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Palpatine's Force-sensitivity escaped the notice of the Jedi Order; instead, his gifts came to the attention of Darth Plagueis, a Muun Dark Lord of the Sith.

Having judged the young Palpatine worthy of joining the Sith, Darth Plagueis formally initiated him into the cult. Those initiation ceremonies that have been witnessed have revealed certain common elements: the apprentice-initiate went down on bended knee to humble himself before his prospective master; the initiate pledged himself to his master, to the master's teachings, and to the ways of the Sith Order; the master confirmed that the initiate was joining his destiny to that of the Sith Order of his own free will. So affirmed, the initiate was formally welcomed into the Sith Order, proclaimed a Dark Lord of the Sith, and given a new name according to the Sith tradition. Darth Plagueis properly observed his cult's traditions, and Palpatine became a Sith apprentice in this manner. Exactly what inspiration Plagueis found in this communion has not been revealed, but Plagueis decided that, from that moment forward, Palpatine would be known as Darth Sidious.

Darth Sidious's apprenticeship has been described as lasting many decades, though there is no specific indication of when it began or when it ended. In that time, Plagueis trained Sidious in accordance with Darth Bane's tradition. During the course of Sidious's training, Darth Plagueis once allowed him access to a number of Sith holocrons, items that, according to the arcane writing inscribed on their pyramidal surfaces, were recorded in the days of Darth Bane. The Jedi mistakenly believed that these holocrons sat in the Archives room in their Temple, but those were actually clever forgeries, a form of Sith disinformation. How the actual and false holocrons came to their respective owners is still not known.

Under Plagueis, Sidious deeply studied Sith history, learning of the ancient Sith Lords as well as the more recent ones, such as Darth Bane.[source?] Bane's teachings were of particular note, as they were the basis of the order. Plagueis's teachings were brutal, but they successfully molded Palpatine into one of the most powerful Dark Lords since Bane.

Plagueis was obsessed with immortality. He delved into forbidden teachings, and possessed—or sought to possess—knowledge that could sustain those who were dying, or even return them from death. Both the Jedi and the Sith had sought ways to survive death for thousands of years, without success. The most powerful of the ancient Sith Lords, particularly Darth Sion and Darth Andeddu, supposedly knew such secrets, but they had been lost or misplaced. Plagueis then began taking his research to its greatest extreme, to create new life from nothing. Eventually Plagueis told Sidious of an experiment to influence the midi-chlorians to draw life directly from the Force itself. The child that resulted, Plagueis insisted, would potentially possess astounding powers.

Sidious at once suspected that Plagueis's real intention was to "create" a new apprentice to replace him. His position threatened, Sidious decided that he had learned all he could from Plagueis, and he already had his own secret apprentice in the form of Darth Maul. Soon after, Sidious killed Plagueis in his sleep and took the title of Sith Master for himself. To make certain the same thing would never happen to him, he kept a close eye on his own apprentices, and told them only the barest minimum of information about Plagueis. For much of his life, he would be on his guard, vowing to himself never to make the mistake of sleeping as Plagueis had.

Though Plagueis had died, there is evidence to suggest that his experiment came to fruition nonetheless: on the distant desert world of Tatooine, a thirty-year-old slave woman, Shmi Skywalker, gave birth to a son, named Anakin Skywalker (42 BBY). Though much remains unknown about Skywalker's childhood, it is known that his mother had no knowledge of her son's biological father, and when Skywalker eventually became known to the rest of the galaxy, it was discovered that he had more Force potential than any Force-user in history: his midi-chlorian count passed 20,000 per cell, far beyond the most powerful Sith or Jedi (by contrast, the average count for a standard, non-Force-sensitive human was less than 2,500 per cell). Sidious kept a close watch on Skywalker as he grew, anticipating that he could be a far more powerful apprentice than Darth Maul.

Shortly before he had murdered Plagueis, Palpatine had spirited a young Zabrak from his family on Iridonia, and had begun training him as a Sith. It was not without precedent that Sidious should have chosen a Zabrak for his apprentice. In ancient times, the Sith, taking notice of the martial prowess of the Zabrak, made lucrative contacts on Iridonia, and spent exorbitant sums to hire Iridonian Zabrak as mercenaries. Long after the Sith culture died out, the influence of the Sith remained a part of Zabrak culture. Zabraks were known to endure extreme amounts of pain, but nothing could have prepared young Maul for the brutality of Palpatine's training. Despite Palpatine's harshness, Maul held the utmost respect for the man, and was fanatically loyal.

When Darth Maul was very young—so young that he would remember few memories prior to this (c. 54–52 BBY)—Darth Sidious took him to the Jedi Temple, both of them disguised as tourists. Sidious's command of the dark side was sufficient to keep both himself and Maul from being sensed by the Jedi, as long as they did not enter the Temple itself. As the building was not open to tourists in any event, there was very little risk of discovery. For the better part of a day, they stood there, and Sidious pointed out to Maul the various faces of individual Jedi as they entered and left the Temple, whispering into his apprentice's ear of the Jedi Order's ultimate destruction. Maul would long remember the thrill of seeing his foes, standing in their presence, hearing about their downfall, as they walked past, not one of them aware of the fate that ultimately awaited them.

Eventually, the time came for Maul's final test. Palpatine sent him out to a remote and isolated world, where he was hunted by assassin droids for a month. At the end of the month, Maul found Palpatine waiting at the mouth of a cave. Maul had not eaten for days, and was exhausted. Regardless, Palpatine challenged Maul to a duel, in which Maul was easily defeated. Palpatine stood over the broken man, and told him that he had been preparing another apprentice, should Maul fail as he had. Enraged, Maul flew at Palpatine with murderous intent. Palpatine was caught off guard, but was able to disarm Maul. Even without a weapon, Maul continued to attack, even going so far as to bite Sidious's hand before being ultimately defeated. Pleased, Sidious announced that Maul's training was complete, and that he was now a Sith Lord.

Before Palpatine could launch his grand plan for the extinction of the Jedi, he had to deal with a variety of dark side practitioners. The Sun Guard, the Sorcerers of Tund, and the Dark Force practitioners were all brought into line, and under Palpatine's direct control. The Sorcerers of Tund had in fact been almost completely eliminated by the last member, Rokur Gepta. Palpatine was intrigued by the Tundian secrets, and later would gave him the title of Scrivinir of the Centrality. In addition, Palpatine enlisted the Dark Force adherents, who were leaded by former Jedi Master Kadann, and dubbed them the Prophets of the Dark Side.

Palpatine began his political career at a young age, carefully hiding his true persona of Darth Sidious. On Naboo, public service was mandatory from the ages of twelve to twenty, and he began his political career in this fashion (70–62 BBY). Unlike most Naboo, however, he elected to stay on in politics beyond the normally accepted age. He entered local Naboo politics (62–52 BBY), working his way upwards. He lost more elections than he won, missing out on a string of political appointments.

When Senator Vidar Kim, Naboo's representative in the Galactic Senate, was assassinated by a never-identified gunman on a passing airspeeder (52 BBY), the thirty-year-old Palpatine stood for election to succeed him. The people of Naboo elected him as their sectorial Senator, to represent Naboo and the thirty-five other affiliated worlds of the Chommell Sector. It is not known whether or not Palpatine, Plagueis, or any of their allies had anything to do with the murder, but whoever ordered it, only Palpatine stood to gain from it.

When Palpatine first came to Coruscant to begin his service in the Senate, a number of his personal effects came with him from Naboo, accompanied by a manifest. The manifest was submitted to Republic officials as part of a standard security scan. This procedure was mandatory for all equipment and furniture to enter the Senate building. One of these items was an abstract sculpture of Sistros, one of the Four Sages of Dwartii.

Palpatine's manifest clearly stated that this sculpture was a single piece of solid-forged neuranium with a bronzium finish. But the sculpture was not solid; it contained a small cylindrical cavity, in which rested one of his Sith lightsabers, sealed within the sculpture at the time of its forging. The security scan did not detect this cavity; neuranium was so dense that any piece more than a millimeter in thickness was impervious to sensors, and since nothing unusual was found in the scan, no one questioned it further. An advanced gravimetric detector would have revealed that one small section of the sculpture massed slightly less than it should have, but no one thought to use one at the time. The sculpture was admitted and placed in Palpatine's Senate offices (the floor had to be specially reinforced to bear its weight), and when Palpatine was elected Supreme Chancellor it was moved into the anteroom of his Suite in the Executive Office Building. Only after thirty-three years would Palpatine extract the blade within.

The new representative of Chommell Sector wasted no time in forming relationships that could help him in the future. The first was the son of the man whose death ensured his own election. Ronhar Kim was a Jedi who had forsworn his family ties but had also been present to witness his father's murder. Palpatine approached the younger Kim even as he stood before his father's body, lying in state. Under his mask of sorrow and condolence, he studied Kim carefully. But he said little; instead, he demonstrated an art that would serve him well, and give him access to the powerful: his ability to listen, to serve as a confidant for others.

During their conversation, it quickly became clear that, rather than finding whoever struck down the father he had barely known, Kim was more concerned about himself and his own choices in life: Vidar Kim, lacking any other living family, had wanted his son to honor his bloodline again, perhaps follow him into politics. But Palpatine suggested that for a Jedi to become a politician would be a waste. Instead, perhaps the best course would be an alliance between a Jedi and a politician.

Kim agreed, and struck up a "friendship" that would last some three decades. Ronhar Kim would be the first of Palpatine's "alliances" with individual Jedi, but this particular alliance would be of great use: Kim would eventually be used as a pawn in a scheme that resulted in the creation of the feared Red Guards (32 BBY), and his eventual death in battle on Merson (21 BBY) would be used as propaganda fuel to further Palpatine's war aims. For these reasons, it can be said that a significant portion of the machinery that would destroy the Jedi would be created, unknowingly, with the help of Ronhar Kim. By the time Palpatine stepped onto the Senate floor for the first time, he already knew that the prominent power-brokers in the Senate looked down their noses at the more provincial delegates, expecting little to nothing of importance from them. He knew that he, too, was lumped in with the other hopefuls from Rimward worlds, those who, having never ventured far from their homeworlds before, would in short order be overwhelmed by Coruscanti politics.

Rather than do anything to prove the elites wrong, Palpatine encouraged them to keep thinking this way. Again, he failed to take advantage of opportunities that could have landed him on important advisory boards and powerful committees, and unless pressed, he never shared his observations with his colleagues; apparently he purposely sought to keep his advancement slow, knowing that the more he did so, the more harmless he seemed to potential rivals. The performance evidently worked; the powerful Senators, wrapped up in their own petty power struggles, simply laughed at the small and quiet provincial, and otherwise paid him no mind.

Palpatine surprised everyone as he became increasingly popular. He wrote extensively, his notes on power becoming popular texts among political and military science students, his theories even taught at leading universities throughout the galaxy. Despite this growing influence, Palpatine remained unassuming, and would spend many hours alone reflecting in his modest, yet well-appointed quarters. People remarked on how he remained a private man, rarely attending social functions, devoting all his time to his work. In fact, he spent much of his time in the training of Darth Maul and the furthering of his private Sith agendas; it was left to his senatorial aides and to droids, such as TC-4 to do much of the day-to-day work and maintain his guise as the mild-mannered representative of Naboo.

Senator Palpatine began establishing relationships with respected public figures in key positions of government. As it grew, the list of friends included Senators both weak and powerful, military officers, members of the great organs of commerce, and even members of the Jedi Order. Many of those with whom he formed friendships would eventually have prominent positions in the Empire. Others would meet radically different fates.