Tenebrae — known to the old Sith Empire as Darth Vitiate, to his reconstituted empire simply as the Sith Emperor, and to his later Eternal Empire as Valkorion — is a Sith Pureblood dark side entity who directed galactic events for roughly fourteen hundred years in the Star Wars: The Old Republic era. He is developed across Drew Karpyshyn's novel Revan (Del Rey, 2011) and the MMO itself.
Nathema
His defining act is the ritual that made him. Having gathered the surviving Sith Lords on his own world after Naga Sadow's defeat, he drained the life from all of them and from the entire planet — leaving Nathema as a world with no Force presence whatsoever, a dead spot in the galaxy. It is the strongest single image the Old Republic material produced.
Three names, one problem
The character exists in three publishing layers, and they do not sit together comfortably. Karpyshyn's novel establishes Vitiate; the MMO's early expansions treat him as an off-screen emperor; the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion recasts him as Valkorion, ruler of a third power nobody had mentioned. Anyone reading about him is reading a character that was substantially revised twice for commercial reasons.
Possession as a method
His actual technique is inhabitation rather than conquest — he persists by occupying other bodies, which is what lets one villain span thirteen centuries of setting without the writers having to explain a lifespan.
Canon status
Star Wars Legends. The Old Republic MMO and its fiction were moved to the Legends shelf in 2014.
