An OOC History
The Hands of Darkness have the honour to call themselves the first EU based Sith Empire Roleplay guild for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The Hands of Darkness originally formed back in 2008 just after BioWare's initial announcement that they were working on a MMO successor of the critically acclaimed Knights of the Old Republic series.
Darth Derriphan, having led respected Sith guilds in the now defunct Lucasarts and SOE joint MMO Star Wars Galaxies and wanting to carry that legacy on to the new upcoming game, created a small community for Sith roleplayers called the 'Sith Council'. The community gained the attention of a few Sith roleplayers who engaged in post by post sith roleplay.
One member of this community was the Sith enthusiast Darth Mynock. Finding a like minded person, who appeared to enjoy the lore and backstory of the Sith as much as he. Darth Derriphan propostition Darth Mynock with the idea of turning the small community into a full blow guild. Darth Mynock graciously accepted the proposition and together they began to set about the ground work for what would become the Hands of Darkness.
Together the pair worked on a concept behind the guild, a mature roleplay guild that would be based within the EU and remain true to the canonical settign of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It was deemed that this group would work in secret, and serve the Dark side of the force, manipulating things from the shadows. This concept ultimately gave rise to the groups name, The Hands of Darkness.
A mere month after the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic was announced and the Hands of Darkness were ready to be unleashed upon the public. Setting up on a free guildportal, soon applications from across Europe began to flood into the site. Soon a core member base was built up and others were invited to share in the role of leadership responsibilites. Darth Viscus was one such person, whose help in the early stages of the Hands of Darkness was essential in getting us to a point we could reach out beyond what we currently had, and get a better idea of where we should be come game release.
Soon enough it time to move from our current guildportal home and create a website for ourselves. The new webiste created by another Shadow council member of the time, Darth Thantos, started to bring in a new batch of recruits. Impressed by the flashy graphics of the new site and the reputation that was spreading of the Hands being the No.1 EU Sith RP guild. Due to personal issues sadly Darth Thantos had to leave the Hands of Darkness, and it was time for a promising new member to take up the reins of site administrator, Darth Inanivis.
Darth Inanivis joined the Shadow Council, and it immediately became clear that the current site was not going to be able cope with the future needs of the Hands. So once more a new site was created, one that would go on to serve us to just prior to launch. During this point we would lose Darth Mynock, who at the time was suffering various personal issues, in a huge guild wide event that would set the stage for similar major events.
It was during this period much of what is regarded as the modern era of the Hands was put in place. the story of the Hands was fully fleshed out, community events became increasingly more common, and the RP reached new levels of quality. It was also during this period the Hands of Darkness started to branch out into the real world with meet ups at various SWTOR events held in london.
As so the time finally came for the announcement of a launch date. Things which the Hands of Darkness had taken for granted in the past now had to be finalised. It was decided as we moved into a new era of the Hands actually entering the game a new site should be designed and fresh start made. Things such as ranks were re-evaluated and members began to wrap up long story plots in a final RP event that would see the Hands of Darkness destroyed only to be reformed in game.
It has been a long three years as we waited patiently for the release of Star Wars: The Old Rpeublic, but there is no doubt that the Hands of Darkness are finally in a position to dominate the server they choose with high qaulity RP and an emphasis on a tight mature community.
