Editing Witches of Dathomir (section)

==='''Origins'''===

Around 600 BBY, a Jedi Knight named Allya arrived on the wilderness planet Dathomir, apparently a rogue exiled by the Jedi Council to meditate on the Force in enforced solitude. On her arrival, however, she encountered other Human exiles. Linguistic evidence suggests that elements of the planet's Human population had been largely isolated from the wider Galaxy since the days of the Paecian Empire, in 3,000 BBY or earlier, while later Dathomiri tradition claimed that the inhabitants Allya found had been exiled for producing illegal battle droids; what is not clear from available evidence is whether the earlier settlers had arrived in a single group long before Allya's time, or if in fact Dathomir had been used more continuously as a penal colony over the millennia.

One other factor in Dathomir's past that may be relevant, but seems to have been forgotten to future generations, is the existence of a Sith academy on the planet in the final years of the New Sith Wars, shortly before 1,000 BBY. This was one of the more prestigious training establishments of the Brotherhood of Darkness, ranked with the Iridonia Academy second only to the newly-founded center on the ancient capital of Korriban, and trained the Sith equivalent of Jedi Knights: but it is not known how long it lasted for, or if it left any permanent legacy on the planet.

What is clear is that by the time of Allya's arrival, the Human population had become prey for the dominant sentients at the apex of Dathomir's native food-chain: the rancors. But when Allya assumed leadership of the population, events were set in motion that would lead to the development of a unique Human culture on Dathomir, founded on the enslavement of the male population to Force-sensitive female warriors, the transformation of the rancors from predators to allies, and the authorship of the Book of Law.

Native accounts sometimes attributed the shaping of Dathomiri society entirely to Allya, presenting her as a lone woman among a rabble of helpless men, mere snacks for herds of hungry rancors until they became her willing slaves. These traditions insinuated that Allya reduced the population to willing subjugation in a single lifetime, with the few who did not follow her becoming food for the rancors; among her followers, favored slaves were offered the chance to become mates, in the knowledge that if they fathered sons, they would be fed to the rancors. The boys were raised by other slaves to become slaves themselves, whereas the daughters of Allya were raised by her and trained in the ways of the Force.

This account claims that Dathomiri society was forged in a single generation, and traces the ancestry of every Human on the planet to a single mother and her daughters—the eldest of whom was said to have been just sixteen local years old (about twenty standard years) when her Jedi mother died. But while this version was largely accepted as accurate by the New Republic, it is likely to be at least partially legendary. The linguistic influence of Paecian in the Dathomiri language shows that the Human population had been established for rather more than two millennia when Allya arrived, indicating the existence of a viable breeding population; and even under the New Republic, the Singing Mountain Clan remembered others who had not been "daughters of Allya", and who had gradually faded as distinct groups over subsequent generations.

Nevertheless, it is likely that the key event in the forging of Dathomiri society was Allya's discovery that she could tame the rancors using the Force, with the resulting symbiosis between female rider and mount dictating subsequent social patterns. The attribution of the Book of Law to Allya is probably also correct: a codification of the moral and ethical laws that she wished for her daughters to follow, written down shortly before her death. The final entry of the Book of Law was the same as Allya's last words to her daughters: "Never concede to evil".