Sith Hogwarts
Korriban, ancestral homeworld of the Sith Empire, is the first proving ground for several class stories in Star Wars: The Old Republic, most notably the Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor. Its bare rock, red dust and looming monuments set the tone immediately: this is a planet where the dark side feels close to the surface and where survival is treated as a test rather than a right.
The Sith Academy dominates both the skyline and daily life. Within its halls, would‑be Sith are pushed through a series of gruelling trials designed to strip away weakness and prove their commitment to the dark side, with failure often meaning death or disposal in the nearby tombs. Those tombs – scattered through the Valley of the Dark Lords and the surrounding cliffs – hold the remains, relics and defences of ancient Sith, and many of the early missions for Warriors and Inquisitors send you into them under the eye of harsh overseers.
For the Sith Warrior, the early arc centres on tasks set by Overseer Tremel and then Darth Baras, culminating in “The Final Trial”, which requires entering the Tomb of Naga Sadow to recover an ancient lightsaber from a hidden reliquary. Getting to the chamber means fighting through wild creatures, traps and layers of security, and then working with Vette – a captured Twi’lek treasure‑hunter – to locate and activate hidden mechanisms carved into statues and other objects deeper inside the tomb. Along the way, the Warrior must also deal with rival acolytes and Imperial soldiers who have been twisted or broken by prolonged exposure to the tomb’s dark energies.
The Sith Inquisitor’s introduction runs in parallel but with a different emphasis. Beginning as a former slave granted a chance to rise, the Inquisitor is first sent into the Tomb of Ajunta Pall and then into Naga Sadow’s tomb to recover artefacts tied to Tulak Hord as part of Lord Zash’s wider plans. These early forays involve piecing together fragments of tablets, confronting ancient guardians and unsealing hidden chambers, and they echo the class’s longer‑term focus on tapping older Sith knowledge and spirits for power. In both stories, Korriban becomes the place where your relationship to your master and the Academy’s hierarchy is established, usually through choices about how ruthlessly you treat rivals and subordinates.
Beyond their immediate function as trial grounds, the tombs and the Valley of the Dark Lords act as a physical archive of Sith history. Names such as Marka Ragnos, Naga Sadow, Ajunta Pall and Tulak Hord appear in inscriptions, quest text and briefing dialogue, folding older Expanded Universe material into the MMO’s version of the era. The Valley itself, lined with colossal statues and monumental entrances cut into the rock, reinforces the idea that each generation of Sith has tried to outdo the last in stone and scale, turning the planet into a continuous memorial to power and ambition.
Korriban’s visual design does a lot of work in setting mood with relatively simple elements. The surface is a mix of red‑brown deserts, jagged canyons and half‑collapsed structures, with a sky that tends towards muted oranges and browns rather than the bright starscapes seen elsewhere. Inside the tombs, narrow corridors give way to larger halls lined with stern statues and carved reliefs, lit by a mix of flickering torches and cold, artificial light from later Imperial installations, making it clear where old stone ends and recent excavation begins. Occasional pockets of madness – acolytes, droids and beasts driven wild by the dark side – break the otherwise measured pace of exploration.
In the wider Star Wars timeline, Korriban (also known as Moraband in other sources) retains its role as a nexus for the dark side, a place that draws Sith Lords and acolytes back to study, test themselves or seek out stronger connections to the Force. In The Old Republic specifically, it underlines how the Sith Empire replenishes itself: each new wave of Academy students trained among tombs and bones, learning that power is taken in direct competition with peers. The relics, scrolls and holocrons buried in its depths give shape to Sith beliefs about legacy and succession, and the early class stories use those spaces to show how a Sith’s path is set long before they ever leave the planet.
Even after you move on to Dromund Kaas and beyond, Korriban remains one of the game’s touchstones. Returning later – whether for flashpoints, side missions or simply out of curiosity – throws the contrast into sharper relief: the Academy and tombs are constants, while your place within the Empire has shifted. As an introduction to the Sith perspective, the planet’s mix of harsh training, heavily signposted history and unrelenting atmosphere still does a clear job of showing what it means to choose the dark side in this corner of the Star Wars universe.
