After leaving Dromund Kaas, Darth Revan and Darth Malak sought the Star Forge. They traced surviving Rakatan Star Maps on worlds including Dantooine, Kashyyyk, Korriban, Manaan, and Tatooine, assembling enough information to reach Rakata Prime.
3960 BBY · Legends · Historical interpretation
THE RAKATAN STAR MAPS
Story evidence, dates and limitations
Revan and Malak sought dispersed Rakatan Star Maps to reconstruct the route to the Star Forge. Maps associated with Dantooine, Kashyyyk, Korriban, Manaan and Tatooine appear prominently in Knights of the Old Republic. Accounts of the pre-3956 search intersect with later game discoveries by an amnesiac Revan and should not be written as though one visit explains every map's full history. The navigation network was a legacy of the much older Infinite Empire.
Social history and consequences
The story shows how old imperial infrastructure survives a regime's collapse and is repurposed by a new power. The maps distributed knowledge across worlds with different local societies, illustrating that archaeological remnants are not isolated from living politics. Revan and Malak's pursuit converted such fragments into the means of locating an automated war-production facility. A source claim that a particular map exists is not proof that its surrounding culture approved its use.
Research trail: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), five Star Map locations; The Old Republic: Revan. Read chronological source references →. Original edition page citations remain to be checked. The event banner is original symbolic IDS art and is not an authentic screenshot.
A dead empire provides the infrastructure for a new one
The Rakatan devices had outlived the Infinite Empire by more than twenty millennia.
Their surviving data now enabled a new Sith military project.
Knowledge is distributed across ruins
No single map gave the complete answer.
The search required reconstructing a network from fragments left on several worlds.
Anthropological assessment
The Star Maps show distributed archives functioning across deep time.
Fragmentation can preserve knowledge by preventing any one site's destruction from erasing the whole system.
The Old Republic / connected history
Recovering the knowledge of a vanished empire
Darth Revan and Darth Malak sought access to the Star Forge through a distributed Rakatan network of Star Maps. The devices had survived the destruction of the Infinite Empire and appeared on worlds that later developed very different societies. No single surviving installation supplied the whole course to the ancient facility. The search required reading a system left behind by a civilization whose political order had disappeared. It took place after the confrontation on Dromund Kaas, though material encountered earlier by Revan was part of what made the search possible.
The places where the maps survived were not empty archaeological reserves. Dantooine supported a Jedi Enclave; Kashyyyk had living Wookiee communities and industrial exploitation; Korriban carried layers of Sith ritual and teaching; Manaan was strategically contested for its kolto production; and Tatooine had indigenous history that was often discounted by outside settlers. Searching those locations linked a military project with local questions of sovereignty and memory. Later, the redeemed Revan's crew revisited parts of this network, but that 3956 BBY expedition belongs to a separate narrative and must not be merged with the 3960 BBY mission.
An archive is a network, not a single treasure
A surviving fragment may be unintelligible on its own and gain meaning only through comparison with fragments elsewhere. The Rakatan system exemplified preservation across time, while the new Sith used the recovered information in ways its builders could not have anticipated. Multiple sites also meant that the loss of one installation need not end the search.
Who controls the interpretation of ruins?
Military visitors did not have an uncontested right to determine the meaning of every ancient site. New societies formed around the remains, and each developed a relationship to the objects and territories involved. The fact that a machine contained useful coordinates did not make its surrounding community irrelevant.
Was this the same journey as Revan's 3956 BBY Star Map quest?
No. The earlier search helped Darth Revan and Darth Malak find the Star Forge. The later quest occurred after Revan's memory alteration and served a different political objective.
Sources and dating: Knights of the Old Republic game; Drew Karpyshyn, The Old Republic: Revan. Legends; variable player choices are not treated as universal chronology. Interpretive statements are distinguished from original published events.
Source judgment · 3960 BBY
Test your historical interpretation
Choose your answers. The assessment shows corrections, a source-based explanation and a score.
Legends · Early Jedi Civil War source audit
Five dispersed Rakatan sites and the danger of reading a map as permission
What the sources document
In the period preceding the Jedi Civil War, Revan and Malak investigated surviving Rakatan Star Maps linked to Dantooine, Kashyyyk, Korriban, Manaan and Tatooine. By combining ancient navigation records, they could reconstruct the route to Lehon and the Star Forge. The same locations later became important to an amnesiac Revan during the 3956 BBY quest depicted in Knights of the Old Republic. The two journeys must be distinguished: early use by Revan and Malak belongs to the preparation of the Sith military, while the later expedition sought to locate and destroy the factory.
Anthropological and political assessment
A network of distributed archives can preserve information that no single site contains in full. The Star Maps, however, remained situated within living societies. On Kashyyyk, the devices existed in a world where Wookiee communities faced exploitation; on Manaan they intersected with Selkath neutrality; on Tatooine with the territories and political lives of Indigenous Tusken communities. The story of discovering coordinates should not be told as though these inhabited worlds were empty archaeological stages. Possession of an old navigational record also gave the seekers immense strategic leverage without giving them moral ownership of the societies around it.
Source limitations
Knights of the Old Republic permits a variable world-visit order for the later quest. Do not invent a fixed itinerary for every Star Map or conflate the early and later discovery scenes. The exact date of some earlier visits is retrospective.
Check your historical judgment: Was Revan's 3956 BBY search for Star Maps his first ever contact with every Rakatan map?
Correction and insight: No. Pre-amnesia Revan and Malak had used the map network earlier; the 3956 journey rediscovered its significance after the loss of his memory.
Sources: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), Star Map worlds; The Old Republic: Revan. Reference bibliography ↗. Original print/game scene citations remain under verification.
Sources and further reading
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
- Drew Karpyshyn, The Old Republic: Revan.