Welcome apprentice, to your first lessons in the mysteries of the Darkside. Here, I will discuss the nature of the darkside, and what leads people to it's shadowy embrace.
Acts of Evil.
Evil is not always easy to recognise. An innocent act may ultimately result in great suffering. An act of revenge may save the lives of millions of people. The pure at heart can lash out in anger. Evil may lurk beneath a mask of virtue. Whether an act is evil or not, often boils down to a question of motivation, and motivations can be hard to identify.
Remember that simply feeling anger, fear, bloodlust, or any other similarly negative emotions is not in an of itself of the darkside. The journey to the Darkside begins when someone allows such emotions to determine their actions, rather than the will of the Force.
Fear.
All sentient creatures experience fear at some point in their lives; it is a defense mechanism designed to impel creatures away from danger. People feel fear when they believe they may lose something valuable to them. Fear for their own lives is the most common motivator, but the fear can be for the lives of friends or loved ones, or even for something as trivial as the loss of a possession or an opportunity.
A person acts out of genuine fear when they abandon reason and logic in order to eliminate or escape a threat. Unreasoning fear is characterized by desperation and frantic attempts to escape the danger at any cost. People who use the most lethal weapon available (regardless of their proficiency or circumstances), attack all out without first determining the actual degree of danger, or abandon threatened allies to save their own lives, are certainly acting out of fear. Their journey to the Darkside has begun.
Anger.
Like fear, anger is almost unavoidable for sentient beings. It is symptomatic of frustration - stress without a suitable means of release. Such tension results in violent behaviour, aimed at relieving the frustration all at once. It can be brought on by a variety of factors, but most commonly relates to fear. The fear of the consequences of failure can create tremendous surges of anger in sentient beings.
People acting in anger lose the ability to show mercy; the target of the anger must feel their wrath. A person gripped by anger often takes unnecessary risks in order to punish or destry the target of their ire. Victory is not good enough if the foe is still moving. The person does not wish to address the situation when they are more rational; they need to vent their fury NOW, while their blood is boiling and their enemy is within reach/ Such a person deliberately gives their anger free rain, and thus gives in to the Dark Side.
Hatred.
Stress can also result in a more subtle kind of anger: Hatred. Hatred is a simmering resentment, the outward expression of which may start small but gradually escalates into full scale acts of violence. Hatred festers inside someone until eventually they come to believe the target of their hatred somehow has less right to exist than they do. In their own mind, they reduce the enemy to a nebulous menace, the source of all the things they despise and of all the ills that plague them. To their thinking, the object of their hatred consciously attempts to thwart them. But it is not a personal vendetta; their enemy clearly threatens all that is touched. They have a right and even a duty to destroy that enemy and, what's more, to undo all that they have wrought.
Hatred is often identifiable by an accompanying sense of righteousness; they feel that they are morally bound to eliminate the thing they hate. For them, considerations such as perspectives and mitigating circumstances are not a factor. Lenience is not an option. Justice is theirs to administer , and they do so with the assurance that anyone can plainly see the correctness of their decision. But whether they are right or wrong, the very fact they choose to act on their belief and nothing else brings them one step closer to the Dark Side.
Suffering.
Hatred often springs from a position of inferiority; what one cannot control, one frequently hates. But when someone has the power of life and death over the subject of their hatred - a single individual, or even an entire galaxy - they can cause suffering. Mental, verbal, and physical abuse are their tools; through these methods, they denigrate and depersonalise their victims - making them no more significant than objects, to be used or destroyed, as they like.
Malice is the ultimate expression of hatred, because the object of such hate invariably suffers. A person who wishes to cause suffering has no sense of pity. They callously cause pain, injury and anguish, because they know that no-one has the power to stop them - they are in command. But they have graduated beyond the need to destroy that which they hate; to them, keeping their victims alive but always in fear of death reminds them of authority over them. As long as control can continue to be exerted over them, they feel the contempt the malicious has over them. But should they challenge, they present a threat, and must be destroyed. Thus, a return to fear, and the path to the Dark Side is traced all over again.
Pride.
Some people build their self image and their ego on uncertain foundations. Their sense of self worth is predicated on beliefs that may or may not be true. When others challenge those beliefs, these people do whatever they feel necessary to protect the foundations of their fragile self-image. Wounded pride can be just as dangerous as a wounded animal.
Pride runs the gamut of fear, anger, and hatred, because a person whose pride is at stake fears the judgement of others, becomes angry at those who attack their self image, and grows to hate those that force them to face unpleasant truths. They feed their pride when they become defensieve, and give in to their pride when they become quarrelsome - because if denial isn't good enough, they must silence the source of their frustration. Simple denial isn't particularly dangerous, but the path to the Dark Side passes through aggressive pride.
Aggression.
Sometimes people act out of a desire simply to see blood. This is definitle a trait of the darkside. Such a person may be overcompensating for a perceived personal weakness, because they believe that by taking the offensive, they mask their poor defenses. The faster and harder they strike, the less chance that their opponent will discover theor weak spot.
Aggression manifests as an eagerness to fight. The person has no patience for more peaceful solutions, and consciously engineers the situation so that they may respond with their favourite element: violence. They may not always strike the first blow, but the provocation can almost always be traced back directly to them. They are most dangerous when they encounter another being who is also motivated by aggression, because both feel the need to test themselves. Once the fighting starts, an aggressive person can easily fall to the Dark Side.
Vengeance.
A combination of hatred and anger, vengeance impels someone to administer what they consider 'justice' - though ultimately, that justice only serves themselves. They act out of a need for compensation, often to redress wrongs they feel they have suffered. Whether that actally have or not is immaterial; to them, the scales must be balanced. But they may overcompensate, inviting vengeance directed at themselves. Vengeance is a dangeros motivator because it frequently replicates itself, continuing the cycle.
Acts of vengeance are usually obvous. The person suffers a blow to their pride or their person and seeks to visit an 'equal but opposite' blow on the perpetrator. What constitutes 'equal' is generally open to interpretation, but 'opposite' is always clear. Without practicing forbearance, the person demands that the loss of pride be repaid with the loss of pride, the loss of limb be repaid with the loss of limb, and the loss of life be repaid with the loss of life. When they take revenge, they take a step farther towards the dark side.
Greed.
Sometimes a person refuses to be satisfied with what they have already attained. They want whatever there is to be had, and if they cannot have it, they become bitter and resentful. Their greed drives them to acquire anything that seems valuable, even if they cannot perceive it's value themselves. They can be persuaded to part with acquisitions - but only for something of greater value. They have no real concern for how their avarice affects those around them. To them, other sentient beings are merely ambuklatory showrooms, to be picked clean or disdained according to their whim.
Greed manifests as a desire to take what cannot easily be earned. Someone acting out of greed may make a token effort to acquire some coveted object by conventional means, but resorts to more extreme means if thwarted. They are often unconcerned that they cannot actually use what they gain. Their real goal is exclusive ownership; if someone else values it, they must have it. Their obsession may override their sense of fairness, and thus lead to the sufefring of others - the summit of the darkside.
Jealousy.
Where the greedy person covets material things, the jealous covets intangibles. They resent the attention or honour afforded to others, and whether they have earned the same treatment or not, they feel they are worthy of it. They may in fact be deserving - but their jealousy dictates that they receive more recognition, greater accolades, or mroe support. Deprived of this attention, their hatred festers within them, until they decide they should simply eliminate the competition.
A person motivated by jealousy acts to weaken to opposition. They attack whatever makes the other person their 'rival'. It may be the others skill, or beauty, or reputation, but the person simply wants their own qualities to seem better by comparison - and reducing the other is easier than improving themselves. They may steal a ship or weapon, attempt to disfigure their rival, or attempt to besmirch thei good name. How they attack is not so important as what they attack, for it reveals their jealous nature and empowers the dark side.
Love.
While not itself of the Dark Side, love can create an opening for the dark side to insinuate itself in someone's heart. Love is delicate, and can be upset by the merest touch of doubt, anger or jealousy. When someone feels love, they feel fulfilled. If something intrudes on that feeling of well-being, they fear losing the fulfillment - the absence of which is an aching emptiness. All alone in that void, they can give in to anger, hatred, suffering, pride, or vengeance - any emotion that fills the emptiness and takes the pain away.
People acting out of love are in no danger of falling to the dark side. But someone who acts out of the need for love risks everything.
