- "WE ARE THE STRONG
- WE ARE THE SONS OF THE OLD GODS
- WE WERE BORN ONLY MEN
- WE TRAVELED BEYOND OUR STARS
- AND THERE WE SLEW THE GODS OF WAR
WE ARE THE CLEANSING FIRE TO PURGE EVERY GALAXY"
- -Quotation unknown
Formation[]
The Darknight Crusades are the ancient descendants of the devastated remnants of the Taung Crusaders. 30,000 years ago the Taung assembled a force of 15,000,000 Human auxiliaries overseen by 1,000,000 Taung warriors and left the galaxy as a extra-galactic mercenary army the likes of which no galaxy has ever seen. The Taung were a technologically advanced race who were, at the time, the galaxy's premier warrior race.
Extragalactic[]
They're first commission came when they encountered the sorely beleaguered , along with the rest of their galaxy’s organic beings, being driven to the brink of extinction by the Galaxy spanning war that the Silentium and the Abominor were waging.
The Vong Priest Caste hired the extragalactic warriors to show the disheartened Vong how to wage war. For the next 25,000 years the mercenaries, who adopted the name Darknight after their legendary Patriarch Talon Darknight, waged a brutal apocalyptic Crusade that ended only when both of the autonomous races had fled the galaxy.
The Yuuzhan Vong and the Darknights both evolved in a galaxy that knew nothing but war on a titanic scale. When the war ended and the galaxy the Vong had fought so hard for lay in ruin and they cursed the technology that had caused it. In their extreme technophobia they turned on their oldest ally… The Darknights.
The war was a brutal one on which further drove the galaxy into an inescapable oblivion of fire, blood, and hatred. The war ended with the Darknights and the other inhabitants of the Galaxy driving the entire Vong species into the black between galaxies.
Return[]
The Darknights, their 30,000 year Crusade finished, returned home to their own galaxy expecting to find the galaxy as they had left it; with the super-races (Killick, Rakata, Taung, Chiss, and Sith) still firmly in control of the galaxy. They were of course surprised to see that the galaxy had changed so much in their absence. The Taung were no more and the other races of old had long since faded into obscurity.
With nothing left to them but their unmatchable martial prowess they returned to their home galaxy and continued the Crusade. Their perfection of the art of making war quickly made a reputation for them and their seemingly young but legendarily capable Patriarch: Talon Darknight. They reacquainted themselves with the descendants of their mutual Taung ancestors; The Mandalorians an helped found the Mandalorian Empire.
The Darknights shepherded the infantile Mandalorian Empire through its first expansions and even led the Vanguard of the Mandalorian assault when, then Mandalore Cyrus Fett’s navy, destroyed the joint Vong- Yevetha attack on Taris. Talon himself slew the Vong Warmaster when the charges he planted destroyed the bridge of the Warmaster’s Flagship.
The Darknights evolved into the ME’s shadow guardians and Praetorian Guard. They acted as a constant and uncontrollable force within the ME that often as not didn’t answer to the ME’s increasingly incompetent leadership.