Exar Kun is a human Jedi Knight who fell to the dark side, took the title Dark Lord of the Sith, and fought the Great Sith War against the Galactic Republic around 3996 BBY. He was created by Kevin J. Anderson, mentioned as an unnamed "dark man" in Jedi Search (Bantam Spectra, 1994) and introduced properly in the sequel, Dark Apprentice, the same year. Anderson was initially unsure whether to make him a Sith Lord or a "Dark Jedi"; George Lucas voted for Sith.
Two projects, one villain
What happened next is one of the more interesting collisions in Star Wars publishing. Anderson was writing the Jedi Academy Trilogy for Bantam; Tom Veitch was writing Tales of the Jedi for Dark Horse. Veitch proposed merging Kun's story into his own ongoing Old Republic serial, and the two lines were welded together — which is why a novel villain from 11 ABY has a full comics biography four thousand years earlier.
The apprentice who kept reading
Kun trains under the Krevaaki Master Vodo-Siosk Baas, and his fall is entirely a research problem. He is curious, arrogant and quick to anger, he finds fragments of Sith history, and he goes looking. Onderon, then Yavin 4, then the spirit of Freedon Nadd, who guides him exactly as far as is useful and is annihilated for it. The dark side does not seduce Exar Kun so much as get out of his way.
The Brotherhood of the Sith
Kun takes Ulic Qel-Droma as an apprentice after beating him, and the two of them raise a war. The double-bladed lightsaber — the weapon every Star Wars reader now associates with Darth Maul — originates with Kun in this fiction. So does the Massassi architecture of Yavin 4 that the Rebel Alliance will one day fly out of.
Ossus
The Great Sith War ends with the Cron Cluster supernova and the ruin of the library world Ossus, and with Kun performing a ritual on Yavin 4 that binds his spirit to the temples rather than die. That is the hinge that lets Anderson use him four millennia later: Luke Skywalker rebuilds the Jedi on top of him, and Kun corrupts two of the first students.
What he is worth now
Kun is Star Wars Legends and has been since 2014, though current canon has quietly kept the name alive — a roleplaying sourcebook reference, and a desk in Solo whose obsidian base is looted from a temple honouring him. As a character he is thin next to Darth Bane or Darth Plagueis; as a piece of publishing history he is essential, because he is the first time the Expanded Universe decided it could invent Sith history rather than wait for a film to supply it.
Where to read him
Tales of the Jedi — Dark Lords of the Sith (1994–95) and The Sith War (1995–96) for the war; the Jedi Academy Trilogy for the haunting. The comics have aged better than the novels.
