10 Weird Hobbies Sith Lords Did for Fun

Being a Sith Lord isn’t all plotting revenge and throwing people off balconies. Between conquering the galaxy and backstabbing apprentices, some of these dark side users actually had… hobbies. Strange, dangerous, or just plain weird — here are ten things Sith Lords did for “fun.”

1. Darth Sidious Enjoyed Writing His Own Dark Side Philosophy

Before he ruled the galaxy, Darth Sidious was basically… a blogger for the dark side. In Star Wars: Dark Empire – The Collection, it’s revealed that Sidious was a prolific writer. He didn’t just study Sith teachings — he documented them, analyzed them, and published them (well, kind of).

He wrote three works that became known collectively as the Dark Side Compendium — The Book of Anger, The Weakness of Inferiors, and The Creation of Monsters. Together, they read like the Emperor’s twisted version of a philosophy textbook.

In them, Sidious explored everything from his hatred for weakness to his obsession with bending life and death itself. He described rage as the “purest” form of strength and even detailed methods for creating dark side abominations through the Force.

So while other Sith trained apprentices or hunted Jedi, Sidious spent his downtime writing essays about domination and suffering.
Truly, the galaxy’s most terrifying scholar.

2. Darth Bane Spent His Free Time Studying Ancient Sith Records

Darth Bane, the founder of the Rule of Two, was not just a brutal Sith powerhouse. He also spent a surprising amount of time studying ancient Sith records, digging through the past for knowledge that could make him stronger. In Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, he is described this way: “Bane spent several hours each day studying the ancient records. He found them fascinating. Many of the scrolls were historical records recounting ancient battles or glorifying the deeds of ancient Sith Lords.”

So while other Sith might have relaxed in more normal ways, Bane’s version of fun was reading old Sith history, sharpening his philosophy, and treating forgotten dark side knowledge like buried treasure.

3. Darth Cognus Was Always Practicing Her Foresight

For Darth Cognus, foresight was not just a rare talent. It was something she kept developing. Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil explains that unlike most Iktotchi, whose visions were vague and unpredictable, Cognus had trained herself to direct them with far more control. By concentrating on a specific person or place, she could turn those flashes into something coherent and useful. Before traveling to Ambria, she prepared by meditating on the planet for hours and received visions tied to its history.

4. Darth Gravid Spent His Time Trying to Change Sith Philosophy

Darth Gravid’s unusual obsession was the idea that the Sith needed to be remade. In Darth Plagueis, he is said to have “sought to introduce Jedi selflessness and compassion into his teachings and practice,” after deciding that full devotion to the dark side would only lead the Sith toward eventual failure. 

That was already a shocking break from Sith tradition, but Gravid’s attempts to straddle both paths gradually drove him mad. In time, he convinced himself that the only way to protect the future of the Sith was to destroy much of the lore they had spent generations preserving. So while other Sith collected knowledge, Gravid became infamous for tearing it apart, wiping away texts, holocrons, and artifacts in the belief that the Order needed a completely new beginning.

5. Darth Vectivus Treated the Dark Side with Unusual Practicality

Darth Vectivus may be one of the only Sith who could sound like a business executive even through a holocron. In Legacy of the Force: Inferno, his recorded advice includes lines like, “Never borrow money from someone powerful enough to make you pay” and “Let your employees know you trust them… then watch them.” 

Add that to the fact that he had once been a middle manager in a galactic mining conglomerate, and Vectivus starts to feel less like a traditional Sith Lord and more like someone who carried a corporate mindset straight into the dark side. His version of Sith wisdom sounds less like prophecy or conquest and more like ruthless management strategy.

6. Darth Tenebrous Approached the Dark Side Like a Mathematical Problem

Tenebrous wasn’t just a Sith Lord — he was a scientist obsessed with perfection. He spent years studying biology, starship design, and mathematical theory. His experiments led to advanced stealth ships and even biological weapons. Tenebrous believed logic and science could perfect the dark side — basically the Sith version of a mad scientist with a calculator.

7. Darth Plagueis Spent His Time Experimenting with Life and Death

Darth Plagueis spent his time obsessing over the possibility of defeating death itself. In Legends, he is described as being “obsessed with the prospect of eternal life,” a fixation that pushed him far beyond ordinary Sith ambition. His interest was not limited to gaining more power, but to understanding whether the Force could be used to preserve life, create life through midi-chlorians, and even maintain consciousness after death. 

The Darth Plagueis material notes that he used Darth Venamis in tests manipulating midi-chlorians “in an attempt to achieve immortality and conquer death.” Around 42 BBY, Plagueis took Venamis’s life, resurrected him, and killed him again, repeating the process until the Bith’s organs finally gave out. More than most Sith, Plagueis treated the dark side not simply as a weapon, but as a way to push past the natural limits of life itself.

8. Darth Maul Spent His Time Training and Building Deadly Tools

If Darth Maul had a defining pastime, it was training until there was nothing left in him except skill, anger, and discipline. The Wrath of Darth Maul describes a childhood built around punishing drills, from agility exercises and staff combat to Force training on Tosste and escape tests over a vat of acid. Sidious and TD-D9 rewarded every improvement with harsher lessons, making Maul’s growth feel less like normal apprenticeship and more like a lifetime of weaponization. That is what makes him stand out, because Maul did not just learn to fight. He was shaped by endless practice into someone who lived for it.

9. Darth Vader Mixed Mechanical Skill with Military Command

Darth Vader still carried the builder’s instinct that had defined Anakin Skywalker from childhood. Long before he became a Sith, Anakin was a gifted mechanic who built C-3PO from spare parts on Tatooine, and that talent for understanding machines never fully disappeared. Even after the fall of Anakin, Vader remained someone shaped by technical skill, engineering instinct, and a mind that naturally understood how things were put together.

He was also one of the Empire’s most feared commanders. Official Star Wars material notes that Vader worked alongside Grand Moff Tarkin to supervise construction of the Death Star and help stamp out resistance to Imperial rule. That side of him mattered just as much, because Vader was not only a dark enforcer sent to intimidate others. He was trusted with command, large-scale operations, and some of the Empire’s most important military projects.

10. Darth Caedus Turned Pain into a Philosophy

Darth Caedus had an unusual relationship with pain long before he became a Sith. In Traitor, Jacen Solo is tortured in the Yuuzhan Vong’s Embrace of Pain, and the story makes clear that he eventually learns to use that suffering to sustain himself. Later, as Darth Caedus, that experience had clearly stayed with him. 

He had an Embrace of Pain installed aboard the Anakin Solo and used it on Ben Skywalker in an attempt to break him and turn him to the dark side. That makes Caedus stand out, because pain was never just punishment to him. It became something he endured, learned from, and eventually tried to use as a tool of control.