According to the typical version of events, the Sith are the result of a Jedi schism, in which those Jedi who embraced the Dark Side of the Force were defeated and exiled beyond known space. The Dark Jedi journeyed to the Sith homeworld and conquered them, then conquered nearby systems, and the Sith Empire was born. A new set of practices developing over the millennia, which resulted in Sith traditions that survived the destruction of their empire.

This version of events is based entirely on accounts from Jedi who lived thousands of years later, who were themselves trying to make sense of partial and contradictory reports. The primary source of Jedi information about these events is the holocron of Vodo-Siosk Baas, who lived twenty millennia after the events in question. Further, Baas is himself relating hearsay of information provided to him by Odar Urr, the Jedi scholar who read scrolls that described early Sith history, which were then written several millennia after the fact. These scrolls then present a version of events which are contradicted by the very facts witnessed by Odan Urr, although this problem was not apparent to the simple-minded Jedi.

According to the scrolls read by Odan Urr, after the Dark Jedi left Republic space and travelled to the Sith homeworld, they were not seen from again. However, this does not explain how these scrolls knew where the Dark Jedi went, and it does not explain why, when Odan Urr presented the danger of the Sith Empire to the Republic, regular soldiers knew of the Sith as childhood monsters hiding under the bed. If the scrolls were correct, the name "Sith" should have been completely unknown to those living in the Republic.

Luckily, we have recently discovered an early Sith practioner, who was not only an eyewitness to some of these events, but played an active role in the creation of the Sith. Her name is Arden Lyn, and she has corrected many misconceptions which arose from the muddled Jedi accounts.

According to her story in the article, "The Emperor's Pawns" (Star Wars Gamer #5), Arden Lyn was the partner of Xendor, the leader of that first schism between Light and Dark Jedi. However, Lyn also reports that she followed Xendor in his exile from Kashi Mer, and the teräs käsi practices they studied there. So while the Jedi report that the "schism" was begun by a Dark Jedi, Lyn has personal knowledge of her lover and his study of the Force, which began with teräs käsi, not the Jedi Order.

Xendor and Lyn certainly attracted former Jedi to their cause, along with any other Force adepts with enough wisdom to see beyond the Jedi Order's imposed dualism of the Light Side and Dark Side. However, only a Jedi who could not conceive of a new Force tradition being founded from exiles of several different traditions, would insist that all these adepts opposed to Jedi dogma must be Dark Jedi. This new Force tradition was the Sith Order, and while the first Sith (and many Sith since) certainly included some Dark Jedi, neither the Sith as a whole nor its founders can accurately be described as Jedi, Dark or otherwise.

The exiled Sith did indeed travel to Ziost, and intermarried with the priestly caste of the native people to become their rulers. With time, the Sith expanded to nearby systems and founded an empire, however we do not know the name of the species native to Ziost, as they also became known as Sith, once their world became the home to the Sith Empire.

A possible explanation for the Jedi version of how the Sith Order began comes approximately 19,000 years later - still 6000 years before the Battle of Yavin, and 1000 years before Odan Urr discovered the scrolls describing the Sith Empire. At that time, a schism occurred between Light and Dark Jedi that became called the Hundred Years Darkness, which is in most ways described in the same manner that the Great Schism between the Jedi and Sith, millennia earlier. Since much of this shared description can be shown to apply only to the Hundred Years Darkness, and only causes contradictions when applied to the Great Schism, it is apparent that events from the Hundred Years Darkness became conflated into the description of the Great Schism.

However, the original Jedi reports of the Great Schism were obviously confused from the start, as it only can be called a schism by Jedi who see no difference between Dark Jedi and exiles from other traditions. From the perspective of the Sith, our origins were not a schism at all. Our order was founded by exiles from a number of other traditions, one of which was the Jedi. The Jedi then declared us anathema, and waged war against us for a hundred years, until they could drive us from known space. This blatant persecution of a new Force tradition, independent of Jedi teachings, the Jedi call a "schism".