. "An Act of War," he said, Kuza grinning at his shoulder. Immediately, the Archon realized where the true impetus for this conflict had come, and she swore to defy Kuza's insidious machinations to her last breath. But to Blessedrebel, Kuza's dupe, she only laughed. And that laughter echoed through the halls of the stronghold even as Brotherhood assassins surrounded her...

 

Later, on Tattoine, the Archon convened a war council, summoning her available Reapers and her allies in Legacy of Darkness. Before long, her Stronghold was croweded with delegates, including Empress Siffuth of Legacy of Darkness herself. Lei-Shen revealed what had happened and petitioned her counterpart for aid. Both the Empress and her second, Lord Hadies, offered their enthusiastic support. The two matriarchs would speak privately for a time, each gauging the other and finding a great deal in common to respect, stengthening the bonds of the alliance still further. When they returned to the War Council, the Archon made the war-hierachy official, ensuring that her subbordinates would heed and obey the council of thier LoD counterparts. Lei-Shen then charged Lord Hadies with the duty of contacting the Brotherhood and informing those Assassins of the gundark nest they had just fallen into by challenging the Reapers. Lei-Shhen would go a step further in contacting Warwin of the Dxun Crusaders, contracting the PVP guild as a mercenary element to supplant her own lack of soldiers.

 

That, however, was not the end to the Reaper's good fortune against the brotherhood. While derailing Revan's plans on Yavin 4, who should seek out the Archon but Sithtodius of Death Legion himself. After requesting her time, he made known his desires to bury the hatchet between them, leaving their badblood in the past. But Lei-Shen was wary, for this man had harmed her in the past, and she said as much and more. She told him every negative opinion she'd ever voiced about him. And after she was finally done venting, she told him that the ONLY way she would allow the past to be the past is if he apologized. At that, Sithtodius bowed before Lei-Shen with great respect and voiced his apology. After judging his sincerity, the Archon accepted, thereby ending her longest conflict. But greater truths were soon to be revealed, for the two Leaders discovered that they had a common foe...

 

The Brotherhood.

 

The Reapers' enemies, however, had not been idle. Unbeknowst to the Archon, the worm Kuza had managed to pool enough resources to secure a meeting with Empress Siiffuth herself in secret...and corrupt her against the Reapers. The first surprise of the day was that Yegrcoln sought an audience with Lei-Shen. When she granted it, he revealed that behind the Archon's back, Siffuth had formed an alliance with the very guild she'd vowed to bring to justice not a week before. When Lei-Shen discovered this, she demanded that Siffuth account for her actions. They met in Siffuth's offices in the Legacy of Darkness stronghold on Dromund Kaas. The woman's only explanation was that she'd determined, against all logic, that it had been the REAPERS who had been the aggressors against the Brotherhood. As she spoke, Kuza appeared from the shadows at her shoulder, much the same way a maggot breaches the skin of a carcass, wearing the same grin he'd worn when Blessedrebel dropped his war banner at the Archon's feet.

 

Lei-Shen was hardly surprised at Siffuth's betrayal, it is the unfortunate way of the Sith. The Archon was more surprised at Siffuth's apparent foolishness. Something simply did not add up. But, whatever it was, it did not concern Lei-Shen. For whatever Siffuth's purpose had been, the result that she and Legacy of Darkness had betrayed the Reapers to their enemies, and that was an incounsolable fact. Lei-Shen turned and left the office with her head held high as Kuza and Campaignking hurled insults at her back.

 

By this point, the Archon had had quite her fill of self-styled 'Emperors' and Empress's'. From Vitiate to Siffuth to Malgus, all seemed familiar with only one common trait: Treachery. It was, the Archon reflected, akin to watching the destruction of the Sith Empire in miniature as the Republic's growing strength, to say nothing of the coming of the Knights of a fallen Empire, threatened them all...

 

The Archon returned to her seat of power on Tatooine where Yegrcoln waited for her and the results of her confrontation with Siffuth. Lei-Shen related the details, quipping that she was hardly surprised Kuza would attempt such a coup, but that he succeeded astounded and perplexed her. At that, Yegrcoln looked at his feet. Shuffling, he announced that Kuza had not been alone in spoiling her alliance with LoD...that he'd had help...from Yegrcoln himself; freely offered, he explained pittifully, as a result of his anger at being replaced as Imperator by Parthaax.

 

Lei-Shen had always been a patient woman, and she had shown a saintly amount in favor of her former Imperator. Though at this news, she did not hesitate, but blasted him with a wave of dark energy so powerful in its rage that expelled him from her fortress completely. In a blink, she'd removed every privelege he'd ever had with her and banned him from her presence. All of the anger that had built up from her humiliation on Dromund Kaas was unleashed on the foolish young sith Lord. That he survived the experience at all is a testimant to Lei-Shen's greatest weakness..her mercy.

 

The following morning, while Lei-Shen was investigating the tragedy on Ziost, Emperor Sithtodius called upon her, having learned of LoD's unexpected shift and thinking to warn her personally. While the gesture was enough to lift her spirts somewhat from the depths of rage that had grown overnight, it was not enough to fully relieve her. He went on to say that both he and Warwin of the Dxun Crusaders would continue to oppose the Brotherhood on all fronts. Valuing the showing of solidarity, Lei-Shen confirmed that she and her Reapers would stand resolute at their shoulders agaisnt the foe that brought war and treachury like plauge before their door.