Star Wars - Darth Bane - Rule of Two

Rule of Two is a novel by the Canadian writer Drew Karpyshyn, published by Del Rey in 2007. It is the second book in his trilogy about Darth Bane, and it is set a thousand years before the rise of the Empire.

Bane has survived the destruction of the old Sith order and drawn a conclusion from it: the Sith destroyed themselves because there were too many of them, each plotting against the rest. His answer is the Rule of Two, a discipline under which there is one master and one apprentice, with the apprentice expected eventually to kill the master. The book is largely about what that rule costs in practice, because Bane now has to find and train a successor worth the trouble, and the candidate he settles on is not the obvious one. Meanwhile Johun Othone, a Jedi Padawan whose master was killed by Bane, has been pursuing him and is not prepared to accept the order's caution about a threat the council would rather not advertise.

The trilogy explores the period between the Sith wars of the Old Republic and the films, and it supplies an account of how the Sith managed to survive unseen for so long.