By: Jason Deitzel
The Sorcerers of Tund can date their founding back to before the Great Sith War of Exar Kun, circa 4,250 BBY. They were originally a group of exiled pureblood Sith priests and sorcerers, considered to be heretics by Kissai priests within the Sith Order’s caste system. It is rumored they were banished in the waning days of the Great Hyperspace War, over seven centuries prior, or if their disbarment from the Sith Order came in a subsequent century by one of the Sith factions that survived the war.
Regardless, the discredited Kissai found their way to the planet Tund, where they established their own Force organization, combining their dark side magiks with the sciences and their ideologies surrounding ontology. This conjoining of the dark side, the physical and the metaphysical made them skilled in deception and illusion, to the point where they became skilled in shapeshifting.
Claiming inspiration from past Rakatan interaction, the Sorcerers of Tund adopted the beliefe that all sentients were Force-sensitive and therefore, the Force was omnipotent, calling it the Unity. Because the sorcerers consumed so much of their time in the pursuit of their ideology, they hardly left Tund. However, this did not stop others from seeking them out. Over the centuries, humans and other sentient species came and joined their ranks.
Before the Great Sith War, the Jedi considered the Sorcerers of Tund to be merely a dark side sect. After the war with Exar Kun, however, their approach changed. At some point after the Great Sith War, a sorcerer named Karnak Tetsu rose to power within the organization and began a reign of terror on Tund. The details of his horror are unknown, but it earned him the moniker “Karnak the Maleficient” and prompted the Jedi to intervene.
It can be presumed Tetsu was usurped, but the cult did continue in existence. From time to time, the Jedi did try to convert sorcerers, but eventually gave up and were content observing the system to make sure they did not try to re-ignite their past campaign of terror.
Come the calamity of the Clone War, the Jedi were forced to abandon their surveilance of the group. During this time, a famous magician, Adler Roty, claimed to be a Sorcerer of Tund. Hailing from Coruscant, his show centered around his motto, “It’s not the Force! It’s magic!” To further propagate this persona, he claimed to be an unspeakably wicked and greedy person. However, it was never verified if his skills as an illusionist stemmed from the Sorcerers of Tund.
The last known Sorcerers of Tund was a Croke named Rokur Gepta. Gepta joined the sect in 5 BBY and quickly rose within its ranks. However, once Gepta learned everything he could from them, he eradicated the cult and all life on Tund with a bioweapon known as an electromagnetic torpedo.
Leaving the planet dead, he came in contact with Emperor Palpatine. Trading knowledge for power, Gepta provided the Sith Lord with secrets he had learned from the Sorcerers of Tund, and in exchange Palpatine made him Scrivnir of the Centrality, a minor government in the Outer Rim.
Rokur Gepta’s reign didn’t last long. A couple years later, Lando Calrissian killed him after a deal went sour, ending the legacy that was the Sorcerers of Tund.
The first reference to the Sorcerers of Tund can be found in the novel Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu. Other references stem from the other novels in the Lando Calrissian Adventure series, Star Wars: The Old Republic video game, the Darth Plagueis novel, and various Roleplaying sourcebooks.