Star Wars: Who Was The First Sith & How Were They Redeemed?
The Jedi and the Sith are such a core dichotomy in "Star Wars" that it's easy to forget they didn't always exist. By the events of the Skywalker Saga, both orders of Force users have been galactic staples for ages, but if you go back far enough in the "Star Wars" timeline, you'll eventually find a point where neither group's around.
In the "Star Wars" Legends timeline, aka the old Expanded Universe, the first proper Dark Lord of the Sith was Ajunta Pall. Once a Jedi Master, Pall ran afoul of his brethren when he began dabbling in dark corners of the Force. This tension led to a split, with Pall taking a number of followers and forming a faction of Dark Jedi. The ensuing conflict is known in the Legends timeline as the Hundred-Year Darkness — a title that still exists in the modern canon, albeit with a few changes.
Eventually, Ajunta Pall and his followers made their way to Korriban, the ancient homeworld of the true Sith race. There they leveraged their advanced technology and immense powers to subdue and control the local population, adding the Sith's own Force knowledge to theirs. Out of this conquest, Pall became the first "Jen'ari," or "Dark Lord" of the Sith. But of course, since the Sith themselves had existed on Korriban for so long, the actual story of the "first" Sith isn't all that simple.
The difference between the Sith and the Dark Lords of the Sith
In the old "Star Wars" Expanded Universe, there's a hard distinction between the species of the Sith and the order of Sith Lords. As you might expect, the species came first, and though its members have certain natural predilections toward the Force and its dark side, they were very different from the Sith most fans know before encountering Ajunta Pall.
Pall and his Dark Jedi followers came to Korriban in exile and used it as their new base of operations, beginning generations of Sith Empire history. Pall managed to take advantage of local myths and traditions to convince the local Sith that he was a kind of messiah. In the modern canon, the Sith species still technically exists as a separate entity from the order, but only in extraneous sources. Most of the extensive lore of the Sith race from the Legends timeline was wiped out when Disney took over, and hardly any of it has been reinstated.
Even Korriban itself, once a hugely important planet in the "Star Wars" Old Republic era of the Expanded Universe, has been significantly altered by the canon. Yoda visits Sith tombs on the planet in "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," but under the name Moraband instead of Korriban. This change can be read simply as an effect of so much time passing, but Disney hasn't done much to restore the actual Korriban of old.
What happened to Ajunta Pall, the first Sith Lord
As the first Dark Lord of the Sith and the leader of the first Sith Empire, Ajunta Pall led conquests to other worlds and expanded the reach of his dark side faction. He lived a long life of warring and conquering, and by the time of his death, he'd established an order that would live for thousands of years. Changes later came in the form of Darth Bane's "Rule of Two," leading to a much stealthier existence for future Sith, but the imperial structure that Pall created lasted for a long time and caused the Jedi a great deal of trouble before it ended.
In the beloved video game "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic," the Jedi-turned-Sith-turned-Jedi known as Revan encounters Pall's ghost in his tomb on Korriban. The original Sith Lord shows great regret for the chaos and violence he caused and the legacy of the Sith. He ends up helping Revan get one step closer to stopping the new Sith Empire, and in doing so, he manages to return to the light side and become one with the Force, finally finding peace. There are a few different ways that the player can choose to deal with Pall in the game, but this is generally seen as the true resolution: Pall being redeemed by Revan and moving on from his tether on the Sith homeworld.
Is Ajunta Pall still canon?
Though many aspects of Ajunta Pall's story have been re-canonized in the modern "Star Wars" lore, he himself does not currently exist within the Disney mythos. However, he could still be made canon. Some extraneous sourcebooks and minor texts have mentioned an unnamed ancient Jedi who left the order and became the first Sith Lord. These core beats map cleanly onto Pall's story, but it remains to be seen if he himself will be the name used when Disney eventually returns to the origin of the Sith.
James Mangold's upcoming "Star Wars" movie, which is supposed to explore the beginnings of the Jedi Order, could finally re-canonize the start of the Sith as well. Or we might have to wait for some Old Republic stories in the Disney canon. Revan has been brought back, albeit in name only, and Korriban and the Sith species both exist in the modern timeline in different forms. Whatever happens in the future, Disney has left the space around the beginning of the Sith vague enough that the old EU lore still fits pretty well.