The New Order in Power

[Master_Baerne]

Brilliant work, but I do have one question: What does the designation rS mean? I've heard dates in Star Wars expressed as "ABY" or "BBY", but not rS.

[Publius]

The rS calendar is reckoned with reference to the Great ReSynchronization, an arbitrary zero-point calendar initiated three years prior to the events of The Phantom Menace (A New Hope takes place in 35 rS). It is the calendar used in the Galaxywide NewsNets feature of the Star Wars Adventure Journal and in HoloNet News. It is preferred because it is both used 'in universe' and is non-partisan (to say nothing of "BrS/rS" being aesthetically superior to the clumsy "ABY/BBY").

[RogueIce]

The rS calendar is reckoned with reference to the Great ReSynchronization, an arbitrary zero-point calendar initiated three years prior to the events of The Phantom Menace (A New Hope takes place in 35 rS). It is the calendar used in the Galaxywide NewsNets feature of the Star Wars Adventure Journal and in HoloNet News. It is preferred because it is both used 'in universe' and is non-partisan (to say nothing of "BrS/rS" being aesthetically superior to the clumsy "ABY/BBY").

Especially since it begs the question, just what is ANH? 0 BY?

Anyway, as I said in IM, I'm looking forward to your Armed Forces entry. Especially as regards the Imperial Army, which half the time doesn't really seem to exist except as a part of the Stormtrooper Corps (the ones who provide the vehicles I guess).

[phongn]

Especially since it begs the question, just what is ANH? 0 BY?

Year zero, yes.

[Publius]

THE NEW ORDER IN POWER

Chapter Five: The Hierarchy

Perhaps more than any other aspect of the Galactic Empire, the Hierarchy defies easy description. There was no formal instrument of incorporation, and no established governing structure; it had no stated purpose, and no formal roll of membership. Nevertheless, the power exercised by the Hierarchy was quite real, and there was never any question over whether or not any particular individual was a member of it. Despite its lack of formalized structure, it behaved as a corporation, owning property in its own name and appointing agents to represent its interests. Often Hierarchs were selected to serve as The Throne’s emissaries, and they frequently appeared with little to no warning, rarely venturing further than to define their role as “speaking for the Emperor.” There was no question that the Hierarchy was a part of the Empire’s ruling structure, even if it was never made clear what precisely the Hierarchy was, or what it existed to do. Historians have struggled over the years with even its basic character; Dier L. Prentiss, arguably the preeminent secular expert on the Hierarchy, described it as an “unincorporated society with undefined powers to act as extraordinary personal representatives of the Emperor,” seeing it as playing a legitimate if uncomfortable role in government, while Janu Godalhi, a former rebel partisan, famously wrote in The Dark Side of the Empire that the Hierarchy was “a cult of parasites, a blot on the constitution, a blemish on the face of good government, a cancer on the body politic, a black hole of malign influence.” [1]

The lack of documentation related to the Hierarchy has made it an historical dead spot, and historians are almost entirely reliant on verbal accounts and second-hand description. Without a charter or act of incorporation, it cannot even be reliably determined when the Hierarchy was established. Prentiss’s The Black Hole of the Empire covers mountains of incidental evidence and personal recollections, leading him to the conclusion that the Hierarchy was a kind of merger between Darth Sidious’s secret network and parts of Palpatine of Naboo’s clientele. Prentiss sees it as a continuation of the trend of Palpatine’s use of informal representatives — a practice, it must be noted, that appears to have been deliberately calculated to increase his personal prestige, as it accustomed people to accepting orders on the authority of Palpatine the man rather than the office of the President. Many of the Hierarchy’s members were members of Palpatine’s entourage for decades, and nearly all the members of his Inner Circle were associated with it (with a few prominent exceptions, such as Indutiomarus Trachta and Ardus Kaine). Nevertheless, the evidence is incidental, circumstantial, and indirect; there is virtually no direct evidence at all. There does not appear to have been anything like it among the predecessor Sith states like the Brotherhood of the Sith and the Sith Empire (unsurprising, given that these theocratic polities lacked many features of the Empire, such as devolved government, a dedicated diplomatic and colonial administration, and a professionalized civil service), although ‘Alanahrmaas has pointed out functional (if not necessarily structural) similarities to the Shadow Court of Ouhibo and the Penumbra of the Polystate of Korel, both of which were influenced by the Sith. Kerum Antilles-Smyrigorax goes further and compares the Hierarchy to the Synod of Experts of the Tund and to the largely mythical Leukocytists of Zomfoodigan. [2]

As nearly as can be determined, the Hierarchy was structured as a secret society divided into two “Spheres,” the Greater Sphere and the Lesser Sphere (contrary to expectation, the Greater Sphere was conceived as being inside the Lesser Sphere — the terms are borrowed from Sithian eschatology rather than Gehrlian geometry). The Greater Sphere was composed of full initiates of the society, while the Lesser Sphere was composed of their familiars and support staff. According to Luke Skywalker’s Reminiscences, the Greater Sphere was composed entirely of “dark side” magi, belonging to a number of different sects (indeed, he speculates that it included nearly all such magi throughout the Empire); the Lesser Sphere appears to have been dedicated entirely to the support of the Greater, and it comes as no surprise that Sate Pestage, the Shadow Hand to Palpatine’s Dark Lord of the Sith, seems to have doubled as head of the Lesser Sphere. There was apparently a system of internal ranking, though its mechanics are not well understood; it is known, however, that whatever system was in place, it bore no relationship with the Table of Ranks or other formal distinctions. The New Republic Historical Council’s official scribe documented evidence in his Neo-Almanach that despite his relatively lowly rank as a “mere” inquisitor, the former Master Jedi Jerec’s standing in the Hierarchy was second only to Darth Vader himself, noting that he “outranked the Dark Side Adepts such as Hethrir, Sedriss, and Kadann” (remarkable in that Lord Hethrir was Procurator of Justice and the former Master Jedi Kadann, the so-called Supreme Prophet of the Dark Side). Hierarchical rank was accepted as “trumping” normative rank, and thus a Hierarch like Kadann could even overrule so lofty a figure as Grand Admiral Afsheen Makati without a second thought — and implicitly putting a man like Jerec far above even that rarefied place in the Imperial State’s normative rank structure. [3]

The evidence remains sketchy at best, however, when one attempts to move from generalities to specificity. It is known, for example, that the Hierarchy included autonomous organizations like the Prophets of the Dark Side, a neo-Sithic cult composed primarily of heretical Jedi Knights who served as privy advisors to Palpatine, using their preternatural abilities of prescience and clairvoyance; the Prophets also provided initial training to many of Palpatine’s covert magi, including Grand Admiral Nial Declann. The cult used two basic ranks for initiates, acolyte and prophet, and subdivided these basic ranks with additional distinctions (lesser prophet, high prophet, etc.), with the Supreme Prophet having ordinary jurisdiction over the entire body. The Prophets operated mainly out of a hidden temple within the Imperial Palace complex, but maintained temples on Dromund Kaas and Bosthirda (the latter of which was kept secret even from Palpatine himself). The Prophets are particularly noteworthy because they rarely acted as emissaries of The Throne but often conducted their own espionage efforts, leading many to consider their status as “Imperial” to be tenuous at best. A similar covert organization known to have existed within the Hierarchy was the Secret Order of the Emperor, a secret society composed of individuals loyal to Palpatine personally, who carried out self-assigned missions and spied on the normative state with an eye toward maintaining Palpatine’s hold on power. The Secret Order — whose resources were plentiful enough for it to operate its own frigates independently of the Imperial Navy — formed an enormous network of spies and agents-in-place, providing Palpatine and his Inner Circle with an enormous amount of internal intelligence. Their efforts were not limited to information-gathering; the Secret Order also conducted assassinations, spot inspections, and any number of other tasks furthering the goals of the Hierarchy, and recruited from among the finest soldiers, sailors, agents, and marines in the Armed Forces to provide its muscle. The Secret Order maintained its own system of ranks, completely unrelated to the Table of Ranks and even to the Hierarchy’s ill-understood system (First Initiate, Second Circle, Third Circle, Fourth Circle, Inner Circle, Emperor’s Hand, Emperor’s Eyes, Emperor’s Voice, and Emperor’s Reach); this particular information is known in its entirety due to the declassified memoirs of a Secret Order agent, Fleet Admiral Tan Maarek Stele. The Secret Order’s handlers — swathed in a distinctive cloak and carrying letters patent identifying them as special agents of The Throne — often appeared on space stations, bases, and warships throughout the Empire, ignoring the chain of command; countless Imperial officers and men have recorded being told simply never to ask who these “Cloaked Figures” were or what they wanted, and the vast majority of those who saw them certainly never learned that they represented the Secret Order. Although the two organizations had no formal constitutional link, the Prophets of the Dark Side appear to have directed the activities of the Secret Order of the Emperor (although this should not be understood as to mean that members of the one were ipso facto members of the other). [4]

The public image of the Jedi Order and other mystic cults suffered deleterious harm in 16 rS when the leader of the Jedi High Council, Master Jedi Mace Windu, led three other Jedi Knights into Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s office to arrest him and seize power in the Republic. The subsequent declassification of records has revealed, of course, that Palpatine was in fact a Sith Lord and had manipulated the entire Clone War for the sake of engineering his own rise to power, but none of this was known at the time. Totally lacking in political savvy or public relations skills, Windu had simply decided Palpatine’s continued possession of lawfully-enacted extra-constitutional powers was a danger to the Republic, and resolved to force him to resign. In retrospect it would have been difficult to devise a more inept approach, and the Jedi played directly into Palpatine’s hands. The dismal failure of the Cloister Coup directly led to Order 66 and the swift passage of the Dangerous Cults Act 16 rS, which outlawed the use of “preternatural or extranormal abilities,” to include “all manifestations of mentalics, telepathy, magics, mystics, wizardry, sorcery, magery, shamanism, or comparable meta-disciplines of any kind whatever,” in any way that “may influence, prejudice, resist, obstruct, or in any way interfere with the functioning of government or commerce, without license, sanction, and regulation by the Imperial State.” The Dangerous Cults Act was to serve as the legal basis for the Great Purge, in which the Jedi Order, the Guild of Vindicators, the Church of the First Frequency, and countless others — including Jedi auxiliaries like the Antarian Rangers and the Pendarran Warriors — were exterminated en masse, all with the sanction of the Imperial Senate and the courts. [5]

As a result of the Dangerous Cults Act, His Imperial Majesty’s Government had the right to establish its own state-sponsored cadre of Force cultists comparable to the old Republic’s Jedi Order, but the negative publicity associated with the Cloister Coup lingered for decades, and HIMG never pursued the matter. Instead, the Privy Council met in closed session and issued an order in council establishing the Inquisitorius, a secretive autonomous branch of Imperial Intelligence headed by the Grand Inquisitor and charged with enforcing the Dangerous Cults Act. Unusual for Imperial agencies, the Inquisitorius did not conform to the Table of Ranks, and did not use an officer/enlisted format. Instead it was arranged like the Hierarchy itself, into upper and lower halves: The specially-trained agents who served as field operatives and interrogators were classified as “inquisitors,” while the clerical and support staff were classified as “familiars.” Each category was divided into degrees of seniority, but the structure much more closely resembled a tradesman’s guild than the militaristic structure found elsewhere in the Imperial State. Particularly noteworthy was the fact that each inquisitor bore credentials certifying him to act directly on behalf of The Throne, without the interposition of Imperial Intelligence, the Ministry of Security, or even HIMG and the Privy Council. These credentials gave them legal immunities not enjoyed by any other law enforcement officers, as well as tremendous informal powers of persuasion. In addition, they often carried letters of cachet issued by The Throne authorizing them to act without reference to “ordinary law,” often to enforce arbitrary orders and impose unappealable judgments. Thus armed, the inquisitors became known as “angels of death,” appearing suddenly and with wide-ranging authority to suspend due process of law in pursuit of “dangerous cultists,” acting with near-total immunity. On their own authority, inquisitors often issued Legal Authorization for Advanced Confinement Documents (LAACDocs), authorizing the arbitrary detention of individuals without cause, and without recourse to writs of habeas corpus or quo warranto. ‘Alanahrmaas has documented that the extraordinary powers granted to the Inquisitorius were frequently pressed into service in support of planetary “pacification” operations, often with only perfunctory reference to violations of the Dangerous Cults Act; often the accusation alone was sufficient to warrant an “audit” by an inquisitor, who would after overseeing exceptionally horrific purges eventually conclude that there was no violation after all, without providing relief to the injured parties. The inquisitorial audit — more commonly called a “witch hunt” — became the most dreaded of all possible acts by the Imperial State, as the audit was not subject to the Sapient Rights Act. Unlike the questionable doctrine of imperial infallibility used as a defense by the Armed Forces of the Imperium, the inquisitors’ credentials and letters of cachet made them almost totally immune to the judicial oversight. They were free to scour the galaxy for “dangerous cultists” with impunity. [6]

During the Clone War, the unflattering nickname “Palpatine’s Secret Police” had begun being applied to the Jedi by Palpatine’s detractors, who thought them beholden to his politics. With the dissolution of the Jedi Order and its rigorous suppression by the Inquisitorius, the name was unironically passed to the Inquisitorius, along with the occasional use of “Dark Knights” and “Emperor’s Sabermen” to refer to inquisitors. Despite this, documentation has shown that the overwhelming majority — some 98 per cent — of all inquisitors and familiars were not practicing Force cultists, and in of that remaining two per cent, the vast majority were cultists but not magi. Only a tiny minority of the Inquisitorius actually possessed abilities regulated by the Dangerous Cults Act; nicknames aside, the Inquisitorius was decidedly not the Empire’s Jedi Order. As a matter of course, inquisitors were issued their vestments, a lightsaber, and a disruptor, but conventional wisdom has noted for thousands of years that carrying a lightsaber does not a Jedi Knight make. Declassified documents from the archives of Citadel Inquisitorius on Prakith have revealed that 80 per cent of all inquisitors never ignited their lightsabers outside of initial training and annual re-qualification (as compared to the 96 per cent who used their disruptors at least once a month, and the 98 per cent who used mind-probes or other interrogative automata). The Inquisitorius’s authoritative handbook, Stratagems of the Inquisitorius, went into great detail in many subjects, including a thorough dissertation on a number of different interrogation disciplines, and contained detailed descriptions of hundreds of cults pursued by the Inquisitorius — but contained only a single paragraph on the lightsaber, and that only insofar as it discussed its use as part of the inquisitor’s psychological warfare arsenal. The relative unimportance of the weapon in the text is striking, not least because the author, Grand Inquisitor Laddinare, Lord Torbin (formerly Director of Information for the Judicial Department and Palpatine’s wartime Attorney General), was himself a magus regulated under the terms of the Dangerous Cults Act. [7]

Although the Inquisitorius contained only a tiny minority of magi under the Dangerous Cults Act — “10-96s” in fringer parlance, after the Imperial enforcement protocol for a mentally imbalanced person (with the connotation of a ke’dem, Old Corellian for “condemned” or “fallen,” i.e., dark Jedi) — they were disproportionately represented in the highest ranks of the organization, with almost all of the most senior high inquisitors and every successive Grand Inquisitor being 10-96s (although this was common knowledge only among the upper ranks of the Empire’s ruling class; the vast majority of the population knew them only as the “angels of death” who carried lightsabers, disruptors, and letters of cachet). Thus, the Inquisitorius’s reputation was twofold: The lower ranks saw them as the Empire’s most sinister of secret police, while the upper ranks saw them as Jedi hunter-killers. It was this latter reputation as the Hierarchy’s muscle that led to the Inquisitorius’s diminishing relevance outside the context of the Dangerous Cults Act and the Great Purge. With the Purge more or less completed, the ruling class saw no real need for the Inquisitorius outside the occasional audit of particularly troublesome rebellious worlds. When the Lord Torbin was assassinated on Weerden, no replacement Grand Inquisitor was appointed — the Senate, HIMG, silent fractions, and even many in the Privy Council had been disturbed by the Grand Inquisitor’s freedom of action, as he reported directly to The Throne or to the Ruling Council, without any responsibility to any of the others, despite his theoretical subordination to Imperial Intelligence and the Ministry of Security. Instead, the Lord Torbin’s deputy, Chief Inquisitor Loam Redge, served as acting head of the Inquisitorius until his replacement by Chief Inquisitor Ja’ce Yiaso in 36 rS, whose stewardship of the organization was notably phlegmatic, allowing the Inquisitorius to fade still further into the background while more aggressive and influential members like High Inquisitor Tremayne and Inquisitor Jerec became virtually autonomous warlords. [8]

The Inquisitorius was not the only “muscle” at the Hierarchy’s disposal. Military and naval assets of the Imperial State were routinely seconded to the Hierarchy; it was a relatively common sight for inquisitors and other agents of The Throne like Tremayne and Jerec to have Star Destroyers at their beck and call, while Rokur Gepta, Palpatine’s good friend and the last Sorcerer of Tund, crewed his personal cruiser with Imperial Navy sailors and even ruled as a de facto Imperial proconsul in the Centrality, a client state of the Empire (Gepta’s authority was even more unusual than most members of the Hierarchy, as strictly speaking the Imperial State had no direct jurisdiction in the Centrality, as it was neither a dominion nor part of HIM Other Territories). Some of the individual members and constituent sects maintained their own private armies, separate and independent from the Armed Forces of the Imperium; the Sith Order itself numbered among its resources the theocratic Enlightenment of Thule, an entire world ruled by a Sithian clerico-military junta and dedicated to training and provision of military forces for the Sith Lords’ use. Leading members like Darth Vader owned clienteles in their own right and even kept their own stables of spies and assassins — as well as commanding extensive regular forces. The resources of nearly the entire Imperial State were made available for the Hierarchy’s use, such as the development of the Shadow Droids and the conversion of the marines of the Black Watch (1st Battalion, Seventh Imperial Guards Regiment) into ‘dark side’ stormtroopers, or “Darktroopers” (like the Sovereign Protectors of 1st Bn, First Imperial and Royal Guards, the Black Watch’s Force training was reportedly rudimentary, and never intended to make them into anything beyond neophyte magi). Even those forces not specifically seconded to them could be commandeered with little effort, requiring little more than the presentation of their credentials. The Hierarchy’s casual use of their letters patents to supersede the chain of command and take control of local assets prompted Captain Jaso Seledrood’s famous observation that fleet admirals “only have to worry about the success of their subordinates, their Moff, and guys whose name begins with Lord.” [9]

Luke Skywalker’s Reminiscences contains an extended discussion of the Hierarchy’s place in the Empire — or, more correctly, what the Hierarchy’s place in the Empire would be. According to Skywalker, the Hierarchy was intended to be more than merely a catchall secret society of the Empire’s magi. Drawing from his personal experience and from conversations with the few surviving members of the Emperor’s Inner Circle, Skywalker concludes that the Hierarchy actually represented an incipient ‘dark side’ theocracy, with Palpatine’s “Scientists of Darkness” replacing the College of Moffs and gradually integrating the galaxy into a kind of stateless psychic dictatorship, what Skywalker calls “a narcotic utopia of shadows and hunger.” The Reminiscences remains one of the most detailed and comprehensive sources from any of the key figures of the time — especially regarding the Byss period — and although Skywalker’s description of the Hierarchy drew controversy, there is a great deal of support for his assertion, despite Palpatine’s traditional antipathy toward documenting his activities. Palpatinism-Tarkinism was wholly in support of totalitarianism as a system of government, using Palpatine’s writings in The Paths to Power and The New Tranquility as justification; the uncensored text of The Weakness of Inferiors contains an elegantly written synthesis of Palpatine’s previously published secular political theories with Sith doctrine — at least some among the Revisionist school have gone so far as to suggest that the “Science of Darkness” version represents the original form rather than a synthesis, and that the secular versions were in fact sanitized for the sake of introducing his full program to an uncritical public. In any case, in his last book on politics one finds Palpatine calling unabashedly for “control, without violence, over the innocent, the ignorant, and ‘all inferiors’” (earlier he defines the term “inferiors” as encompassing everyone not within the Hierarchy’s Greater Sphere — a term, it must be remembered, derived from Sithian eschatology) and prescribing the use of his Science of Darkness to impose “structure in order for civilization to survive and thrive in the galaxy.” Furthermore, it is a documented fact that Palpatine was slowly integrating members of the Hierarchy into the normative structure of the Imperial State, from installing Sarcev Quest, Sim Aloo, and Janus Greejatus in the Ruling Council, to appointing Darth Vader’s protégé the Lord Hethrir as Procurator of Justice, to ultimately appointing Vader himself as Supreme Commander after the destruction of the Death Star. Skywalker notes in characteristically mild language in his Reminiscences that Palpatine remarked to him on Byss that he’d essentially begun a second infiltration of the State, repeating the same process that had brought him to power in the first place; where first he’d infiltrated the Republic and twisted it to his ends, he was now infiltrating his own Empire to further transmogrify it into his Sithian utopia. [10]

Endnotes

[1] Janu Godalhi is identified as a former law enforcement official, rebel partisan, and popular historian in “Star Wars: Databank | Godalhi, Janu.”

[2] The Hierarchy’s origin among Palpatine’s supporters is from Threats of the Galaxy, which notes that many of his subjects [dark side adepts] were drawn from the fawning Senators and other officials who had long been loyal to Palpatine’s government and continued to serve the Emperor after the demise of the Republic.” His practice of sending personal representatives rather than dedicated representatives is seen in his use of aide Kinman Doriana as an all-purpose agent in “Hero of Cartao” (Star Wars Insider Nos. 68 - 70) and Outbound Flight.

The Emperor’s Inner Circle is defined by the Star Wars Encyclopedia as “a group of ministers and governors closest to the Emperor at the time of the Battle of Endor.” Its association with the dark side is inferred from the fact that Sate Pestage is known to be a Sith cultist (“The Emperor’s Pawns,” Star Wars Gamer No. 5) while both Sim Aloo and Janus Greejatus are known dark side adepts (Death Star II Expansion Set), as are Palpatine’s close friends Nefta and Sa-Di (Dark Empire II). Grand Moff Kaine appears in “The Pentastar Alignment” (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 3), respectively. Trachta’s given name of Indutiomarus is unattested.

The Brotherhood of the Sith first appears in Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith. The Sith Empire first appears in Tales of the Jedi: Golden Age of the Sith. The Sorcerers of Tund were first mentioned in Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu.

[3] Sate Pestage’s role as Shadow Hand to Darth Sidious is conjecture, based on the description of that office as a “trusted advisor and second in command” in “Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties” (Star Wars Insider No. 88 Online Supplement). His involvement in dark side esoterica despite an apparent lack of Force sensitivity is derived from the statement in “The Emperor’s Pawns” that he was involved in unspecified “dark side experiments,” casting him as Darth Sidious’s chief familiar to match his secular role as the Galactic Emperor’s alter ego.

The “official scribe” is a reference to the notional author of The New Essential Guide to Characters, herein referred to by the non-canonical name Neo-Almanach (his affiliation with the New Republic Historical Council, notional publishers of The Essential Chronology, is unattested). The statement of Jerec’s rank relative to Lord Hethrir, Sedriss, and Kadann, is quoted directly from that source, and forms the basis for the concept of rank within the Hierarchy.

Kadann subjected Makati to summary corporal punishment on the bridge of the latter’s flagship in an incident described in “Who’s Who: Imperial Grand Admirals” (Star Wars Insider No. 66).

[4] The Prophets of the Dark Side first appeared in The Dark Side Sourcebook, and were said to be responsible for initial dark side training in “Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties,” which also defined their ranks and the locations of their temples. The Prophets were identified as having trained Declann in “Who’s Who: Imperial Grand Admirals,” and were confirmed as having their own internal espionage efforts in “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark Side.”

The Secret Order of the Emperor first appeared in TIE Fighter, which also defined their ranks and identified their representatives as the Cloaked Figure; they were seen to operate at least one Nebulon-B escort frigate independently of the Imperial Navy in that same source. Tan Maarek Stele’s affiliation with the Secret Order is attested, but his eventual rank of fleet admiral is not.

The Prophets of the Dark Side were first identified as the leaders of the Secret Order of the Emperor in “The Emperor’s Pawns.” Tan Stele was an Emperor’s Hand of the Secret Order, but not a Prophet of the Dark Side, thus providing the basis for the continued separation of the two organizations.

[5] Mace Windu led the attempted coup against Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith. The name “Cloister Coup” and the Dangerous Cults Act are unattested.

The Jedi Order was first mentioned in A New Hope. The Guild of Vindicators first appeared in “Dark Lord’s Conscience” (Devilworlds No. 1). The Church of the First Frequency was mentioned in the Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook. The Antarian Rangers and Pendarran Warriors were first mentioned in X-Wing: Wraith Squadron and Wanted by Cracken, respectively. All of these organizations’ first appearances established their persecution by the Empire.

[6] The Inquisitorius was first mentioned in the Dark Empire Sourcebook, which describes it mission as “rooting out all that smacked of the old ways during the Great Purge.” The Grand Inquisitor was first mentioned in The Star Wars Sourcebook, and later identified by the Dark Empire Sourcebook as head of the Inquisitorius. It was called “a secret division of Imperial Intelligence” in the Rebellion Era Sourcebook, which adds that they “conduct searches of the farthest reaches of the Empire, most notably in the Outer Rim Territories,” looking for “Force-users – adepts, shamans, dark side devotees and alien students of the Force in all their forms, as well as any ancient Jedi that may have escaped the purges of the previous generation.”

The Ministry of Security was mentioned in “Imperial Advisor Golthan Leaves Court” (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 13). Its status as the portfolio with control of Imperial Intelligence is unattested.

Legal Authorization for Advanced Confinement Documents (LAACDocs) are mentioned as a legal innovation of High Inquisitor Tremayne in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim.

Inquisitors’ role in routine planetary suppressions is alluded to in the Dark Empire Sourcebook, which notes that the standard “Inquisition Module” for the modular taskforce cruiser is manned by “100 Inquisitors, 3,660 CompForce/observation staff, 10,000 interrogation droids” and is “used for punitive actions against insurgents and rebellious worlds.” The Module is equipped with “15,000 pre-fabircated disintegration chambers, two garrison bases, an Orbital Data Net Eraser unit, probes with sterilization spores, five cluster bombs with magnepulse bombs... and a complete orbital nightcloak system,” providing the basis for the particularly fearsome reputation of being left to the Inquisitorius’s tender mercies.

The term “audit” for Inquisitorius operations is mentioned by the scribe in The New Essential Guide to Characters, mentioning that an inquisitor’s great influence came from “wielding the bargaining tool of exemption from Inquisitorius audits.”

[7] The nickname “Palpatine’s Secret Police” for the Jedi Order during the late Clone War was mentioned in Yoda: Dark Rendezvous (it is not attested for the Inquisitorius). The Courtship of Princess Leia refers to a group of Jedi having been exterminated by “Lord Vader and his Dark Knights” without elaboration; their identification with the Inquisitorius is conjectural.

Citadel Inquisitorius, Prakith, is mentioned as the headquarters of the Inquisitorius in “Byss and the Deep Core, Part 3: Prakith.”

The fact that not all inquisitors are Force-sensitive was first established by Alliance Intelligence Reports, which includes High Inquisitor Mox Slosin, a Force-blind yet nevertheless high-ranking member of the Inquisitorius. Furthermore, former Master Jedi Jerec was identified as an inquisitor by The New Essential Guide to Characters, but it is made quite clear in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire that he kept his Jedi abilities secret, meaning that lack of preternatural abilities was not incompatible with service as an inquisitor.

Disruptors are described as a kind of extremely powerful firearm in The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology, which notes they were highly-restricted, and only “a very small number of Imperial officials — Imperial Security Bureau interrogators and inquisitors — were allowed to carry these inhumane weapons.”

Intelligence czar Blackhole used a mind-probe while interrogating prisoners on Vorzyd V in “Gambler’s World.” Grand Inquisitor Laddinare, Lord Torbin, was first mentioned in The Star Wars Sourcebook, and was identified as author of Strategems of the Inquisitorius by The New Essential Guide to Droids, in which he discussed the use of interrogation aids like the IT-O interrogator (first seen in A New Hope). His status as Judicial Department Information Director is mentioned in “People’s Inquest Demand Jedi Budget Reports” (HoloNet News Vol. 531, No. 48); his term as Attorney General is unattested. He was revealed to be an expert swordsman and a Jedi hunter-killer in “The Emperor’s Pawns” (Star Wars Gamer No. 5).

[8] The terminology “10-96,” its origin in “Imperial enforcement protocol,” and its relationship with the Old Corellian word ke’dem, are quoted without elaboration from “The Final Exit” (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 4).

The Lord Torbin’s assassination was first mentioned in The Star Wars Sourcebook. The vacancy in the office of Grand Inquisitor after his death was mentioned in the Dark Empire Sourcebook. Chief Inquisitor Loam Redge is seen at the Galactic Emperor’s Retreat on Naboo in Galaxies: An Empire Divided; his status as the Lord Torbin’s deputy and de facto successor is unattested. Ja’ce Yiaso appears in the same source, but is identified as Grand Inquisitor; his rank is corrected to chief inquisitor herein to satisfy the Dark Empire Sourcebook’s statement that the Lord Torbin was the last Grand Inquisitor, with the Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook establishing that his assassination took place at an unspecified time prior to the events of Han Solo’s Revenge in 33 rS.

Yiaso’s lackluster management of the Inquisitorius is unattested, but serves to explain the organization’s gradual slide into irrelevancy described by the Dark Empire Sourcebook, which notes that they had “long since outlived any usefulness” and “were unaware of their unpopularity.”

High Inquisitor Tremayne first appears in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim. Jerec first appears in Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, and was identified as an inquisitor in The New Essential Guide to Characters. Both are seen to operate independently at their own discretion or on direct orders from Darth Vader and the Galactic Emperor, with no reference to their nominal superiors in the Inquisitorius.

[9] In Tremayne’s first appearance in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim, it was established that the Star Destroyer Interrogator “is at his disposal at all times,” although his flagship is identified as the Inquisitor in “Dark Vendetta” (Star Wars Galaxy Magazine No. 8). Jerec was seen to have use of the Star Destroyer Vengeance, Captain Thrawn commanding, in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire (The New Essential Guide to Characters establishes that Jerec subsequently adopted a Super Star Destroyer also named Vengeance as his flagship).

Rokur Gepta, Sorcerer of Tund, first appears in Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, in which his ship is identified as the decommissioned Imperial cruiser Wennis, crewed by “military personnel, now indefinitely detached to serve aboard the decommissioned cruiser.” The Essential Chronology mentions that Gepta “enjoyed an amicable relationship with Emperor Palpatine,” who had “granted him near-total autonomy within the confines of the Centrality,” with the right to “command Imperial naval units.” The Centrality was identified as a client state of the Empire rather than a member state or incorporated territory in “A Campaign Guide to the Centrality” (Star Wars Gamer No. 5).

Thule first appeared in The Clone Wars, and was described in Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, which confirms that the ruling junta is a remnant of pre-Order Sith but maintained their allegiance to the reigning Sith Master, Darth Sidious, who kept it carefully isolated from the assets of the Imperial State.

Darth Vader’s personal internal spynet is first alluded to in “Dark Lord’s Gambit” (Star Wars Vol. 1, No. 35), in which he mentions “my spies” who kept him informed of the doings of Major General Ulric, Baron Tagge, a key member of a rival court party. In the comic adaptation of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, he again mentions “my spies” having identified Luke Skywalker as the destroyer of the Death Star. Vader’s henchmen are known to have included both military officers (Major Rahz of “Bring Me the Children: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker” and Special Forces operator Major Shira Ellan Colla Brie of “Hello, Bespin, Good-bye!”, Star Wars Vol. 1, No. 57) and fringer assassins (former Gunnery Sergeant Wrenga “Jix” Jixton of Shadows of the Empire: Shadow Stalker and the Noghri Death Commandos of Heir to the Empire), as well as training his own client magi (e.g., Flint from “The Apprentice,” Star Wars Annual No. 3, the Lord Hethrir of The Crystal Star, and Kharys, Majestrix of Skye, of “The Long Hunt,” Star Wars Annual No. 1).

The Shadow Droids and the Darktroopers first appeared in Dark Empire II; both are said to be “empowered” with the dark side of the Force. The extent of the Darktroopers’ training is conjectured from the statement in The Dark Side Sourcebook and the Royal Guard and Sovereign Protectors received only very basic training intended to “sustain the Emperor until help arrived” in the event that they failed to provide complete protection. The designations Black Watch (1st Battalion, Seventh Imperial Guards Regiment) and Sovereign Protectors (1st Battalion, First Imperial and Royal Guards Regiment) are unattested.

Captain Seledrood’s comment is quoted verbatim from the Imperial Sourcebook; his given name is unattested, as he is only identified as “Captain Seledrood (deceased).”

[10] Palpatine’s plan to replace the Moffs with his dark side adepts is explicitly described in the Dark Empire Sourcebook, which notes that “eventually these adepts would replace the system of Moffs, Grand Moffs and governors, instituting a Dark Side Theocracy [sic]”; in Threats of the Galaxy, it is noted that he “intended to train a new breed of noble, one completely subservient to the dark side, to replace the planetary governors who were hoping to have a more direct hand in his control over the galaxy.”

The idyllic nature of Palpatine’s dark side theocracy is also described in the Dark Empire Sourcebook, which describes the prototypical Byss as being “a mythic world, bathed in the Dark Side [sic] of the Force,” “reputed to be a peaceful and beautiful world,” with “enormous leisure and habitation complexes,” home to 19.8 billions who “live out the rest of their lives in harmless amusements and pageants” on “a mystic siren world, whose surreal shores and glimmering oceans held the promise of contentment unattainable anywhere else.”

Palpatine’s career as a writer is mentioned in the Core Rulebook, which notes that his “early notes on the nature of power” became “popular political texts” and were “taught at universities throughout the galaxy”; The Paths to Power is mentioned by name as one of his books which had topped “the best-seller lists” in “Palpatine’s Triumphs: A Celebration” (Republic HoloNet News Special Inaugural Edition 16:5:241, Star Wars Insider No. 84), although The New Tranquility is unattested. The Weakness of Inferiors passage regarding “control, without violence” is quoted verbatim from the Dark Empire Sourcebook (the second passage regarding civilization is unattested). The New Essential Guide to Characters claims that Palpatine “merged political theory with Sith doctrine” in The Book of Anger, but this is an obvious error, as The Weakness of Inferiors is doctrinal while The Book of Anger is phenomenological.

The infiltration of dark side adepts into the Imperial State is first mentioned as such in the Dark Empire Sourcebook, which notes that “before the Emperor’s defeat, many had been gathered into the Imperial Ruling Council”; “The Emperor’s Pawns” adds that Sarcev Quest, an Emperor’s Hand, “became the first darksider [sic] to infiltrate the Imperial Ruling Council.” Sim Aloo and Janus Greejatus were identified as dark side adepts on the “Imperial council [sic]” in the Death Star II Expansion Set. The Lord Hethrir was identified as the Procurator of Justice in The Crystal Star, while Darth Vader’s appointment as Supreme Commander is described in Dark Empire, which notes that Luke Skywalker had “taken his father’s place as the Emperor’s protégé and Supreme Commander of the Imperial forces.”

[Illuminatus Primus]

Another brilliant entry. This is pretty much the finally "integrated" interpretation of Palpatine's countless dark side peons.

[Desdinova]

I absolutely hate what LF did to the Secret Order (that is, integrating it into the Dumbasses of the Dark Side cult... gah). It's nice to see an argument against that.

[Publius]

THE NEW ORDER IN POWER

Chapter Six: The College of Moffs

The Moffs

The title "Moff" itself has a long lineage; the word is attested in the meaning of "potentate" or "grandee" as early as 17,729 BrS in a series of High Galactic peace treaties between the Senex Lords and the Kings of the Twelve Proxen. In some quarters of the galaxy it evolved into a ruling title in its own right (for the most part extinct by the time of the Great Hyperspace War), while in others it led a vestigial existence as an archaic title for certain high officers (the University of Caldera, for example, still titles the head of its medical school the Moff of Apothecary and Physic). By the Late Siltrine Period, it was mostly used in belles-lettres and poetry, evoking an almost numinous sense of a bygone era of 'Great Men' (the most famous use being in Palchryne's essay "On the Need for Latter Day Moffs in a New Order of Ages"). It seems unsurprising, then, that a belletrist and classicist of Palpatine's stature should have been familiar with it, and made quick use of it in a calculated appeal to the millennial yearnings of the postwar era; longtime propagandist and ci-devant Podium press secretary Pollux Hax's memoirs mention that as an assistant private secretary in the newly-upgraded His Imperial Majesty's Household, he'd written a privy memorandum suggesting the Old Esselian title "Grandix" be brought into general use, only to be overruled by Palpatine himself, who preferred "Moff." Thus, in 16 rS the Imperial Chancellery released an Imperial Decree (countersigned by the Grand Vizier, HIMAG(IS), and the Lord President of the Council) establishing "Moff of the Empire" as a "style, title, or attribute" to be bestowed at the pleasure of The Throne. It was in effect a special dignity to be granted to the cardinals of the Empire, men and women who served in key positions and held the Emperor's personal favor. As with most major state offices, The Throne made appointments on the advice of the Privy Council (the only other appointment handled directly by the Privy Council rather than by its committee HIM Government or other select committee was that of the Minister President himself). [1]

The Moff was styled "His Excellency" and entitled to the postnominal initials ME; additionally, he had the legal right to infix the title into his substantive name (thus Wilhuff Tarkin became Wilhuff Moff Tarkin), and even enjoyed some of the traditional trappings of sovereign royalty (such as the celebrated right to walk beneath a canopy during state ceremonial). The Table of Ranks made special provision for him, creating an entirely new level for him above ministers, secretaries of state, high admirals, surface marshals, and ambassadors (a matter of no small importance, because it was specified that a Moff took precedence immediately after a privy counsellor but before a candidate member of the Council — meaning that if the Minister of the Interior or Minister of the Colonies was not a full privy counsellor, he actually took precedence after his subordinate governors who also happened to be Moffs). Despite his status as a civilian, a Moff had the right to wear the uniform of the Armed Forces of the Imperium instead of the State Services uniform, carried a saber instead of a dagger, and was entitled to wear gold epaulettes and a gold aiguillette on his right shoulder while in dress uniform (the aiguillette on the right shoulder was a conspicuous indication of affiliation with HIM Household). He shared the privy counsellor's immunity to arrest except in case of breach of the Galactic Emperor's peace, and was uniquely privileged to ignore a subpoena — a Moff was privileged to provide all testimony in writing rather than appearing before any court or tribunal (legally, only the Galactic Emperor could require a Moff's presence, meaning that the Ruling Council was the only body that could order him to appear before it). As previously noted, Moffs were in fact civilians, and in some cases their new place on the Table of Ranks placed them well above where they had previously served in the Armed Forces (e.g., Marcellin Moff Wessel, Governor of Immalia Sector, was actually a colonel). [2]

In keeping with the Palpatinist-Tarkinist doctrine of "organic holistics" (i.e., corporativism), the Moffs were administered by the College of Moffs, a state corporation charged with regulating their pay, allowances, and benefits. Although the relationship between the individual Moff and the College was in theory the same as the relationship between the individual judge or lawyer and the College of Judicature or the individual minister or secretary of state and the Council of Ministers, in actual practice the College's ability to dictate policy or force compliance was significantly reduced by the very nature of Moffhood: A Moff by definition held the Galactic Emperor's favor, and it was no simple matter to discipline one of "The Emperor's Own." As a result, the College of Moffs became less of an administrative body and more of a private club, transmogrified by its members' preferences into something of an advocacy group. A sizeable legal department was established and charged with protecting the privileges of the College's members; a Moff facing civil or criminal charges enjoyed some of the finest legal representation in the galaxy, provided at the College's expense (despite the intense and often lethal rivalries within the College, it was universally agreed that no one benefited if the prestige or privileges of Moffhood were in any way damaged by outsiders — where "outsiders" included the courts). Unlike most of the Empire's state corporations, however, the members of the College of Moffs were all at the same level on the Table of Ranks, which meant there was no single preeminent member with an undisputed claim to headship of the college (cf. the Minister President and the Lord Justice President). Consequently, the position of Dean of the College of Moffs — customarily an honor bestowed on the Governor General of the Core Worlds whenever that officer was also a member of the College, otherwise belonging to the next senior governor general who was also a member of the College — was a largely honorary one, with a great deal of prestige and influence at court but little actual power. Ironically, despite their status as "The Emperor's Own," the College of Moffs never actually adhered to the Palpatinist-Tarkinist ideal described in the so-called 'Leadership Principle.' [3]

The title of Moff is often incorrectly believed to be strictly gubernatorial, and in many cases it was used as a synonym for governor. Needless to say, this is not correct; not all Moffs were governors nor were all governors Moffs. It is true that the large majority of Moffs were governors, but it is fallacious to insist that the one must be accompanied by the other (to say nothing of factual impossibility — at any given time there were more several thousand Sectors but the total number of Moffs never exceeded the maximum of 1,600 established in the initial Imperial Decree). Moffs were found in a number of different offices under the Empire, including senior administrators, military commanders, program directors, and even Government ministers and diplomatic agents. [4]

A second (and closely related) error is the commonly held belief that Moffs were sector governors. This second error stems from the fact that the Empire had two types of Sector-based governor: sector governors and regional governors (the large majority of Moffs governors were regional governors vice sector governors). The office of sector governor was an established part of the multilayered federal structure of the Republic, with a limited role in administering the affairs of Sector-level devolved governments. Popularly elected within his own Sector, the governor's authority was limited by the local constitution, statutes, customary law, and gentlemen's agreements between Great Powers holding interests in the Sector (the Tradyne Sector, for example, was subject to an understanding on tariffs between Corellia and Detapa, both Great Powers with interests in the Sector despite being located in different Regions altogether). As an agent of the sector government, he had no authority over Republican assets like the Sector Rangers or the Republican Guard — both under the control of the Republic-appointed sector coordinator — and lacked the ability of the Sector's senator to assume direct control of the Republic's security assets; for this reason, the sector governor was in many Sectors regarded as a kind of chief administrator on the sector assembly's behalf rather than a chief executive in his own right (there were, of course, exceptions; in some Sectors the sector governor was a powerful figure in local and even regional politics). [5]

The office of regional governor was much newer, dating only to the Sector Governance Decree of 16 rS, one of the last major reforms of the Galactic Unity Government prior to the establishment of the Empire; regional governors were appointed rather than elected, and were not subject to recall or removal at the Sector level. As an agent of the Republic Authority (soon to be replaced by the Imperial State), the regional governor was supreme commander of galactic military and naval forces in the Sector, and soon acquired control of galactic police and civil service local assets, as well. The regional governor was not accountable to the sector assembly — he reported instead to the Senate via HIM Government and to the Privy Council — and even had the authority to issue executive orders with force of law. The two offices existed in parallel; Sectors continued to elect sector governors even after regional governors were appointed, but it soom became clear that sector governors were rapidly facing into irrelevancy in the face of their much more vigorous counterparts. Many Sectors streamlined their local governments to eliminate redundancy of effort with the regional governorate, or even abolished them altogether (to say nothing of not wanting to pay the de facto sinecure salary of the lame-duck sector governor). Even the full title was different: The sector governor's full title was generally "Governor of X Sector," whereas the regional governor employed the more formidable title "Governor and Supreme Commander in and over X Sector" (in actual practice, this distinction was only seen in the most formal contexts). A Moff as regional governor was usually referred to as "Moff Governor," or occasionally the more archaic form "Governor Moff." [6]

The Moff regional governor was the chief representative of the Imperial State in the Sector, and had a great deal of control over the sector administration (although his authority over "His Imperial Majesty's Government for X Sector" included the local His Imperial Majesty's Attorney and his office, it did not extend to the Imperial courts of the third tier or inferior tribunals, except of course for courts martial). He could interfere as much or as little as he liked in the performance of subordinate governors' and territorial administrators' duties, and could even assume direct responsibility as governor of a particularly favored jurisdiction at his pleasure. He had authority to prescribe the structure for the devolved HIMG by decree, could set policy on his own initiative, and could even dismiss officers from the State Services or the Armed Forces under his authority without reference to the ministries (most famously in the cases of Ternau Moff pà and Surface Marshal Grigori O'Carraghix, dismissed in disgrace after a rancorous quarrel over a game of Firepath, and of Iosif Carran Moff the Garland Mór and Permanent Secretary Sir Petr bel Tarriweather, dismissed because of "irreconcilable sartorial differences") — unlike the Minister President's Cabinet on Imperial Center, the devolved HIMGs had no ministers, and thus the approval of the Council of Ministers was unnecessary for even the most sweeping personnel decisions regarding the Civil Service (and in any case, most ministers were not even candidate members of the Council, and were thus outranked by a Moff). The regional governor could appoint anyone he liked to his cabinet (if he decided to keep a cabinet), and could even go so far as to delegate day-to-day control to a prime minister or first secretary or whatever title he was inclined to use. Furthermore, as supreme commander, the regional governor had total control of the Sector Command, the sum total of all Imperial Navy, Army, Marine, and Intelligence regular forces stationed within the Sector, as well as having authority over the local sepoy forces and any allied forces while the latter were actually operating with Imperial forces. Most prominently, a regional governor was assigned a personal security detachment from an Imperial Guards unit, and always had at his personal disposal a Marine legion (which acquired the official style "The Moff's Own" when the regional governor was a Moff as a consequence of his patronage). Despite his subordination and responsibility to the Senate, the Privy Council, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of the Colonies, and the local Grand Moff governor general, the Moff regional governor had considerable discretion in his administration of the Sector. Indeed, the Moff's free hand to rule as he pleased was responsible for some of the most notorious scandals and abuses of power in the Empire. [7]

All Sectors were not created equal. The oldest Sectors in the Galactic Core, established in the early days of the Republic, were designed to include approximately fifty inhabited planets. As time passed, the definition of a Sector became much less specific, so that the youngest Sectors in the outlands regions of the galaxy were in some cases dozens or even hundreds of times larger in volume than their Coreward brethren. Similarly, the economic conditions varied radically from Sector to Sector, from the economic powerhouses of the Core such as Kuat Sector to the impoverished subsistence worlds of Arkanis Sector in the Outer Rim. Most importantly, however, political conditions were different. The Great Powers of the galaxy were heavily concentrated near the Core, and each was nestled comfortably at the heart of a vast sphere of influence (as described in De la Hauterie's Satellite States); in many cases entire Sectors were dominated totally by a single state, either by territorial coterminousness or by more informal means. The political conditions in a Sector had a tremendous impact on the regional governorate, for obvious reasons; in a Sector containing one or more Great Powers, a regional governor could expect to face close scrutiny from powerful forces in the Senate, and was forced to be cautious in discharging his duties (to say nothing of having to contend with the entrenched influence of the Great Powers themselves). Contrariwise, a Sector in the Outer Rim, often bereft of Great Powers and far from the watchful eyes of the Senate, had nothing at all to check the power of the regional governor. The result was a radical variation in the character of a regional governorate's administration, whereby one could find benevolent paternalism in one Sector and iron-fisted autocracy in the next; the large majority of Imperial atrocities and oppression took place in "the Sticks," as Core Worlders derisively referred to the outland regions. Needless to say, a governorship of a Sector in the wealthy and cosmopolitan Core Worlds Region might have offered less freedom of action than a Sector in the Outer Rim Territories Region, but the difference in prestige was enough to make up for it; Core Worlds governorships were highly sought-after among Moffs, not least for the privilege of residing in sumptuous palaces in the lap of luxury. [8]

The Grand Moffs

Sectors have historically arranged into groups traditionally called Regions, but like the Sectors themselves, all Regions were not created equal; they could range from as few as three to as many as several thousands of Sectors, and there was no sense in pretending that the smallest were remotely as important as the largest. Accordingly, although they were all commonly referred to simply as Regions without further elaboration, in actual fact the Republic Authority had instituted a classification scheme dividing them into three types, viz., the Lesser Region, the Greater Region, and the Galactic Region. So easily understood was the classification that the distinction was rarely made in practice, even in official correspondence. Only in the most formal of legal texts would one find reference to (for example) the Region of the Prylex Commons, the Greater Region of the Bright Jewel Cluster, or the Core Worlds Region of the Galaxy, instead leaving them as simply the Prylex Commons, the Bright Jewel System Cluster, or the Core Worlds. (As it happens, scandocs that used the full titles were usually of the same kind that would later make the distinction between the Governor of the Sector and the Governor and Supreme Commander in and over the Sector.) As with Sectors, the prestige associated with each Region varied wildly according to its political and economic circumstances; their borders were as likely to reflect historical association or sentimentality as astronomical proximity or sound economics, and the outlands Regions never carried anything remotely like the importance and gravitas of their Coreward brethren. Nevertheless, they all had one thing in common: The Republic Authority was represented by a governor general, who was appointed by the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic and held the personal rank of a head of state. For millennia, the rank of governor general represented an achievement greater even than having risen to the post of General Minister. Only the Supreme Chancellery itself was regarded as a greater honor than the governorate general within the executive branch of the Republic. [9]

The establishment of the Empire brought rapid changes. In the first place, the governor general was classified as an Executive of the Imperium, and thus the traditional household regiments were replaced by personal security detachments of Imperial Guards stormtroopers (although many Regions chose to continue the practice of equipping household regiments for tradition's sake). The governors general were given much greater authority to regulate the affairs of their Regions, including the right to issue orders to sector governors and the newly-established regional governors, and to oversee the work of the newly-created HIMAGs' Regional chancelleries; the appointment of governors general became an Imperial and Royal Prerogative, and in the process the governor general was upgraded from representative of the Imperial State to the representative of The Throne itself. The old practice of appointing distinguished diplomats and jurists was discontinued in favor of professional civil servants and Galactic Emperor's Commissioned Officers (GECOs) — in fact, it rapidly became clear that service as a regional governor was practically a sine qua non of the governorate general. To acknowledge the newfound importance of the office in the tightening federal structure of the Empire, the decision was rapidly made in late 16 rS to create a new rank within the College of Moffs, to be bestowed upon the governors general who found the Galactic Emperor's favor. Thus was born the rank of Grand Moff of the Empire. [10]

The Grand Moff held considerable prestige in the Empire; it is with good reason that the Grand Moffs were dubbed "the Incorruptible's fair-haired children." In the first place, his appointment was a clear mark of the Galactic Emperor's personal favor — unusually, the Privy Council had little input in the matter, leaving the creation of Grand Moffs one of the few overtly exercised "reserve powers" of The Throne. Like the less radiant Moff, the Grand Moff was styled "His Excellency" and enjoyed the use of legally-regulated postnominal initials (GME), as well as all the other privileges of the Moff like the canopy and the uniform of the Armed Forces of the Imperium. But the Grand Moff's privileges were even greater; he carried a different baton than did the Moffs, surface marshals, and high admirals, was entitled to an apanage, and was totally immune to arrest except by a specially-appointed commissioner of The Throne. Furthermore, he took precedence before even the privy counsellors, ranking with the Peers of the Empire and heads of state (hence the famous holo of Minister President Tarasikodissa Iesayu stepping aside for Indutiomarus Grand Moff Trachta). The office of Dean of the College of Moffs was reserved for the Grand Moff Governor General of the Core Worlds Region of the Galaxy, or to the next senior Grand Moff governor general in the theoretical event that he was not a member (in actual practice, very few governors general did not receive the rank). No Grand Moff was ever appointed who was not already sworn of the Council, and they were frequently major players of court intrigue; a cabal of Grand Moffs who jokingly dubbed themselves the "Central Committee" of the College of Moffs — or occasionally even the tongue-in-cheek "Mofference" — were the core of one of the court's most enduring parties. [11]

It seems inevitable that any discussion of the Grand Moffs must become a discussion of the best-known among them, Wilhuff Grand Moff Tarkin, who was early on recognized as one of the ablest of Palpatine's "Whiz Kid" technocrats. Scion of the patrician Tarkins of Eriadu, he had served as Lieutenant Governor of Seswenna Sector before the Clone War, only to return afterward as Governor of Seswenna Sector and then as the newly-appointed Governor and Supreme Commander in and over Seswenna Sector. In addition to his duties as both a sector and regional governor, he was a leading figure at court, a privy counsellor, and one of the chief architects of the Palpatinist-Tarkinist ideology (as implied by the very name); over the course of his career, he would add Minister of the Interior of the Galactic Empire, Imperial Senator for the Social Republic of Eriadu and the Seswenna Sector, and President of the Social Republic of Eriadu to his list of offices, as well as his place as Honorary Vice Chairman of the Select Committee of COMPNOR, the New Order Galactic Committee's First Assistant General Secretary for the Galaxy, and General Secretary of the New Order Party of the Outer Rim. He was, as one holojournalist once put it, "kind of a big deal." As acting Governor General of the Outer Rim Territories Region of the Galaxy, Tarkin was the foremost executor of the postwar reconstruction policies of the Imperial State, sidestepping traditional legal restrictions by appealing to his mandate to stamp out Separatist holdouts, to institute the rule of (Imperial) law, and to enforce the Galactic Emperor's Peace. As these wartime powers began to expire by virtue of their sunset clauses, and with no Senatorial Amendments in sight to extend them, the "Pocket Grand Moff" — so called because of his status as an acting governor general, which left him not quite a Grand Moff but something rather more than a "mere" Moff — submitted a privy memorandum to The Throne suggesting (among other things) that these wartime powers to cross Sector boundaries be packaged together into a new territorial unit, which he called a Priority Sector or Oversector (the two terms, Basic and Galactic Standard, appear interchangeably in Tarkin's scandocs; the use of the one over the other has been source of no small amount of controversy among historians). Although the actual correspondence was handled by Ars Dangor, President of the Ruling Council, there is no question among reputable historians that Palpatine himself was intimately involved in the proposal. Tarkin's memorandum was made the basis for an official policy statement of the Imperial State, which Dangor named the Tarkin Doctrine. As for Tarkin himself, the rewards were considerable: He was appointed both His Imperial Majesty's Plenipotentiary for the Suppression of Rebellion and Governor General and Supreme Commander in and over Oversector Outer, a new kind of governorate general appointed directly by The Throne (or the Ruling Council), without any input at all from the Privy Council. Needless to say, this promotion carried with it elevation to the coveted degree of Grand Moff of the Empire. [12]

The Tarkin Doctrine was one of the most radical changes in the whole course of the Empire. The Revisionist school has generally attempted to downplay the novelty of the Oversector, pointing to the appointment of privy counsellors as proconsuls over Special Areas — the official title was of course "rector" rather than "proconsul" — as an intellectual prototype. The facts simply do not support this assessment; Special Areas were ad hoc groupings of political responsibility, with no attempt made at formally incorporating them as a separate jurisdiction, and they lacked consistent organization, usually simply "piggybacking" off the existing government structures. In contrast, the Oversector was a fully-functioning territorial unit, defined without reference to existing borders, and included both a professional civil service, a functioning judicial system — the principal officer of the justice system was dubbed HIM Procurator General (vice the Region's HIM Attorney General) — , and a standing military and navy. The governor general of an Oversector could not only commandeer whatever Sector-based military or naval forces happened to be operating under the regional governor's orders within his area of responsibility, but also had command of his own permanently attached forces; no Oversector was ever incorporated without at least the equivalent of two full Sector Commands. The Oversector governor general had authority to issue orders to regional governors within his jurisdiction — meaning, of course, that in some cases a Sector might fall under the authority of a sector governor, regional governor, regional governor general, and oversector governor general at the same time and in the same respect — and unlike the Moffs regional governors, was not subject to HIMG's or the Privy Council's control. But the real utility of the Oversector was in its modularity: Because it did not conform to traditional territorial bounds of Sector and Region, an Oversector could be used to sidestep or short-circuit the vested interests and spheres of influence of local Great Powers. Thus Tarkin of Eriadu, who had been unable to become Governor General of the Outer Rim Territories Region due to forceful opposition among rival Great Powers in the Outer Rim, became a Grand Moff by making an endrun around them and their entrenched influence via the Governorate General of Oversector Outer. The Oversector was in many ways a frontal assault on the ages-old system of the Great Powers and their spheres of influence. So successful was this tactic that within a few years, Tarkin had broken his rivals' stranglehold on the office and succeeded in adding the Governorate General of the Outer Rim Territories to his repertoire, thus becoming the iron-fisted dictator of the largest volume of space directly controlled by a single being in the known universe. [13]

Officially, Oversectors were created to counter continued Separatist subversion and increasing Rebel violence. This justification was accepted at face value at first, but rapidly descended into the depths of legal fiction; while Separatism and Rebellion were plausible justifications for Oversector Outer, Bright Jewel Priority Sector, and even Quelii Oversector, but the establishment of Imperial Center Oversector — "Sector Zero," in spacer slang — , which incorporated the naval might of Anaxes, the so-called "Defender of the Core," into the newly-established forces of Azure Hammer Command, smacked of a blatant power grab, giving rise to one of the most rancorous court cases in Imperial history. Ultimately the case of Dell vs. Galactic Empire, 7 G.E. 114 (26), went before the Supreme Court of the Galactic Empire, where it was seized upon by the Lord Justice President, the notoriously acid-penned Duke of Burr Nolyds, as an opportunity to put the Senate in its place. Peppered liberally with thinly-veiled excoriation of Senator Harkon Dell, the Opinion of the Court was one of the most sweeping statements of the Imperial State's authority in matters of galactic security, and one of the few times the Supreme Court ventured to describe the Imperial and Royal Prerogative in anything like clear terms. Nevertheless, the frontal assault on the Great Powers' traditional spheres of influence did not go unanswered, giving rise to frequent use of the Senate's oversight powers to try to wrest control back from the Grand Moffs, especially in His Imperial Majesty's Other Territories, those fifty million territorial jurisdictions not legally incorporated into any dominion and therefore relegated to the demesne of The Throne. Unsurprisingly, the Oversector system was one of the most frequently criticized aspects of the Empire, frequently described as a "tightening of the grip" designed to stamp out lingering Republicanism. Indeed, the system dovetails quite nicely with the other "Rationalization" policies intended to increase Imperial control at the expense of the Great Powers (such as the codification of law and equity into a single codex juris, the standardization of the galaxy's medical practices into a single health code, and the attempted imposition of a uniform system of bankruptcy law). The Revisionist school has long noted that not everything in Tarkin's memorandum to The Throne proposing the system was new: Most notably, the Death Star Project was already well underway by the time Tarkin officially proposed it, and many Revisionists have suggested that the Oversector had been planned out in advance by Palpatine and Tarkin as an alternative to the war-powers regional governorate general, with the actual proposal itself being a mere pantomime (itself not at all unprecedented in Palpatine's and Tarkin's long collaboration). Luke Skywalker's Reminiscences go even further, claiming that Palpatine only intended the Oversector system as a transitional phase, ultimately intending to replace the entire governorate structure with direct theocratic rule by the Hierarchy. [14]

Endnotes

[1] The hegemonic Lords of the Senex Sector appeared in Children of the Jedi, in which it was established that they were sufficiently ancient as to regard Coruscant as déclassé.

"Meet Your Regional Governors" (Republic HoloNet News Special Inaugural Edition, Star Wars Insider No. 84) specifically states that Palpatine chose the title "Moff" as "an evocative tribute to the satraps of the small space empires who grew the ancient Republic" (it also establishes that the title was in use immediately after Palpatine's enthronement in 16 rS). Pollux Hax is identified as a former "chief of the Emperor's propaganda dissemination section" in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe; his status as an assistant private secretary and his involvement in the selection of the title is unattested.

The Imperial Sourcebook states that the Emperor's advisors "usually appoint the planetary governors, as well as some of the Moffs, and oversee the political machinery of the Empire" (although it adds that "a few are just holo-approvals of candidates the Emperor has chosen"). The Rebellion Era Sourcebook states this more forcefully: "The moffs were appointed by the Emperor and his advisors."

[2] Moffs were styled "His Excellency" in Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future (and anyway it is the conventional form for high-ranking state officials not entitled to a more specific style). Moffs are specifically identified as civilians rather than commissioned officers in the Imperial Sourcebook, which notes that under the Empire "civilian orders are now transmitted at the level of the Sector Group, from regional Moffs, Grand Moffs, or the Emperor himself." Nevertheless nearly all Moffs who have appeared in the canon have worn the drab duty uniform of the Imperial armed forces, with rank badges.

The Star Wars Sourcebook mentions a "Naval sword" being used in a surrender ceremony hosted by General Irrv, an Army officer, indicating uniformity throughout the services (evidently in favor of the Navy). The Hutt Gambit goes further and explicitly identifies the weapon as a "ceremonial officer's saber," making it an important symbol of the officer's authority (the breaking of the saber's blade is mentioned as a part of the formal ceremony of degradation preceding an officer's dismissal in disgrace).

"What Sin Loyalty?" (Empire No. 13) establishes that officers in the grade of commander and lieutenant colonel may wear epaulettes on their dress uniforms, while gold epaulettes are attested only in the grade of grand admiral (and, presumably by extension, grand general). An aide to Grand Moff Tarkin is seen wearing an aiguillette on the left shoulder in Mara Jade: By the Emperor's Hand. The Moff's special affiliation with the Emperor is attested by the Lords of the Expanse Gamemaster Guide which notes that the Moff is "assigned to represent the Emperor," while Planet of Twilight says that a Moff generally rules "in the name of the Emperor."

Moff Wessel's rank of colonel is explicitly stated in "Meet Your Regional Governors."

[3] Imperial politics as a complicated affair of intrigues and frequent violence is well-established in the canon. The Hero's Guide mentions that dueling remains a common practice among the upper class, and court intrigues are known to have resulted in the deaths of some of the principals (e.g., the Prince Xizor of Falleen in Shadows of the Empire and Orman, Baron Tagge, in "In Mortal Combat!," Star Wars Vol. 1, No. 37). "Soldiers of the Empire!" (Star Wars Official Poster Monthly No. 4) notes that "the personal ambitions of the leader one [an Imperial Guards stormtrooper] is assigned to protect may give rise to little-publicized but very lethal feuds," adding that "the size of a titled officer's private army is a factor in realizing his political goals, and Imperial Guards often find themselves in the role of his men," and that "a Guard never feels he is playing the traitor by assassinating rival Imperial Officers," revealing that assassination is not only common, but even uses official resources. In Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama, Darth Vader rejects the use of outright physical torture in favor of mind-altering drugs, hypnotic suggestion, and psychic probing, because a high-level Imperial politician will have had "access to many family and government secrets" and consequently will have been "specifically trained and prepared to withstand conventional questioning," necessitating "levels of pain so high as to risk killing her" to conduct an effective interrogation-by-torture.

[4] Several Moffs have appeared who have no gubernatorial function, such as Moff Kadir, the treacherous Commander of Imperial Center Security in "Betrayal" (Empire Nos. 1 - 4), and Moff Jerjerrod, the Director, Imperial Energy Systems, in the Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook; conversely, several Sector Governors have appeared who are not Moffs, such as Sector Governor Paro Lanto in Galaxy Guide 4: Alien Races and Sector Governor Nardix in "Of Possible Futures: The Tale of Zuckuss and 4-LOM" (Tales of the Bounty Hunters). The Rebellion Era Sourcebook states that "the position of moff was a political and administrative position similar in function to that of sector governor," making explicit the difference between the two.

The Imperial Sourcebook explicitly states that Regions can "contain from as few as three to upwards of thousands of sectors." Elsewhere, it states that a Sector Group is "all of the military forces assigned to a given sector of space," and adds that "thousands of Sector Groups are at the Emperor's command."

In addition to the examples of Kadir and Jerjerrod, Grand Moff 4-8C was seen as head of Imperial Redesign in Prisoners of the Nikto Pirates, and the late Moff Giiedt was mentioned as having been the Imperial "liaison" to the Tiss'sharl League (a diplomatic post) in "The Price of Power" (Empire No. 31).

[5] The Rebellion Era Sourcebook states that sector governors were "elected by the people." The authority of sector coordinators (mentioned in Shatterpoint) as contrasted with sector governors is unattested, but the Imperial Sourcebook states that in the "Republican Navy" (here treated as the Republic's security assets), "Senators or other politically powerful beings could directly commandeer naval vessels — sometimes entire squadrons — for missions without having the order come down through the chain of command."

[6] Despite the terminology, "Regional Governors" did not in fact govern Regions. "Meet Your Regional Governors" describes newly-appointed Moffs who govern specific Sectors (Moff Tarkin, Governor of Seswenna Sector; Moff Denn Wessex, Governor of Relgim Sector; and Moff Wessel, Governor of Immalia Sector), and specifically says that these "regional governors" received "the honorary title of Moff" (the Imperial Sourcebook states that "Sectors are governed by Moffs"). Threats of the Galaxy explicitly states that "Palpatine installed regional governors, called Moffs, to oversee the galaxy's sectors and exert control over unruly populations, nominally to shore up their defenses against the Separatists." Although the Imperial Sourcebook says that "the title 'regional governor' is commonly used" for Grand Moffs, this must be understood as a colloquial usage in light of the evidence.

The Sector Governance Decree is mentioned in Revenge of the Sith, which reveals that it instituted a system of assigning governors to every planet in the Republic, "arriving with full regiments of clone troops — what they call security forces"; Palpatine described their role as "coordinating planetary defense forces, and ensuring that neighboring systems mesh into cooperative units, and bringing production facilities up to speed in service to the war effort." The Imperial Sourcebook also establishes the basis for the Moff's responsibility to the government and privy council, noting that "a Moff reports to an advisor, with duplicate reports being sent directly to the Emperor."

The parallel of the office of sector governor and regional governor is inferred from the Rebellion Era Sourcebook's previously cited comparison of the role of the Moff to that of the sector governor, and the claim that "the moffs and the senators shared the responsibility of keeping star sectors orderly, prosperous, and obedient to the Empire." The gradual obsolescence of the sector governor is derived from the same source's claim that "elected governors were removed gradually until the moffs held power throughout the Empire."

The specific title "supreme commander" vis-à-vis Sector-based forces is mentioned in Specter of the Past. A secret memorandum from privy counselor Ars Dangor to Moff Tarkin quoted in the Death Star Technical Companion addresses the latter as "Governor Moff Tarkin." The same style is seen in "Soldiers of the Empire!"

[7] The Imperial Sourcebook states that in his capacity as "the being in charge of an entire sector" the Moff "has command over a military Sector Group, and is responsible for the security of the entire sector" and goes on to say that "the Moffs have authority over their sectors, and are responsible for administering the sector-wide bureaucracy," and that they "are known to frequently remold the local bureaucracies, including the sector-wide government, planetary governments (through governors) and even more localized governments, making them more 'agreeable' to the Moff's personal objectives while still adhering to Imperial standards." It notes that governors receive instructions from two sources, "the generally stated policy goals which are distributed by the Diplomatic Service, and [...] direct orders received from the Moff," and "in case of a conflict, the Moff's orders are to be followed"; elsewhere it bluntly states that "the planetary governors of a sector are under a Moff's control." The Moff's freedom to take on a particular governorate is also explicitly stated: "It is not unusual for a Moff to also serve as a governor of a particularly favored world within his sector."

Firepath is a strategy board game played by Darth Vader and Lady Dhol in "Dark Lord's Conscience" (Devilworlds No. 1).

The term "Sector Group" is used in the Imperial Sourcebook to refer both to "all of the military forces assigned to a given sector of space" (both Army and Navy) and to "the total of Naval strength in a sector" (the highest naval echelon, equivalent to the Army's sector army, which "covers all troops in a given sector"). Herein the term 'Sector Command' is substituted for the joint-service Sector Group, leaving the latter term for the Navy echelon.

Imperial Navy and Imperial Army are seen in A New Hope. The stormtroopers are identified as a separate branch of service ("stormtroopers operate independently of the military and answer directly to the Emperor" with "their own chain of command" and "follow the Imperial army and navy at their 'discretion'") in the Technical Journal of the Imperial Forces, and are specifically named as the Imperial Marines in "Pax Empirica — The Wookiee Annihilation" (Galactic Battlegrounds: Prima's Official Strategy Guide). Imperial Intelligence is identified as a separate branch of service ("an official arm of the military") in the Death Star Technical Companion. The Imperial Sourcebook mentions that Surface Officers Training Doctrine specifically provides for operations in concert with local auxiliaries, with the Imperial regulars in a decidedly superior posture in the relationship.

The Imperial Sourcebook mentions that "no Imperial Ambassador, Grand Moff, Moff, Admiral or Governor General goes anywhere in public without an honor guard of at least 10 stormtroopers," while "Soldiers of the Empire!" mentions that elite stormtroopers are assigned to the "Imperial Guards," in which capacity they serve as bodyguards to "an Executive of the Imperium," and specifically notes "Governor Moff Tarkin's personal guard... 40 men. Lord Darth Vader's personal guard... 12 men," hence the identification of the Moff's bodyguard as being a detachment of an Imperial Guards unit (where 'guards' is a unit designation). The regional governor's direct command of a Marine legion is mentioned in Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForce Handbook, which notes that "a common arrangement is to assign a legion to each branch of sector's Imperial government: one legion for the Army, another for the Navy, and a third to the Moff's discretion (the Moff's Own)."

In A New Hope, Grand Moff Tarkin notes that the dissolution of the Senate means that "the Regional Governors will have direct control," implying an oversight role for the Senate in the affairs of the regional governors and the Imperial State's territorial administration. The Moff's subordination to the Cabinet is only unsupported, but the role of the privy council is stated in the Imperial Sourcebook, which notes that "a Moff reports to an advisor, with duplicate reports being sent directly to the Emperor."

[8] The territorial definition of a Sector as containing fifty inhabited planets is specifically stated in the Imperial Sourcebook, as is the definition's decay to include "unimaginably large sectors [that] contain vast numbers of inhabited worlds with no regard to limiting factors." The Core Worlds' economic status is stated in "Into the Core Worlds" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal Vol. 1, No. 7), which calls them "the economic engines of the Empire"; the same source establishes quite clearly the difference in the Empire's approach to government in the Core Worlds versus the outlands, calling it a direct result of "the Emperor's policy of showing only a beneficial face to the Core populace," where "there are few signs of suffering, and little evidence of the oppression and tyranny common to more remote worlds languishing beneath the Empire's jackboots." It goes on to say that "since the Core worlds are so important to the Empire, Moffs supervise only a few worlds rather than one entire sector," and "most locate their homes and offices on the most prominent world in a prominent sector," saying that "being assigned a Core World sector is a highly sought-after plum for Moffs." It also defines "the Sticks" as a derisive Core Worlder term for the outland regions.

Kuat Sector is mentioned in Platt's Starport Guide, while Arkanis Sector, which is home the Tatoo system (including Tatooine), is mentioned in Galaxy Guide 7: Mos Eisley.

[9] The Imperial Sourcebook states that "sectors are grouped together into larger territorial entities called regions," and that Regions can "contain from as few as three to upwards of thousands of sectors." It goes on to identify the Galactic Core (i.e., the Core Worlds) as a Region, and states that "regions are governed by Grand Moffs." The specific terminology of Lesser Region, Greater Region, and Galactic Region (and their formal full titles) is unattested, and was developed by Mr. John Vermazen, and is used here with permission.

The identification of the office of governor general with the Region is based on the identification of Nox Vellam as "Governor-General" of the "Bright Jewel System Cluster" in Scoundrel's Luck, with the added note that Yavin IV is within his jurisdiction; however, "Siege at Yavin!" (Star Wars Vol. 1, No. 25) establishes that Yavin is in the Gordian Reach Sector, which indicates that the Gordian Reach is a subdivision of the Bright Jewel.

The governor general's rank as a head of state is inferred from the Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook, which states that the ExO of the Corporate Sector Authority is "treated as a political leader abroad and holds a social ranking comparable to an Imperial Grand Moff," by extension making a governor general a member of the same diplomatic grade.

[10] The title "Executive of the Imperium" and the entitlement to an Imperial Guards detachment is derived from "Soldiers of the Empire!" (and supported by the same passage from the Imperial Sourcebook which is hitherto cited to justify the Moff regional governor's own Imperial Guards personal security detachment). The progression from regional governor to governor general is derived from the Hero's Guide Web Enhancement: Character Templates and Prestige Classes, which notes that "if the Imperial Moff does his job well and furthers the aims of the Emperor's New Order, he may live long enough to attain the position of Grand Moff and oversee several sectors in the Emperor's name." The Imperial Sourcebook explicitly states that "regions are governed by Grand Moffs," thus the identification of the title as a special honor for governors general of Regions.

[11] The Imperial Sourcebook states that "the Emperor personally appoints each Grand Moff, and they report directly to him." The Grand Moff's rank as equivalent to a head of state's is in the previously cited Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook. The "Central Committee" as a club of Grand Moffs is unattested, but serves as a basis for the later Central Committee of Grand Moffs, which "Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals" makes clear was established after the Battle of Endor in 39 rS. In Queen of the Empire, the Central Committee held a secret conference on board the Moffship, explicitly described as "a Mofference."

[12] Grand Moff Tarkin first appears in A New Hope, and is identified as Lieutenant Governor of Seswenna Sector as of 3 rS in Cloak of Deception. He is expressly called a "sector governor" in Revenge of the Sith, and his status as one of the earliest regional governors is confirmed in "Meet Your Regional Governors," while his status as a privy counsellor is inferred from his reminiscences in the Death Star Technical Companion of "my days in the Emperor's court." Tarkin's role as a key ideologue of the New Order is stated in Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope and the Rebellion Era Sourcebook. His term as minister of the interior is unattested, but inspired by the Death Star Technical Companion's mention that he diverted funds from "the departments of System Exploration and Public Works"; his term as a senator is likewise conjecture, based on the claim in Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope that he "appeared untouchable, both in the heat of battle and on the Senate floor." His presidency of Eriadu is unattested, as are the specific offices associated with COMPNOR and the New Order Party. His appointment as a special plenipotentiary for the suppression of the Rebellion is unattested, but based on his command of the first Death Star, in which capacity he explicitly told Darth Vader that "the Emperor has given me a free hand in this matter"; remarkably, his authority to order the destruction of a major Core World has never been questioned in any forum, even by his most ardent critics.

Tarkin's tenure as governor general of the Outer Rim — and with it, the nickname "Pocket Grand Moff" — is unattested, but serves to explain reference to "Grand Moff Tarkin" playing a leading role in the invasion of Kashyyyk in "Pax Empirica — The Wookiee Annihilation," at a time in which he was known to have been a Moff (Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader); the Death Star Technical Companion is unambiguous that he was a Moff when the Tarkin Doctrine was first submitted (both it and the Imperial Sourcebook quote Imperial Communiqué #001044.92v in its entirety). Dangor is seen to respond to Tarkin's proposal in the Death Star Technical Companion, in which he appoints Tarkin to "complete authority and control of Oversector Outer, which includes most of the sectors considered the Outer Rim Territories"; that his promotion to Grand Moff is different from that of the heads of Regions is explicit in Dangor's statement that Grand Moff Tarkin would be "the first of a new order of Imperial officials." The interchangeability of the terms "Oversector" and "Priority Sector" is conjectured from the inconsistent usage of the Imperial Sourcebook; the distinction being a reflection of polylingualism is unattested.

[13] A privy counsellor's proconsular control over a given region of space is described in the Imperial Sourcebook as being "granted oversight of the administration of systems," implying no coherent incorporation as a separately-governed territory; the specific terms "rector" and "Special Area" are unattested, as is the presumed intellectual relationship with the Oversector (or lack thereof). The Imperial Sourcebook states that "each Grand Moff commands at least two Sector Groups, or the equivalent in other military resources," and that they have "complete freedom to act as they see fit, without giving advance warning to the Moffs or planetary governors of their actions." It adds that "the Emperor personally appoints each Grand Moff, and they report directly to him."

Tarkin's appointment as head of the Outer Rim Territories themselves and not only Oversector Outer is explicitly stated in the Death Star Technical Companion, which calls him "Imperial Governor of the Outer Rim Territories" (Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker calls him "Governor of numerous outlying Imperial territories," implying that he continued to hold several significant governorates concurrently). Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope states that Tarkin was "the Imperial Governor with the most systems under his control."

[14] The expansion of the Oversector system is explicitly stated in the Imperial Sourcebook, which notes that "the number of Grand Moffs is growing, and the resources given to each Grand Moff is also increasing." Bright Jewel Priority Sector, the newly-bestowed organizational title of the Bright Jewel Cluster System in Scoundrel's Luck, is described in Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds. "The Quelii oversector [sic]" is mentioned in Cracken's Threat Doctrine, while Imperial Center Oversector, its nickname "Sector Zero," Anaxes the "Defender of the Core," and Azure Hammer Command are described in Coruscant and the Core Worlds. Senator Harkon Dell is mentioned by Grand Moff Tarkin as a critic of the New Order alongside Senators Mon Mothma and the Princess Leia of Alderaan in the Death Star Technical Companion. The Senate's continued efforts to hamper the Grand Moffs is based on Tarkin's statement in A New Hope that with the Senate dissolved the regional governors would have "direct control." The 50 million jurisdictions of HIM Other Territories (name unattested) are based on the "colonies, governorships, and protectorates" of The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Second Edition.

The criticism of the Oversector as "tightening the grip" is based on the Princess Leia's comment to Tarkin in A New Hope that "the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Its relationship with COMPNOR's codification of law (mentioned in the Imperial Sourcebook) as another manifestation of Imperial invasiveness is conjectural; the Rationalization policies and the attempts at unifying health codes and bankruptcy law are unattested. The Death Star Project dates back as early as 5 rS (seen in Rogue Planet), with a prototype already under construction in 16 rS, when it was inspected by the Galactic Emperor and Governor Tarkin in Revenge of the Sith; consequently, Tarkin's suggestion of a weapon of mass destruction to implement rule by fear of force and Dangor's approval of the proposal must be pantomimed ex post facto justification rather than genuine novelty.

The Dark Empire Sourcebook states that "it had been planned that eventually these adepts would replace the system of Moffs, Grand Moffs and governors, instituting a Dark Side Theocracy [sic]."

[Robert Treder]

I'm a die-hard all-around Publius fan, but this series is the crown jewel in his synthesis of Lucas' universe. Synthesize your syntheses and send that shit to LFL; this should be published.

This last entry I think could stand a touch of review for ease of comprehension (esp paragraphs 5 and 9) but overall each installment outdoes the last. Good game.

[Ender]

A few questions:

Will this ever be uploaded to your homepage to serve as a reference/composition?

In noting the control over the armed forces a Moff had, you indicate that the command is a result of his civillian position, when the Imperial Sourcebook states taht Moffs were granted military rank to allow them such command and the Complete visual dictionary goes so far as to confuse it by stating Moff was a military rank. Is there a reasoning to this beyond simple essay structure? THis is also presumably why they wear the rank badges, they have actual military rank as well.

In keeping with the Palpatinist-Tarkinist doctrine of "organic holistics" (i.e., corporativism),

Are you speaking of corporativism as a political system or as an economic system? Also, how if at all does this relate to what we saw in the OR, where instead of the government consuming private organizations, private organizations expanded into the roll of government.

at any given time there were more several thousand Sectors but the total number of Moffs never exceeded the maximum of 1,600 established in the initial Imperial Decree)

No mention of this in the footnote, is it unattested or is there a source?

I note that you make no mention of the fact that Palpatine instituted the policy of his personally selecting the governors after the Battle of Brentaal. Is that because that was a system rather then sector or regional governor?

It is notable that, similar to how Moffs hold more power then ministers, in some cases at least OR governors held more power then senators. If they didn't there would have been little reason for Mousul to seek an governor appointment, as Coruscant holds much more in the way of opportunities then the Ansion sector would.

The Sector Governance Decree also installed Imperial Governors on a system level based on what was said at the meeting prior to the presentation of the 2000

How does the existance of Grand Moff 4-8C mesh with the fact that droids are not citizens? Is there an explanation for that?

Technical Journal of the Imperial Forces

I had to search for a while to find this, as a suggestion, perhaps refer to the published hardback version as that is a bit better known.

You say the Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForce Handbook states that the moff governors were assigned a personal legion, the Imperial Sourcebook says regiments, the ROTS novel says companies. Do you have a quote? As you know, the subject is of some interest to me.

[Illuminatus Primus]

In noting the control over the armed forces a Moff had, you indicate that the command is a result of his civillian position, when the Imperial Sourcebook states taht Moffs were granted military rank to allow them such command and the Complete visual dictionary goes so far as to confuse it by stating Moff was a military rank. Is there a reasoning to this beyond simple essay structure? THis is also presumably why they wear the rank badges, they have actual military rank as well.

I think this is because Moffs seem to uniformly occupy a position of pseudo-military rank as a matter of social ranking (they are all uniform) rather than practical necessity to command armed forces (one imagines the Governor and Supreme Commander in and over the Imperial Sector would require a bigger hat simply to command the assets necessary for managing day-to-day customs duties over Imperial Center than the Governor and Supreme Commander in and over the Arkanis Sector would require for his entire command). That, and explicit facts that some Moffs are not officers and have other ranks (such as COL Wessel).

In keeping with the Palpatinist-Tarkinist doctrine of "organic holistics" (i.e., corporativism),

Are you speaking of corporativism as a political system or as an economic system? Also, how if at all does this relate to what we saw in the OR, where instead of the government consuming private organizations, private organizations expanded into the roll of government.

What are you talking about? COMPOR? In which case, COMPNOR is not the corporativist bodies but rather the administrative colleges instituted over every aspect of public and associative life (detailed here, there are the administrative colleges of the Council of Ministers, College of Judicature, College of Moffs, etc.); in any case, integralist and corporativist economic-political philosophy often was justified with reference to pre-industrial, pre-finance capital guilds and cooperatives. That the Republic already has some that the Empire expands and brings into the state violates nothing, and actually makes a lot of sense. Also, on "political" and "economic" policy - they really cannot be separated here; at heart corporativism or corporatism involves the incorporation of distinct spheres of all public life, including economic activity, into bodies which join the disparate interests with those of the state, thereby transcending centrifugal tendencies like class warfare.

The Sector Governance Decree also installed Imperial Governors on a system level based on what was said at the meeting prior to the presentation of the 2000

Its a poorly-named decree then. System governance across the board does not make sense; there are properties and polities which are obviously interstellar - does the Empire administrate them below the level of their own internal organization?

How does the existance of Grand Moff 4-8C mesh with the fact that droids are not citizens? Is there an explanation for that?

Cal Omas gave a medals or a commendation typically given to organic citizen personnel to a troop of B2 Baktoid battle droids who successfully defeated a Yuuzhan Vong advance. I imagine in special cases citizenship and personal legal rights may be granted to artificially intelligent automata.

You say the Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForce Handbook states that the moff governors were assigned a personal legion, the Imperial Sourcebook says regiments, the ROTS novel says companies. Do you have a quote? As you know, the subject is of some interest to me.

Why not a gradual increase in prestige; the ROTS novel is talking about the wartime Republican regional governors. Perhaps the creation of Moffs of the Empire accorded the Moff regional governor a regiment thus underscoring his superiority in status to the mundane regional governors who remained possessed merely of companies of personal troops. Later, a decree is issued upgrading the Moff's Own to divisional (legion) strength.

[Darth Raptor]

The legal standing of first-degree droids appears to be similar to that of cyborgs with neural enhancements. IOW, it's derived from their sponsors. Individuals in both groups have run the gamut from total outcasts to the highest echelons of galactic society.

[Ender]

I think this is because Moffs seem to uniformly occupy a position of pseudo-military rank as a matter of social ranking (they are all uniform) rather than practical necessity to command armed forces (one imagines the Governor and Supreme Commander in and over the Imperial Sector would require a bigger hat simply to command the assets necessary for managing day-to-day customs duties over Imperial Center than the Governor and Supreme Commander in and over the Arkanis Sector would require for his entire command). That, and explicit facts that some Moffs are not officers and have other ranks (such as COL Wessel).

It is stated most were granted such ranks, not all IIRC>

What are you talking about? COMPOR? In which case, COMPNOR is not the corporativist bodies but rather the administrative colleges instituted over every aspect of public and associative life (detailed here, there are the administrative colleges of the Council of Ministers, College of Judicature, College of Moffs, etc.); in any case, integralist and corporativist economic-political philosophy often was justified with reference to pre-industrial, pre-finance capital guilds and cooperatives. That the Republic already has some that the Empire expands and brings into the state violates nothing, and actually makes a lot of sense. Also, on "political" and "economic" policy - they really cannot be separated here; at heart corporativism or corporatism involves the incorporation of distinct spheres of all public life, including economic activity, into bodies which join the disparate interests with those of the state, thereby transcending centrifugal tendencies like class warfare.

I was thinking the Trade Federation and other such polities actually, where they used the fact that a substantial population lived on their space stations and letters of patent to get political representation. As to political vs economic, I ask because in SW corporatism may be a less accurate term then class collaboration WRT what we saw.

Its a poorly-named decree then. System governance across the board does not make sense; there are properties and polities which are obviously interstellar - does the Empire administrate them below the level of their own internal organization?[/qute]Don't know, source doesn't speak to it.

Cal Omas gave a medals or a commendation typically given to organic citizen personnel to a troop of B2 Baktoid battle droids who successfully defeated a Yuuzhan Vong advance. I imagine in special cases citizenship and personal legal rights may be granted to artificially intelligent automata.

Yes, it is known that some can be emancipated e.g. Squeaky from Wraith squadron. However all of these examples are after the fall of the Empire.

Why not a gradual increase in prestige; the ROTS novel is talking about the wartime Republican regional governors. Perhaps the creation of Moffs of the Empire accorded the Moff regional governor a regiment thus underscoring his superiority in status to the mundane regional governors who remained possessed merely of companies of personal troops. Later, a decree is issued upgrading the Moff's Own to divisional (legion) strength.

Because establishing when such upgrades would have occurred is important.

Also, publius, you state Tarkin was "on-fisted dictator of the largest volume of space directly controlled by a single being in the known universe. " - what makes Sidious not fall into that category, the fact that he deferred most roles to his subordinates?

[Illuminatus Primus]

I think this is because Moffs seem to uniformly occupy a position of pseudo-military rank as a matter of social ranking (they are all uniform) rather than practical necessity to command armed forces (one imagines the Governor and Supreme Commander in and over the Imperial Sector would require a bigger hat simply to command the assets necessary for managing day-to-day customs duties over Imperial Center than the Governor and Supreme Commander in and over the Arkanis Sector would require for his entire command). That, and explicit facts that some Moffs are not officers and have other ranks (such as COL Wessel).

It is stated most were granted such ranks, not all IIRC>

Okay. Most Moffs of the Empire seem to be retired officers; perhaps (I am speculating) they may be promoted to the grade consistent with their Moffhood upon investiture. However, then that promotion is a ancillary honor, not part and parcel of Moffhood, if it is not consistently applied. Obviously therefore officer rank is not necessarily a quality of being a Moff and one can be a Moff and had a lower rank or been a civilian. Do you have a source for this?

I was thinking the Trade Federation and other such polities actually, where they used the fact that a substantial population lived on their space stations and letters of patent to get political representation. As to political vs economic, I ask because in SW corporatism may be a less accurate term then class collaboration WRT what we saw.

What does the Trade Federation and the conglomerates and consortiums associated with the Confederacy have to do with the political-economic philosophy of the Empire? Actually, the fact that fully autonomous latter-day organs of commerce and industry became excessively powerful in their own right and ended up belligerents against the former state is a powerful argument in favor of corporativism if one takes the tack that the newly incorporated organs are joined completely and subordinately to the state. Furthermore, hardcore NOrdinal revivalist movements like the Pentastar Alignment of Powers actually incorporate business and commerce into a Guild (participating members represented are actually known as corporates). This is circumstantial, but given that Ardus Grand Moff Kaine was a key ideologue for COMPNOR and a successor to Tarkin and that his movement dedicated itself primarily to upholding and strengthening the ideals of the New Order, I think it likely the New Order proper embraced a measure of fascist corporativism.

Yes, it is known that some can be emancipated e.g. Squeaky from Wraith squadron. However all of these examples are after the fall of the Empire.

Why would you assume things HAD to have changed as opposed to that they may have just remained the same, especially when there is evidence to the contrary?

Because establishing when such upgrades would have occurred is important.

You do realize that this is not a canonical work, and sometimes invention and "reinterpretation" is substituted from the plain statement of the evidence. I agree, it would be interesting to establish that say, regional governors were accorded a company of Grand Army (superseded by Marine) troops as per the Sector Governance Decree, and the creation of the Moff of the Empire specified that Moffs of the Empire serving as regional governors of sectors were entitled to a regiment of Marines as a personal unit, superseding the mundane regional governor's bare company. Then at some undefined point the Moff's personal regiment is upgraded to a legion.

Also, publius, you state Tarkin was "on-fisted dictator of the largest volume of space directly controlled by a single being in the known universe. " - what makes Sidious not fall into that category, the fact that he deferred most roles to his subordinates?

Because I imagine with the Senate et al, one cannot accurately say he directly controlled it, at least not in the pre-war period (The New Order in Power seems to be taken from the The Third Reich in Power, and therefore one perhaps should contrast how the Empire functioned within the scope of history dealt with by this work under its conceit as a parallel - perhaps Palpatine does deserve that honor, but within the scope of The New Order at War).

[Pelranius]

Great work again Publius. I must confess that I am greatly in your debt for my own GFFA involved amateur writings (that is, if I could actually finish any one of them).

Incidentally, do you have any plans to write about the workings of the New Republic?

[Publius]

Will this ever be uploaded to your homepage to serve as a reference/composition?

Very probably. Once upon a time articles of this style were going to be featured in a "Speculation" section alongside the Analysis and Invention sections, which is probably the route The New Order in Power will take.

In noting the control over the armed forces a Moff had, you indicate that the command is a result of his civillian position, when the Imperial Sourcebook states taht Moffs were granted military rank to allow them such command and the Complete visual dictionary goes so far as to confuse it by stating Moff was a military rank. Is there a reasoning to this beyond simple essay structure? THis is also presumably why they wear the rank badges, they have actual military rank as well.

The Imperial Sourcebook says in ch. 4 that "civilian orders are now transmitted at the level of the Sector Group, from regional Moffs, Grand Moffs, or the Emperor himself," which coincidentally agrees with the revelation in "Meet Your Regional Governors" that Moff Wessel was actually a colonel while still a military officer. Despite the occasional claim that Moff is a rank or office in and of itself, the majority of the evidence supports it being a distinct personal title (which in and of itself argues against it being an inherently military position).

There is of course also the example of Grand Moff Bartam, who is distinctly not dressed in anything like a military uniform.

Are you speaking of corporativism as a political system or as an economic system? Also, how if at all does this relate to what we saw in the OR, where instead of the government consuming private organizations, private organizations expanded into the roll of government.

The word corporativism was used specifically to avoid the confusion caused by years of misuse of corporatism to refer to plutocracy of for-profit corporations. It refers to the doctrine of organizing segments of society into holistic "corporations" (i.e., bodies) and integrating them into the governing process. Hence, the College of Moffs is a manifestation of the same trend as the Council of Ministers and the College of Judicature, organizing a category of interest into an unelected, self-governing corporation.

Additionally, the Imperial economic policy of punitive nationalization ("Imperialization") and redistribution of assets serves to have broken the back of runaway plutocracy and free-marketeer filibustering -- what today would probably be (wrongly) called "corporatism" -- and relegated the board room to the role of decidedly junior partner to the throne room.

No mention of this in the footnote, is it unattested or is there a source?

The existence of thousands of sectors is stated in the Imperial Sourcebook; the limit on the number of Moffs is unattested.

I note that you make no mention of the fact that Palpatine instituted the policy of his personally selecting the governors after the Battle of Brentaal. Is that because that was a system rather then sector or regional governor?

The hand-picking of governors in the Clone War wasn't included because ultimately it does not appear to have been a systematic policy; Palpatine could not possibly have hand-picked every governor, even at a sector level (thousands), let alone assigning governors to each member of the union (one million). At best he could have hand-picked a select few and delegated the choice of the rest to his advisors, which is basically the same system Professor Lamont describes.

It is notable that, similar to how Moffs hold more power then ministers, in some cases at least OR governors held more power then senators. If they didn't there would have been little reason for Mousul to seek an governor appointment, as Coruscant holds much more in the way of opportunities then the Ansion sector would.

One of the ideas of this chapter is that the office of regional governor, subject as it is to considerable variation from sector to sector, is actually much more standardized than the existing office of sector governor, which is subject to all manner of checks and restrictions that could vary wildly from sector to sector. A sector with multiple Great Powers, for example, would probably have more use for an independent sector governor than would a sector that is largely coterminous with a single Great Power (if the Republic of Alderaan comprises most of Alderaan Sector, then the Viceroy and First Chairman is already a sector-wide chief executive, for example; the sector governor would be little more than a decorative concession to convention).

The Sector Governance Decree also installed Imperial Governors on a system level based on what was said at the meeting prior to the presentation of the 2000

Unfortunately, the ambiguity of the term "governor" has made much of the system a confused mess (such as regional governors governing sectors). Probably the Sector Governance Decree created additional governors below the level of the sector (the origin of the Empire's colonial governors, possibly?), in addition to the new office of regional governor. Regrettably, the authors do not appear to have given much thought to the nuts and bolts of the system.

How does the existance of Grand Moff 4-8C mesh with the fact that droids are not citizens? Is there an explanation for that?

More than likely 4-8C is the beneficiary of a letters patent from The Throne granting it special status, or else there may be some provision in law for manumission of AI automata (as there was under the New Republic). One of Palpatine's greatest assets was his pragmatic flexibility, after all.

You say the Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForce Handbook states that the moff governors were assigned a personal legion, the Imperial Sourcebook says regiments, the ROTS novel says companies. Do you have a quote? As you know, the subject is of some interest to me.

Certainly. Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForce Handbook specifically states that "a common arrangement is to assign a legion to each branch of sector's Imperial government: one legion for the Army, another for the Navy, and a third to the Moff's discretion (the Moff's Own)." There is no real conflict among the three claims: A Moff can hardly be expected to travel everywhere accompanied by an entire division of riflemen, and may well hold personal command (or even British-style colonelcy of the regiment) of one or more particularly favored units within the Moff's Own legion, while traveling in the immediate company of a relatively large personal security detachment.

Also, publius, you state Tarkin was "on-fisted dictator of the largest volume of space directly controlled by a single being in the known universe. " - what makes Sidious not fall into that category, the fact that he deferred most roles to his subordinates?

Precisely. Palpatine has the most power of any single being in galactic history and rules by far the largest volume of territory, but does not directly control the vast majority of it. Aside from tending to his own personal holdings and favored religious sites, he spent very little time or effort actually governing territory -- and as Galaxies: An Empire Divided shows, he even delegated the actual day-to-day management of his own holdings, too. Tarkin, in contrast, is a governor four times over, and actively exerts his authority on a daily basis.

Incidentally, do you have any plans to write about the workings of the New Republic?

No. A project of this size and scope is quite intensive in terms of both time and effort, and The New Order in Power benefits from over a decade of notes and research, none of which exist for the Galactic Republic, the rebel Alliance to Restore the Republic/Alliance of Free Planets, or the New Republic. At any rate, surprisingly enough, there is not nearly as much information available (there was never a New Republic Sourcebook, for example); one would have an easier time writing of the Warlord Zsinj, the Pentastar Alignment of Powers, or the Corporate Sector.

[Publius]

THE NEW ORDER IN POWER

Chapter Seven: The State Services of the Imperium

The Galactic Republic had been composed of over a million sovereign states, each jealously guarding its liberties and prerogatives — and none more so than the Great Powers, the ancient masses of hard and soft power nestled comfortably at the centers of huge constellations of territory and influence. At the formation of the Republic, some of the younger Great Powers had adamantly opposed the creation of any sort of standing government at the Republic level, insisting that the standing committees of the Senate were enough to govern the Galactic Union. Traditionally called "the Anarchy Worlds," they insisted loudly and at great length that the Republic had no ontological value except as a collective of the member states, no more and no less: There could not be any locus of power other than the Senate, as that would constitute an unconstitutional theft of power by an extraconstitutional parasite. In the event, the Anarchy Worlds had been unable to carry the day, but the Founders had found it politic to offer a concession to their fear of any body existing outside the member states. The system finally adopted assiduously avoided investing the permanent government with trappings of statehood, ultimately even denying it the name. Thus it was that the permanent federal government became known as the Republic Authority, a name that would endure for twenty five millennia. In the end, only Palpatine of Naboo possessed the audacity and the power to change it. One of his first acts after acclamation as Galactic Emperor was to issue an Imperial Decree renaming the Republic Authority to the Imperial State. [1]

The Imperial State was composed of the entire executive and judiciary of the Galactic Empire, responsible for the day-to-day enforcement and administration of Imperial law and for the implementation of government policy on matters of "All-Empire" significance. It was a vast body of technocrats and bureaucrats, dealing with every imaginable field of sapient interest or endeavor. The Imperial State had agencies dealing with everything from specific regulations for the transportation of fruit across interstellar space to the circumstances under which an entire species could be lawfully exterminated. Needless to say, the fields of expertise of the Imperial State's employees could vary dramatically, ranging from astrographers cataloguing masses of dark matter to admirals and generals wielding weapons of mass destruction capable of rendering whole worlds uninhabitable — and all of them with a specific place on the Table of Ranks, providing a one-to-one correspondence of grade among each and every one of the Imperial State's employees. An ivory-towered populist, one of Palpatine's favorite boasts — posthumously published in the Sayings of the Incorruptible — was that his Empire had succeeded where the Republic had failed, and overcome "the destructive forces of anomiefication and alienation." "A place for everyone," he was fond of saying, "and everyone in his place." [2]

At the broadest possible level, the Imperial State could be divided into two basic groups: Civilian officials on the one hand, and military and naval personnel on the other. In keeping with the New Order ideal of "Systemic Coherence" — close cousin of the doctrine of organic holistics ("orghol") — these two groups were formally organized into two separate categories, the State Services of the Imperium (SSI) and the Armed Forces of the Imperium (AFI). Pursuant to the closely-related 'Identity Principle,' uniforms and insignia of rank existed for each and every grade of the Table of Ranks, whether in the SSI or the AFI, although there were, of course, a large number of functionaries who were permitted to forego wearing uniform. The AFI wore uniforms in drab, black, or white, and Galactic Emperor's Commissioned Officers carried sabers in formal dress; in contrast, the SSI wore uniforms in gray — hence the common nickname "grayshirt" for an Imperial bureaucrat — and carried daggers in formal dress (the universality of arms was in fact a point of frequent complaint in the Senate, where many felt it was unnecessarily threatening and inappropriate). As befitted the pluralized name, the SSI consisted of a number of subsidiary bodies and autonomous services, including (but not limited to) HIM Civil Service, HIM Diplomatic Service, HIM Court Service, HIM Medical Service, the Cadre, the Corrections Service (ICS), the Labor Service (ILS), the Educatory, the Technocracy, and the Merchant Service. Needless to say, the State Services were administrative bodies comprising the work force of the State, providing the billions of functionaries required for the business of government, and not necessarily agencies of the government; the Educatory did not, for example, create or implement government policy on state universities and institutes of higher learning. Contrariwise, some of the State Services were coextensive with official agencies: The Court Service was the administrative guise of the Magistrature and the Merchant Service encompassed most of the Spacelift Command and the Imperial Fleet Auxiliary, the state-owned part of the Merchant Navy; the ILS and ICS did not even change their names in their capacities as government agencies. Most State Services were orghol-compliant, and were organized along the same lines as the Empire's administrative corporations. [3]

Entry into any of the State Services required an academic proficiency test, although the particular test one took varied according to the service the applicant sought to join (the entry requirements to the Technocracy and the Civil Service being much more rigorous than for the Labor Service, for example), and additional requirements such as educational background and letters of recommendation also varied from service to service; advancement was governed by standardized exams and performance evaluations, although there was an informal practice of preferential treatment for members of the New Order Party and the rest of the "COMPNOR Family." Public servants could be assigned to "home duty" in the central bureaucracy, clustered into hubs on major worlds in the Core, or assigned to "duty abroad" in the Regional Governorates; home duty was generally more prestigious and sought after than duty abroad, leading to a system of 'virtual promotion' whereby functionaries working abroad often worked at and were paid at a level higher than their actual grades on the Table of Ranks — a minor or sub-administrator could serve as director of administration in a colonial governorate while on duty abroad, while a comparable billet on home duty was suitable only for a full administrator or higher (in some locales a directorate of administration carried secretarial rank). Despite the SSI's strict rules on conflicts of interest, it was common knowledge that a clever functionary could profit handsomely from service on duty abroad, if he played his cards right. This led, of course, to the famous "0th Law" of SSI conduct: "Don't Get Caught." The punishments for violation of the 0th Law were swift and harsh, and the whole of the SSI was subject to the oversight of the Imperial Senate and its inspectors general, who rigorously used their senatorial mandate to discover and punish waste, fraud, and abuse. Nevertheless, although subject to the Senate's scrutiny, the SSI did not belong to the Senate; as a corporate body of the Imperial State, they were ultimately controlled by HIM Government, whose policies they were responsible for enforcing. As always, Government involvement implied court entanglement — the Government, needless to say, being a creature of the Privy Council — , the SSI's rules on political noninvolvement notwithstanding. The retiring Secretary General Sir Edmond ha-and-Trel reputedly advised his successor, Dr. the Antilles Mór, "It is well that you take no interest in the intrigues of the court; but the intrigues of the court, alas, take an interest in you." [4]

The headquarters of the several State Services were clustered on Basilica — which, along with the Ministerium, helped solidify the street's status as a metonym for Imperial government — , much as the headquarters of the several Armed Forces were clustered on Via Bellatricis, on the opposite side of the Imperial Palace. And just as Supreme Headquarters Armed Forces of the Imperium had its home at the magnificence of Infinity Heights, the Secretariat General State Services of the Imperium was housed in suitable splendor at Sempiternity Towers. At the very top, however, the symmetry broke down, as there was no single independent head of the SSI; unlike the Supreme Commander, the Chairman of the Coordinating Committee was double-hatted, his primary office being that of Secretary General to the Government, the chief administrative officer of the Minister President's Cabinet and head of the Civil Service. The Secretary General, in his capacity as ex officio Chairman of the Coordinating Committee, took precedence before all other functionaries of the Empire; retiring Secretaries General were customarily created Peers of the Empire. Despite his prestige, however, he did not enjoy quite the same preeminence his counterpart the Supreme Commander did. For one thing, the Coordinating Committee had more members than the Supreme Commander's Committee, as it included the heads of all the State Services — including such prominent officials as the Surgeon General of the Galactic Empire, the Director General of the Courts, and the Superintendent General of the Cadre. Although legally equivalent to the Supreme Commander, the Chairman's place in the Empire was somewhat less formidable, particularly given the much more firmly-established subordination of the SSI to the Government's control.

The senior and most prestigious State Service, HIM Civil Service, provided most of the professional functionaries working in the various ministries, bureaux, and independent agencies in the Imperial State; the general rule was that a public servant belonged to the Civil Service unless he belonged to some other State Service. Members could be found in virtually all of the Imperial State's agencies, performing clerical and administrative duties in the Ministry of Finance and HIM Treasury, the Imperial Records Office, the Imperial Business Bureau, or the Bureau of Science and Travel (BST), or filling more specialized roles in the Imperial Department of Resources, the Imperial Colonization Board, the Bureau of Revenue (often translated as "Imperial Taxation Bureau"), and the Ecological Preservation Bureau. Civil servants were even found assigned to duty in such "technical bodies" as the Imperial Social Planning Office, the Imperial Science Division, and the Imperial Survey Corps (ISC) — although the actual technical duties were usually performed by members of the Technocracy. As they rose in rank, civil servants were often the closest to political power; secretaries of state ranked with but after ministers, and the highest-ranking were assigned as permanent secretaries to the various ministries, overseeing the non-political staff and managing the implementation of government policy. Ministers themselves had uncertain tenure — Cabinet ministers had to resign if the Government fell, and non-Cabinet ministers could be sacked or re-shuffled at the Minister President's pleasure; in contrast, permanent secretaries could only be removed for cause (even portfolio re-shuffles did not dislodge them: the Imperial State's components were highly modular, and a re-shuffle would usually only move a permanent secretary to a different minister's jurisdiction). As a result, senior civil servants often became entrenched within their ministries, more or less indispensable to the smooth running of the ministry's affairs; a canny functionary like Chief Administrator Crela Nen, Director of Administration to HIM Colonial Government for Goroth Prime, could passive-aggressively bring government business to a standstill if she did not get what she wanted. Some went even further; Percévale Rendar da Gier-Hensdayle, Permanent Secretary of State to the Ministry of Land Management, held office for 23 years and made a modest place for himself as a Dirty Hand at court, owning a small silent fraction of his own. [5]

The other State Services were generally not as versatile as the Civil Service, but could nevertheless be found represented in a number of different bodies. Technocrats — the Imperial State's corps of scientists, engineers, and technical experts, not to be confused with "Augie's technocrats" —were nearly as ubiquitous as the civil servants, and HIM Medical Service was well-represented in the Imperial Biological Welfare Division, the Imperial Board of Foodstuffs and Consumables, the Imperial Species Identification Bureau, among others. The Cadre encompassed the Imperial Safeguards Division (ISD), the Marshals Service, and most of the Imperial Office of Criminal Investigations (IOCI). Many public servants of the technical corps and even from the Civil Service itself were assigned to duty with the AFI, serving in the ministerial departments, military hospitals, depots, garrisons, and shore commands. Functionaries were not necessarily assigned to work alongside others of the same specialism, and both home duty and duty abroad could lead one to any of countless different places and career tracks. [6]

After the Civil Service, the best-known corps was HIM Diplomatic Service, which simultaneously provided the Empire's foreign service and colonial administration; the combined functions reflected the doctrine of the "Ecumenical Throne," which held that the Galactic Emperor's authority was universal, and that the countless polities in existence only differed from one another in the degree of integration to the Empire and the manner in which The Throne's authority manifested itself. Consequently, there was no such thing as a truly independent state, and therefore no need for a dedicated foreign service — after all, when Senators were ambassadors, how much of a difference was there really between a dominion and a foreign power? The Diplomatic Service thus had responsibility for relations between the Imperial State on the one hand and the dominions, colonies, governorates, protectorates, client states, and foreign powers on the other. Because each dominion was entitled to a Senator, the Imperial State therefore accredited an ambassador of its own to each dominion, who served as the representative of The Throne to the dominion's own head of state; these ambassadorships were largely ceremonial, and in many cases the same being was accredited simultaneously to a Great Power and to the states in its sphere of influence (in some cases, high commissioners were assigned as representatives of the Government instead of ambassadors as representatives of The Throne). Additionally, every inhabited star system in the Empire was assigned an Imperial diplomatic agent, who served as the senior representative of the Imperial State and was responsible for all Imperial assets permanently assigned to the system. The rank and authority of this diplomatic agent varied according to a number of variables assessed by the Diplomatic Service; the most common types were governors, planetary commandants, consuls general, and prefects. Many of these officials were actually GECOs on secondment from the AFI, leading to the common sight of an Imperial governor or other agent wearing the drab uniform of the AFI rather than the gray of the SSI. Many senior diplomatic servants — including governors and diplomats — declined to wear uniform at all. [7]

Governors were the highest-ranking diplomatic agents, appointed directly (albeit en bloc) by the Privy Council to serve as the Imperial State's principal officer in the territories under their administration — predictably called a governorate — , and thus had actual operational command and control of military assets as well as public service. The nature of a governor's appointment varied according to circumstances: governorates within a dominion's territory were generally restrained, and largely confined to local offices of government agencies and the local garrison, while governorates within HIM Other Territories had near total freedom to administer the local government as they pleased, provided they conformed with Diplomatic Service policy and the instructions of the responsible Regional Governor. On occasion, the Diplomatic Service would assign a colonial governor to serve as "civil advisor" to a client state at the invitation of the indigenous government, but in most such cases where this political fiction was entertained the client government was moribund, leaving the colonial government in de facto control. In most cases, the Imperial governor was merely an additional layer of government above the existing local government rather than a wholesale replacement of it (the practice of "one-upsmanship" vice replacement or reform was commonly seen throughout the Empire). [8]

The governor's staff was also variable; governorates of heavily-populated worlds frequently included a second agent as vice governor or lieutenant governor as the governor's second-in-command (a vice governor was assigned at the same time as a governor and held office under the same commission, while a lieutenant governor was an independent assignment for a fixed term). The governor was assisted by a staff of Imperial civil servants, the most senior of which was the director of administration, and other public servants assigned from the Courts Service, Medical Service, Cadre, Technocracy, and other State Services; every governorate included military and naval attachés and a Customs Office representative, who was responsible for collecting excise and tariff revenues. Additionally, the governor was formally the commander-in-chief of whatever regular and sepoy forces were permanently assigned to his jurisdiction, which occasionally led to embarrassing circumstances: Garrisons were conventionally classified as the general headquarters for a paper corps, and thus had a lieutenant general as commanding general as well as a colonel as garrison commander, but not all GECOs seconded to the Diplomatic Service and assigned as governors were necessarily of general rank (or even Army officers at all). The uncomfortable situation on Galrecau Major was the ultimate example, when Captain the Na-Duke of Valrieu was assigned as governor and was thus inadvertently installed as superior to his uncle, Lieutenant General the Grand Duke of Palran-on-Talray. [9]

Governorates were generally subdivided into prefectures, at which level prefects and sub-prefects acted as the governor's representatives, with delegated authority over military and civil assets. In some cases, no governor was assigned at all, and the territory was administered by a prefect — if the vacancy was temporary, the title was "Pro-Governor" or "Administrator of the Government," as "Acting Governor" was restricted by law to vice governors and lieutenant governors — , assisted by a sub-prefect as second-in-command. Systems whose Imperial presence was chiefly military were assigned planetary commandants instead of governors and commissars instead of prefects, while systems largely lacking in garrisons or other military presence were assigned consuls general and consuls instead. Worlds whose Imperial presence was limited to a single installation were often administered by supervisors — often limited-duty GECOs working on secondment as captain-supervisors or colonel-supervisors. Protectorates were separate jurisdictions under the administration of a protector, who was usually a senior prefect under the supervision of a nearby governor; like most governorates, protectorates typically retained their indigenous governments under the protector's oversight. [10]

Note, however, that governorates were not classified as Subjects of the Union, and did not have the same legal status as Sectors, Regions, Special Areas, and Oversectors. Imperial law rarely took notice of the governorate as such; the Government rarely dictated policy directly applicable at that level, as it tended to think in terms of dominions and Regional Governorates. The governors and other diplomatic agents were not Executives of the Imperium, and did not enjoy the privileges of that status — they were not, for example, assigned personal security detachments from the Imperial Guards, and could not commission officers on their own authority (the ability to appoint Governor's Commissioned Officers was a powerful tool frequently underestimated by those without experience in duty abroad). The Diplomatic Service was, after all, one of the State Services, and its agents were therefore subject to a great deal more restrictions to their freedom of action than the political appointees. These diplomatic agents were hardly comparable to the Regional Governors, Rectors, and Governors General in terms of rank or authority. [11]

Indeed, despite the ability of public servants to passive-aggressively disrupt government business and obstruct government policy, the SSI were not generally regarded as a locus of power. The majority of the well-known figures of the Palpatinic Era spent little if any time as public servants; although the SSI was respected and well-compensated, it simply did not have the glamor of the AFI or politics, not least because politicians were obviously freer to play at politics and intrigue (indeed, the Government frequently entangled the SSI and the state agencies in their intrigues, resulting in the bureaucracy frequently working at cross-purposes to itself). Even the prestigious governorship — the governor was styled "His Excellency" and enjoyed the personal style of "Right Honorable" while in office — with its control of whole worlds and divisions of soldiers, could be deprecated by the ruling class: There were tens of millions of governors and other principal diplomatic agents, and even the Diplomatic Service itself often did not bother to address them by name, sending form letters directed to the office and saluting them as "Sir or Madam." Certainly very few governors (who were largely exempted from the rules on political non-involvement) ever achieved even Dirty Hand status at court. Those public servants who did rise to fame — or infamy, as one likes it — tended to come from the Technocracy, including such luminaries as Dr. Bevel Lemelisk, Dr. Umak Leth, Dr. Ohran Keldor, Dr. Lira Wessex née Blissex, Dr. Raegar, and Dr. Borborygmus Gog. Even these famous technocrats were not, for the most part, career public servants; most had been lured into the Empire's service from the private sector, although there were exceptions — Bevel Lemelisk may have entered the service at the rank of master engineer after a successful career at Calthrop Gir, but Umak Leth had started his career at the rank of junior engineer and rose to the office of Chief Engineer to the Galactic Emperor before replacing Lemelisk altogether as Master of Imperial Projects, the head of the Technocracy. [12]

Overall, the SSI were respected and respectable, but no one ever mistook them for being the avenue of achieving honor and influence in the Empire. For those desirous of glory or power, the opportunities were not in the State Services of the Imperium, but rather in their twin brethren: The Armed Forces of the Imperium.

Endnotes

[1] The Founders are mentioned in "House of Tagge Sides with Loyalists" (HoloNet News Vol. 531, No. 49).

[2] The bureaucracy's responsibility for affairs on an "All-Empire" basis is derived from the Imperial Sourcebook's description of government agencies having "authority over a specific subject matter throughout the galaxy." The transportation of substances and commodities is regulated by the Ministry of InterGalactic Transit (sic), mentioned in "A Free-Trader's Guide to Sevarcos" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal Vol. 1, No. 2), while the lawful extermination of a species on the basis of "overwhelming undesirability" is governed by the Dangerous Species Act, mentioned in Galaxy Guide 4: Alien Races.

Palpatine-as-populist is implied by Kinman Doriana's claim that "Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is the champion of the common citizen" in "Hero of Cartao" (Star Wars Insider No. 68 - 70), despite his background as an academic of noble lineage. The Rebellion Era Sourcebook is even more explicit, calling the New Order "a populist movement" in its early years, formed of "grassroots organizations" and "citizen groups" encouraging local involvement in government (the most prominent such group eventually becoming the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order, or COMPNOR).

[3] The Imperial armed forces' drab, black, and white uniforms are seen in A New Hope; the use of officer's sabers in dress uniform and in ceremonials is seen in The Hutt Gambit and the Star Wars Sourcebook, respectively. An "Imperial Civil Service uniform" is mentioned in passing in Tapani Sector Instant Adventures, while the Diplomatic Service appears in the Imperial Sourcebook. The Galactic Republic's Merchant Service is mentioned (as a counterpart to the Republic's Military and Exploratorion Services) in the Star Wars Encyclopedia; it is assumed that the Merchant Service was retained after the transmogrification into the Galactic Empire.

The distinction between the individual corps of public servants and the actual agencies themselves is implied by the Imperial Sourcebook, which states that "the Imperial bureaucracy runs each Imperial agency."

[4] The privy council's and COMPNOR's involvement in controlling the public service is derived from the Imperial Sourcebook's claim that "the Emperor's advisors and COMPNOR effectively control the massive Imperial bureaucracy." The Senate's oversight of the public service is based on General Tagge's objection in Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker to the dissolution of the Senate, asking "how will the Emperor maintain control of the Imperial bureaucracy?"

Galvoni III was identified as "site of an Imperial bureaucratic hub" in Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope, which hosted a branch of the Imperial Records Office, whose "restricted computer network" contained classified information about the Death Star Project, suggesting the importance of these bureaucratic hubs to the Imperial State. Bureaucrats' service at the Sector level under the Regional Governors is established by the Imperial Sourcebook, which mentions that "the Moffs have authority over their sectors, and are responsible for administering the sector-wide bureaucracy, which must answer both to the local Moff and the Imperial bureaucracy."

The grade of minor (junior to the grade of supervisor) is seen in "Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88" (Tales of the Bounty Hunters); the office of director of administration is seen as senior civil servant in the Colonial Government of Goroth Prime in Goroth: Slave of the Empire.

[5] The existence of the Ministry of Finance is implied by the identification of "Finance Minister Gahg" in "The Path to Nowhere" (Dark Times Nos. 1 - 5). The Imperial Records Office is mentioned in Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope, and the Imperial Business Bureau in "Underworld: A Galaxy of Scum and Villainy" (Star Wars Insider No. 89). The Bureau of Science and Travel (BST) is seen in the Rebellion Era Sourcebook. The Imperial Department of Resources is mentioned in Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and the Imperial Colonization Board in The Truce at Bakura Sourcebook. The Bureau of Revenue and the Imperial Taxation Bureau appear in Galaxy Guide 8: Scouts and The Far Orbit Project, respectively (their identification as a single body with two names is unattested). The Imperial Social Planning Office and the Imperial Science Division are mentioned in "The New Empire: How Can You Help?" (Republic HoloNet News Special Inaugural Edition, Star Wars Insider No. 84) and Galaxy of Fear: Army of Terror, respectively. The Imperial Survey Corps (ISC) is mentioned in the Imperial Sourcebook. The Ministry of Land Management appears in the Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook.

"Self-serving Imperial Bureaucrat" Crela Nen, the Director of Administration of the Colonial Government of Goroth Prime, and her successful campaign of passive-aggressive resistance to the policies of her superior, the Rt. Hon. Marsh Limoth, Colonial Governor of Goroth Prime, are seen in Goroth: Slave of the Empire.

[6] The Imperial Biological Welfare Division (a front for the Imperial Biological Weapons Division) was seen in Galaxy of Fear: Planet Plague. The Imperial Board of Foodstuffs and Consumables and the Imperial Species Identification Bureau were mentioned in in "A Free-Trader's Guide to Sevarcos" and "The Evacuation of Jatee" (Supernova), respectively. The Imperial Safeguards Division (ISD) was mentioned in the Star Wars Sourcebook, and the Imperial Office of Criminal Investigations (IOCI) in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim.

[7] An Imperial Senator's diplomatic rank of ambassador is mentioned in A New Hope; the practice of sending an Imperial Ambassador to member states despite their status as part of the Empire is seen in the Lords of the Expanse Gamemaster Guide (an ambassador is accredited to the Tapani Sector), which also mentions the normative practice of sending ambassadors to the Empire's client states. The Diplomatic Service is mentioned in the Imperial Sourcebook, which states that "Imperial policy exists in two different forms for a governor," as there are "the generally stated policy goals which are distributed by the Diplomatic Service" and "the direct orders received from the Moff"; the alternative form Imperial Diplomatic Corps is used in "Velmor: Royalty and Rebellion." The offices of planetary commandant, consul-general, and prefect are seen in "A Free-Trader's Guide to Sevarcos," Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters, and Galaxy Guide 7: Mos Eisley, respectively.

The practice of seconding military and naval officers as governors, planetary commandants, and prefects is conjectured to explain the frequent appearance of these officials in military uniform and displaying military rank. The practice of not wearing uniform is demonstrated by Malvander, Governor of Solem, and an anonymous Imperial diplomat in Sacrifice" (Empire No. 7) and Heroes and Rogues, respectively.

[8] The Imperial Sourcebook claims "planetary governors are Imperial agents who represent the Empire's authority on a single world," that "usually that representation extends to an entire system, giving him jurisdiction of all the planets orbiting a single star," and that he has "command of all Imperial troops garrisoned on his planets"; their appointment by the privy council is described as being "appointed by the Emperor's advisors, although a few are just holo-approvals of candidates the Emperor has chosen." The existence of Imperial governors even in the member states' territory is derived from the claim in "Into the Core Worlds" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 7) that "the governments of the Core Worlds have gone along willingnly with a nominal Imperial occupation" and that "Moffs, as well as governors, preside over the semi-independent world governments." The colonial government as de jure advisors to the local government of an independent state is seen in Goroth: Slave of the Empire, where the Colonial Government officially "serves an entirely 'advisory' function" pursuant to the 'invitation' of the native government, the P'Dar'Ken, which remained "sovereign and supreme."

The Imperial Sourcebook states that "governors are expected to let a planetary government run its own affairs unless the local course of action puts the planet in conflict with Imperial goals"; in The Truce at Bakura the Bakuran legislature and government continued to function under the supervision of Imperial Governor Wilek Nereus. The DarkStryder Campaign indicates that this continuity of self-government may well end up as moribund as a colongial government's official host, as General Herron Dade, the "head of Gandle Ott's planetary militia," intended to use "his popularity to position himself for a bid for the presidency of the long-dormant domestic government."

[9] Marja Lang is identified as an "Imperial Vice-Governor" in The DarkStryder Campaign, in which she is seen to assume office as "Acting-Governor" after the Imperial Governor of Gandle Ott fled the planet. Contrariwise, Hamman Flatt is identified as a "Lieutenant Governor" in Force Commander. The distinction between the two offices is unattested. Captain Zeta Traal was seen as military attaché in charge of the Imperial delegation to the Kingdom of Velmor in "The Last Jedi!" (Star Wars Vol. 1, No. 49). Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters states that by law "every starport" was assigned a Customs officer.

The garrison as headquarters of a paper corps is described in the Imperial Sourcebook, which notes that "the corps HQ is the basis for the Imperial garrison," and uses the paper corps system as the skeleton for a system of "organizing points for rapid mobilization." These garrisons are also home to "additional tech, medical, science and diplomatic service personnel" assigned to perform "diplomatic, trade and medical functions" that are "nominally outside" the commanding general's authority. Note that the Imperial Sourcebook incorrectly claims that majors general command corps; majors general command divisions and lieutenants general command corps (hence the equivalent ranks général de division and général de corps d'armée, respectively).

[10] The prefect as deputy of the governor with military and civil authority is seen in both Galaxy Guide 7: Mos Eisley and "Missed Chance" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 7), while the sub-prefect is seen in Galaxy Guide 10: Bounty Hunters and Galaxy Guide 11: Criminal Organizations. Prefect Gerom was seen as head of government on Namore in Heroes and Rogues, with no mention of a governor. In "A Free-Trader's Guide to Sevarcos," Planetary Commandant Velpar Raftin (a major in Imperial Intelligence) is said to desire the elevation of his administration to a "full governorship"; the same source identifies the planetary commandant's subordinates as Imperial commissars. Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters states that "each planet in the [Minos] Cluster has a consulate, with an Imperial Consul-General in charge of it," and although "there are few Imperial officials stationed at the consulates, and their duties are very limited," they nevertheless retain "the formal authority to take over the local government"; the rank of consul as subordinate to a consul general is unattested.

The grade of supervisor as head of a particular office is seen in "Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88," with Supervisor Gurdun (his aide, Minor Relsted, is promoted to supervisor after Gurdun's transfer); the grade of captain-supervisor is seen in Splinter of the Mind's Eye, in which Bin Essada, a Regional Governor seated at Gyndine, offers to promote Captain-Supervisor Grammel, head of the garrison and secret mining colony on Mimban (Circarpous V) to "Colonel-Supervisor Grammel" if he were successful in detaining certain high-profile rebels. Protectorates were mentioned alongside colonies and governorates in The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Second Edition.

[11] The status of Executive of the Imperium and their personal security detachments from the Imperial Guards are mentioned in "Soldiers for the Empire!" (Star Wars Official Poster Monthly No. 4). The ability to appoint locally-commissioned officers is conjectured from the claim in The New Essential Guide to Characters that Fleet Admiral Natasi Daala's commission was "an unofficial promotion outside of Coruscant's naval hierarchy, but a legitimate one among Tarkin's forces in the Outer Rim" (her actual permanent rank was corporal, according to Daala herself in Darksaber).

[12] The bureaucracy's entanglement in intrigue is mentioned in the Imperial Sourcebook, which notes that the advisors — who "effectively control the massive Imperial bureaucracy" — are "allowed to play their competing interests off each other, often resulting in the bureaucracy's various agencies working at cross-purposes." The number of governors is based on the fact that they are assigned on a system basis, and The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Second Edition, mentions that there are in excess of fifty million "colonies, governorships, and protectorates" in the Empire. The governor's style of "His Excellency" and the stock salutation "Sir or Madam" are seen in "Sacrifice," although the Diplomatic Service is referred to as the "Imperial Administration Section."

Dr. Bevel Lemelisk, Umak Leth, Dr. Ohran Keldor, Lira Wessex (née Blissex), Dr. Raegar, and Borborygmus Gog first appeared in Galaxy Guide 5: Return of the Jedi, the Dark Empire Sourcebook, Children of the Jedi, the Star Wars Sourcebook, "Battle for the Sunstar" (Ewoks), and Galaxy of Fear: Eaten Alive, respectively. Leth's initial rank of Junior Engineer and later position of Chief Engineer to the Emperor are mentioned in the Dark Empire Sourcebook, as is his replacement of Lemelisk as Master of Imperial Projects.

[Publius]

THE NEW ORDER IN POWER

Chapter Eight: The Armed Forces of the Imperium

The consensus of all historians is that the Galactic Empire was the most militarily powerful entity in the history of the known universe. Strato-psychohistorians at the Delgar Institute performed an exhaustive review of military preparedness in the history of the Galactic Union (RM2032.1-4), reporting (among other findings) that the Republic "was at all times in its history possessed of overwhelming military and naval superiority over any state known to have existed at the same time," and "was empirically capable of repelling any incursion into its territories, subject only to political mobilization." Nevertheless, the same report found that the Empire's military-naval strength exceeded the Republic's by every measure at every point in the latter's history; indeed, RM2032.1-4 contains extensive documentation demonstrating conclusively that the "de facto Empire (inclusive)" was more than five times as powerful as the Republic at its height (for the purposes of RM2032.1-4, Palpatine's war-mobilized Republic in the Clone War was judged to be "a pre-existant manifestation of the Empire proper," according to a rather complicated battery of psychohistorical criteria). In one of the most startling findings in the history of applied psychohistory, the Delgar calculated that it would have taken at least three and a half identical versions of the Republic at its height to have posed a serious threat to the Empire's perpetuation-of-structure. In layman's terms, the Empire was invincible. As famously described by Ebenn Q3 Baobab, the two-time Laureate of the Empire, it was thanks to the Empire's status as the most overwhelming superpower ever known that Palpatine "bestrides the galaxy like a colossus." [1]

The Armed Forces of the Imperium (AFI) were simultaneously the Empire's source of power and its means of applying it, both mine and mint. Composed of the Imperial Navy, Imperial Marines, Imperial Army, and Imperial Intelligence, the AFI represented the single largest investment of resources in the whole of the Imperial system. After re-establishing the armed forces under the Republic during the Clone War, Palpatine continued to increase military/naval funding across the board for years, to the point that the AFI in 36 rS were twice as large as they had been in 34, and more than seven times larger than the defense establishment had been at the start of the Clone War in 16 rS. As befitted their status as the Empire's terrible swift sword, the prestige associated with service in the AFI was considerable — so much so, in fact, that in common speech "the service" referred by default to the AFI. Those desiring power and glory pursued their goals by way of the service; to the cunning, the AFI were a route of swift ascent into the heights of the ruling elite: The large majority of Moffs had military experience, and the easiest way for an ambitious scientist or engineer to obtain funding and fame was to ensure his work had military applications. Competition could be cut-throat, but to the victor went considerable spoils. The single largest item on the Imperial budget, the AFI represented an investment of quadrillions of credits and trillions of employees (in fact, the defense appropriation of 32 rS was larger than 98% of all incorporated states' gross-domestic product). [2]

The AFI performed a number of functions within the Empire. First and foremost, they served to protect the Empire in general (and the Imperial State in particular) from violent disorder, to include invasion, insurrection, and terrorism. Secondly, they were responsible for defending the "the integrity of the Union" against Separatist holdouts from the Clone War (although largely a dead letter, this mandate did retain some residual validity, as pockets of Separatist resistance actually remained well beyond the Imperial Period). Thirdly, the AFI maintained the Galactic Emperor's Peace against disturbance by "piracy and warlike disruptions" (technically they were not supposed to enforce normal criminal law, except when assisting the Customs Office). Fourthly, the AFI enforced the Imperial State's jurisdiction over "unlawful interposition of pretended state authority" (the Empire claimed all the territory ever held by the Republic, and thus justified expansionism in the name of revanchism; where that claim did not apply, the Imperial State frequently either invented a prior claim, or justified its conquest under the doctrine of the Ecumenical Throne). Additionally, thanks to the dissolution of the Gendarmerie, the AFI frequently assumed the role of policing the outlands regions of the galaxy, particularly when the Regional Governor declared martial law. This last role is probably the service's most controversial, as it effectually made the colonial wing of the service into permanent internal occupation forces. [3]

The members of the service were divided into two basic categories: officer and enlisted. Officers were required to have a university-level education, and underwent grueling indoctrination at the service academies — including such famous institutions as the Imperial Naval Academy, Raithal Academy, the Military Academy at Cliffside, Carida, the Naval Academy at Prefsbelt IV, and the Space Academy — that left them the most highly-trained professional military cadre in galactic history (one study found that the average subaltern under the Empire had received a curriculum vitae equivalent to that of a field grade officer under the late Republic). The compensation for this herculean effort was the inimitible privilege of a commission "to exercise all lawful authority on behalf of The Throne" (hence the term "Galactic Emperor's Commissioned Officer," or GECO); in formal dress, GECOs carried sabers, a privilege unique to them and the College of Moffs. By law, officers were promoted at regular intervals except where disqualified for statutory advancement by subpar fitness reports or having received disciplinary action (such as nonjudicial punishment or conviction by court martial). Officers at senior/field grade and above were entitled to state-provided dachas on comfortable resort worlds like Sochi, among other conspicuous benefits (the same were extended, of course, to all SSI functionaries at equivalent places on the Table of Ranks). Two controversial practices substantially broadened the career possibilities open to GECOs: secondment and thirdment. Under the practice of secondment, an officer could be released from normal duties to take an assignment elsewhere in the Imperial State or even in allied governments (thus GECOs could be detached to serve as prefects, protectors, and governors, normally civilian jobs). Under the practice of thirdment, an officer could take indefinite leave of the service and take up virtually any career he liked, retaining his rank and precedence but surrendering most of his official benefits (in essence, he enjoyed the distinction of officerhood without its responsibilities). [4]

Enlisted personnel underwent basic training and then additional specialized training in their particular technical field; like the GECOs, "His Imperial Majesty's Enlisted Man" (HIMEM) was statistically better trained, better equipped, and better supported than in any previous military known to history. The range of specialisms available was staggering, and the AFI boasted of a vast cadre of technical experts in everything from sensors to sapping to spacemanship. The Empire spent lavishly on the training of its enlisted men, to the point that one study found 40% of all master chief petty officers, sergeants major, and master technarchs had the equivalent of two and a half master's degrees from a Class II university (and few jobs could command a relatively higher starting salary than a retired master chief boatswain's mate at a shipping company). Senior HIMEMs — an ungrammatical construction, to be sure, but one found used uncritically in official documentation — were designated noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in recognition of their greater responsibility as the 'middle management' and 'blue collar' leadership of the service; they carried cutlasses in formal dress and had the unique right to apply "corporal admonishment" to any citizen in the Empire who was not rated as a GECO or equivalent on the Table of Ranks — in essence, a senior NCO had the right to physically strike almost anyone, without the requirement of justifying himself. [5]

Promotion was swift for both GECOs and HIMEMs; those who demonstrated sustained superior performance were steadily advanced, and there were more than a dozen policy initiatives in place to simultaneously reward successful performers and encourage them to pass along their models of success. In short, the Empire aggressively pursued a policy of institutionalizing excellence. The converse was also true: The AFI were ruthlessly harsh in punishing misconduct or incompetence, often employing the death penalty in cases that would have hardly qualified as capital offenses under most other systems. Despite the initiatives in place for rewarding unorthodox successes, there were a number of cases in which mavericks were summarily executed for deviation from doctrine, only to have their deviations subsequently adopted as doctrine after review by court of inquiry. A study by the Imperial Navy's Bureau of Naval Personnel (BuPers) found that 15% of all deaths on active duty in 37 rS were reported as being the result of capital punishment. Of these, only 54% were reported as the result of conviction by general court martial, and 29% were reported to have been the result of captain's mast or admiral's mast under warlike conditions. This left some 17% of all executions in the Navy in 37 to be classified as having been the result of "summary justice" (the most commonly cited justification was "shot while in commission of mutiny," a kangax-court justification on par with the Correction Service's "shot while attempting to escape" or the ISB's "shot while resisting arrest"). In a Navy with billions of officers and sailors, BuPers simply did not have the time or resources to investigate all executions; they were automatically logged as "provisionally sanctioned, pending review," but the vast majority of cases never underwent review, and the extent to which personal animus and vendetta resulted in state-sanctioned murder will probably never be known. It is known, however, that the more political role of the officer community was accompanied by a significantly greater statistical probability of execution for an officer than for an enlisted man (one of the only measures by which the balance of mortality favored the enlisted community). [6]

Imperial High Command

Operational control of the AFI was exercised centrally by Imperial High Command, an independent body established by Imperial Decree in 16 rS to fill the role played by the Supreme Defense Council and the War Council Advisory Panel during the Clone War. The High Command made its home at Supreme Headquarters Armed Forces of the Imperium (SHAFI), a vast palatial chateau at Infinity Heights in Imperial City; officially, it was comparable to the Imperial Secretariat — located in the Secretariat General State Services of the Imperium at Sempiternity Towers — except that the Secretariat remained subordinate to HIM Government. The High Command, in contrast, did not; although it was obligated to "pay due regard" to HIMG policy and to refrain from interfering with HIMG's administrative control of the AFI, High Command was not subject to the Minister President's control, or even that of the Lord President of the Council. Charged by its constitutive Decree with final authority in all matters related to the Empire's military/naval establishment, the High Command answered only to The Throne or to the Ruling Council. This freedom of action was deliberately designed to insulate the head of the High Command from the appointment intrigues of the Court of Courts, and to counterbalance the authority of the Privy Council in military affairs. The head of the High Command was, needless to say, officially titled Supreme Commander Armed Forces of the Imperium (SCAFI) — the full title was rarely used outside of legal documents, and he was almost invariably referred to as simply the undisambiguated "Supreme Commander" — , who was advanced to "special grade" for the duration of his appointment (lord high admiral and lord high constable for the Navy and Army; the hypothetical ranks of lord high marshal and lord high logothete also existed in case a Marine or Intelligence officer were ever appointed — which never happened); in addition to his operational authority, the Supreme Commander was automatically sworn of the Council and was ex officio Chairman of the Select Committee on Collective Defense and Security (which had a stranglehold on nomination of GECOs for permanent advancement to flag/general/directorial rank). His vast authority over the AFI led to the frequent description of the Supreme Commander as "military dictator" or "shōgun" of the Empire. A list of Supreme Commanders reads like an executive summary of Who's Who, including such warlords as Terrinald Screed, the Great Prince Felijp of Philippic-in-Cranstôme, Dr Tahafut Ibn al-Dajjal, and Darth Vader; post-Endor occupants of the office included Teren Rogriss, Mitth'raw'nuruodo, and Master Jedi Luke Skywalker. [7]

From the state-of-the-art command suite of SHAFI, the Supreme Commander presided over the largest and most powerful military force ever assembled. He chaired the twice-weekly meetings of the Supreme Commander's Committee — the other members were the Deputy Supreme Commander, the First Space Lord and Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant General Imperial Marines, the Chief of Imperial General Staff, and the Superintendent General of the Ubiqtorate — to review the Empire's state of military readiness and to coordinate efforts to meet operational requirements, and was aided by the Surpreme Commander's Staff, whose staff directorates tracked every commitment of Imperial forces at regiment-strength and above on every world in the Empire; indeed, Grand General Malcor Brashin first developed the Battlefield Holographic Control Interface (BHCI) as an integrated command-and-control tool during his tour as Director of Operations (I3) on the Supreme Commander's Staff (and used it to oversee a successful planetary suppression on Telganix III from a Navy amphibious command ship two hundred light years away). Additionally, the Supreme Commander was the appointing authority for the AFI's independent commissions like the Imperial Military Oversight Commission and the Imperial Commission on the Conduct of the War, and could exert considerable influence on appropriations and procurement. Most famously, the Military Oversight Commission had joined with the Senate Budgetary Committee to block the Navy's plan to replace nearly all of its inventory of Victory-class Star Destroyers with the newer Imperial-class, and remained stubbornly opposed even in the face of the Navy's use of its silent fractions, bribery, and intimidation tactics — until, that is, the Supreme Commander, Lord High Admiral Screed (the notoriously caustic-mouthed "God of Space Battles" and "Grandfather of the Grand Admirals") intervened and famously "crammed the ImpStar down the Commission's throats" (in the words of Senator L. N. Jerjerrod, a retired admiral and vice chairman of the Senate Naval Subcommittee). On another occasion, Ibn al-Dajjal vetoed a proposal by the Navy's Bureau of Naval Aviation (BuAv) to modify its interceptors with hyperdrives, despite the fact that the proposal had been an internal Navy matter; in a startlingly blunt memorandum to the 1SL/CNO, the Supreme Commander reminded Admiral Wermis that the High Command's policy was to embark carrier space groups on board capital ships, and submitted in colorfully metaphorical language that Wermis rein in BuAv lest he find himself in need of a proctologist to dislodge Ibn al-Dajjal's boot. [8]

High Command did not have direct control over regular or reserve forces assigned to "colonial service," where they fell under the operational command and control of the Regional Governors and the regional and oversector Governors General (although the High Command retained the ability to supercede the normal chain of command and assume direct control of colonial-service forces); instead, it exercised supervisory authority over large-scale operations conducted by the colonial authorities. This was not, however, a great handicap, as the largest single concentration of military/naval might in the whole of the Empire was not assigned to colonial service at all — the Combined Strategic Forces Command (COMSTRATFORCOM) contained nearly half the total firepower of the Empire, and all of it was under the direct command and control of the High Command; it was a joint-service command, composed of four enormous 'component commands' (the Combined Starfleet, Marine Forces Strategic, the Mobile Strategic Striking Force, and Directorate General Strategic Intelligences), and had in and of itself more manpower and ordnance than the entire Galactic Republic had mobilized halfway through the Clone War. Officially, COMSTRATFORCOM existed to ensure a mobile striking force was held in strategic reserve to promptly reinforce colonial-service forces whenever necessary, ensuring that the Empire's vital infrastructure were protected and the Imperial State were never caught flat-footed by a military emergency. Unofficially, the overwhelming firepower of COMSTRATFORCOM existed to ensure that none of the Empire's governors on "service abroad" ever thought to challenge the Imperial State. Even Grand Moff Tarkin, the dictator of the Outer Rim and "twice, thrice, four times a Governor," could not withstand the High Command's sledgehammer; the Group of Imperial Forces in the Outer Rim and Crimson Mace Command — the unified combat commands assigned to the Outer Rim Territories and to Oversector Outer, respectively — have been rated by RM2021.6-3 as containing more firepower than even the Group of Imperial Forces in the Core and Azure Hammer Command, yet a separate study RM2037.8-2v found that COMSTRATFORCOM was more than eight times more powerful (ironically, the official motto of the High Command was "Peace Is Our Profession"). It has been speculated by the Revisionist school that one of Tarkin's greatest motivations in creating the Death Star was to give himself a concentration of firepower equal to that of COMSTRATFORCOM, something he would find necessary if he were to usurp The Throne from the 'sickly' Palpatine of Naboo. [9]

The Imperial Navy

The Imperial Navy was the senior service of the Armed Forces and central to the Empire's strategic planning — and knew it. The Navy controlled not only the Empire's vast starfleet of enormously powerful warships, but also the majority of troop transports and the logistics train, as well as the Empire's single largest inventory of weapons of mass destruction. The Ministry of the Navy was one of the key portfolios in the Government, and Naval Command the one place even the Imperial Senate never dared to send its armies of inspectors general on a frontal assault. The Navy's silent fractions controlled a number of portfolios — including Intergalactic Transit and Space — and with them, a number of nominally independent agencies like the Imperial Survey Corps (ISC), the Space Rescue Corps (SRC), and the Customs Office; a powerful bloc in the Senate, the so-called Gun Club, was ready to enthusiastically vote for anything the Navy's "fleet faction" might propose (one Senator even admitted he didn't even read Navy funding proposals before voting for them; the Princess Leia of Alderaan famously complained that "you don't count votes for Navy appropriations, you weigh them"). Naval Command was accustomed to a certain degree of splendor; the First Space Lord and Chief of Naval Operations (1SL/CNO) — who enjoyed the unique rank of Admiral of the Navy — effectively reigned as "King of All Known Space" from the palatial majesty of Unity Gardens, the Navy's headquarters complex built by Gehirn and Seele at the far end of Basilica (with the Commodore ISC and Commodore IFA under his thumb, the 1SL/CNO's only real rival was the Commandant General of Imperial Customs, a pale imitator). The Imperial Naval Academy was the most prestigious school in the Empire, and the Navy War College and Naval Postgraduate School each received applicants from more than six million worlds every year. The average Imperial admiral's command was more than ten times what it had been under the Republic. The Navy's official motto was "Service, Fealty, Fidelity," but the unofficial motto around Unity Gardens was the much less modest "It's Good to Be the King." [10]

The Ministry of the Navy managed such administrative tasks as funding, upkeep of "installations and environments," and management of civilian personnel (detailed from the SSI). The rest belonged to Naval Command, and the 1SL/CNO fiercely guarded his prerogatives — and in any case, thanks to the common practice of 'jelligatoring' (i.e., the practice of 'laundering' one's clientele so as to keep ties of patronage 'invisible'), more often than not the 1SL/CNO either 'owned' the Minister of the Navy, or else had enough clout that there was no question of his questioning his nominal subordinate's decisions. It was not the Minister of the Navy who was King of All Known Space, after all. There was no formal Navy general staff; instead, the Board of Admiralty administered the Navy in a somewhat more collegial fashion. The president of the board, 1SL/CNO, was joined by the Second Space Lord and Chief of Naval Personnel, the Third Space Lord and Chief of Naval Procurement, the Fourth Space Lord and Chief of Naval Supplies, the Fifth Space Lord and Chief of Naval Aviation, and certain other officers like the Director of Hypermatter Propulsion, the Surgeon General, and the Astrographer. Beneath the Board of Admiralty the Navy was divided into subject-matter branches, the Line Branch, Flight Branch, Fleet Support Branch, and Support Service Branch, which were further subdivided into bureaux concerned with such matters as deck, logistics, administration, flight, engineering, technical services, ordnance, gunnery, communications, biology, and astrogation. Together the Board of Admiralty and the four branches smoothly administered the largest and most powerful space force in history. [11]

The Navy was unimaginably vast, containing millions of warships, and countless more support ships. The standard Sector Group consisted of 24 Star Destroyers ("major assets"), 1,600 lesser warships ("submajor assets"), and 776 support ships; it was divided into operational commands, which deployed and operated naval forces (e.g., 603rd Superiority Fleet and 730th Assault Fleet), and type commands, which trained, equipped, and maintained naval assets (e.g., Space Force Jehinnom Sector Group and Aviation Force Quatre Ports Sector Group). If the Sector Group was a coequal partner with the Sector Army and (nominally) the Sector Marine Force and the Sector Intelligence Branch in forming a Sector Command, there was no question that the Navy's component command to COMSTRATFORCOM was by far the dominant partner; the Combined Starfleet, composed of enormous numbered starfleets, had enough firepower to disintegrate a habitable planet. In addition to the warships of the Imperial Starfleet, the Navy owned a vast constellation of hospital ships, fleet tankers, container ships, stores and replenishment vessels, ammunition ships, and forward repair ships operated by the Imperial Fleet Auxiliary (IFA), whose sailors were actually civilian merchant mariners employed by the Ministry of the Navy subject to naval discipline and obligated to serve under warlike conditions. Needless to say, the Navy also controlled millions of space stations, shipyards, naval bases, and other installations belonging to the Shore Establishment, and what's more, controlled the Empire's Spacelift Command, an enormous aggregate of ships owned or chartered by the Imperial State to provide spacelift and space transportation to the whole of the AFI and SSI (i.e., the IFA provided replenishment, supply, and support to the Imperial Starfleet, and the Spacelift Command performed the same role in parallel to the Imperial State). While the crews of the Spacelift Command were merchant mariners employed either by the Imperial State or private corporations, there was no question who was their master: The Admiralty had an iron grip on nearly all bulk freighters in the galaxy, and at the Navy's height approximately one-third of all freight moved by large cargo ships was war matériel, under the Navy's control. Still the Admiralty's lust for power was insatiable; when Senate appropriations and naval authorized strength augmentations could not satisfy their hunger, they turned to bait-and-switch tactics to build an ersatz navy, revising the merchant marine academies' curricula to incorporate combat training on naval equipment, and the traditional merchant navy uniforms were abolished in favor of new uniforms almost indistinguishable from the AFI's. Millions of merchantmen owned by the Imperial State were converted into armed merchant cruisers (AMCs), often embarking combat starfighters, and were sent given nominal cargos to carry through pirate- or insurgent-infested space (such cruises were in fact functionally combat space patrols). With mercantile officers and men already trained to Imperial standards with much the same skills and qualifications as their naval counterparts, it was often a mere formality when the Navy outright impressed them into service. Not even the quasiautonomous Bureau of Ships and Services (BoSS), only nominally subordinate to Minispace and the Empire, did not fully escape the Admiralty's bullying. The 1SL/CNO was, after all, the King of All Known Space. [12]

The Imperial Marines

Simultaneously the least political and the most distinctive branch of service, the Imperial Marines barely existed outside of their barracks and white Impervium plastoid armor. Unlike the other branches, the Marines owned no silent fractions, and indeed there was not even a specific portfolio administering their affairs (for the most part, they cerdibacked off Mininav). The professional head of the Marines was the Commandant General Imperial Marines (CGIM), who bore the unique rank Captain General of the Marines and was assisted by the Commandancy Staff. Unlike the other service chiefs, he was appointed directly by The Throne and could not be removed except by letters patent; he submitted a weekly accounting of the Marines operations to the Galactic Emperor, and reported in person to the Ruling Council (he and the Supreme Commander were the only officers of the service to appear regularly before the Serenissimus). The CGIM was a member of the Supreme Commander's Committee, but rarely attended — and when he did, it was usually because some matter or other had a direct impact on the Marines. Central Command's home at Headquarters Imperial Marines was an aesthetically simple affair; although it was suitably cyclopean in dimensions, many reported finding The Citadel almost underwhelming, especially because it was practically on top of the splendor of Unity Gardens and the spectacular zero-gravity fountains of its namesake gardens. The Marines made a conscious effort to be low-key, and even their organization remains something of an historical dead-zone; although declassified records have shown that a significant fraction of the Marines' total manpower was composed of clones decanted by the top-secret Directorate of Hatcheries and Conditioning (DHC chiefly produced "GeNode" type clones, although other processes were also used early on), to this day there remains little to no documentation of their logistics and combat support system. They did not even have a dedicated medical branch; Naval Biological Group provided all healthcare, and helped to sell the (totally unsubstantiated) idea that the Marines had discontinued the use of clones after the Imperial Senate abolished the Grand Army of the Republic and passed the Biotics (Cloning and Bioengineering) Restriction Act — in essence a beefed-up version of the wartime Decree E49D139.41 — outlawing cloning ("except for purposes of species perpetuation, as regulated by the responsible Ministry of the Imperial State") in the wake of the Clonemasters' Revolt. [13]

Pollux Hax, Palpatine's generalissimo of propagandists, masterminded the multimedia campaign that successfully convinced the galaxy that the old clone troopers were a thing of the past, praising the selfless heroism of the Grand Army of the Republic and at the same time unironically excoriating the Jedi for the "immorality" of their "abominable" support for "human slavery" in having commissioned and led the Grand Army (Hax managed to carry on for over a decade without anyone ever thinking to ask why human slavery was more "abominable" than any other kind — it was with good reason he was called "Grand Admiral of Spin-Doctors" and the "Palpatine of Public Relations"). As an unpaid consultant, Hax was also maestro of the superbly-organized 'grassroots' movement against cloning which had forced the Senate's hand, and oversaw the enormous government secrecy effort which simultaneously kept the public only dimly aware of the Empire's use of human slavery and the continued widespread use of cloning in the form of the ubiquitous Marines. Indeed, it was the success of these so-called "Clone Campaigns" that prompted Mon Mothma's famous grudging acknowledgement of Hax as "a genius — a sick, twisted, deceitful genius; an unscrupulous, unprincipled, untrustworthy genius; a despicable, noisome, unctuous genius — but above all, a genius." As a result of his success, the Commandancy Staff was able to carry on for decades without bothering to explain to anyone what precisely was the origin of the Imperial Marines' manpower; indeed, extant records indicate that the Commandant of Personnel (G1) was never even asked the question by any reporter or journalist; the one time the Commandant of Public Affairs (G9) was asked during testimony before the Senate Committee on the Armed Forces, the incumbent, Legion General Guy à Parnasse, mumbled something recorded by the committee stenographer rather unhelpfully as "(incoherent response)." [14]

Nevertheless, the Marines were a formidable force. The officers commissioned from the Military Academy at Cliffside and the riflemen trained at Imperial Military Training Base, Carida, were some of the finest in the galaxy, and were noted for their rigorous, almost fanatical, devotion to duty. The Marines were the favored service when it came to security and "loyalty police": They were ubiquitous as embassy security and personal security detachments, and Marine Detachments were assigned to every ship in the Navy and every garrison in the Army. A detailed study by the Imperial Academy of Science and Methodology found that while local citizens may sneer and curse at masters-at-arms and military policemen, relatively few were so bold as to even look at provost marshal stormtroopers askance (it is theorized that the dehumanizing effect of the T.I.E. Armored Spacesuit is partly responsible for this difference in attitude). The Marines were the shock troopers of the Empire, famous for striking first, striking fast, and striking hard; what's more, they were also reputed as the most versatile, with whole special-operations divisions specifically trained for operating in hostile environments as varied as the imagination could conceive (including but not limited to sandtroopers, snowtroopers, spacetroopers, scout troopers, seatroopers, bombtroopers, radtroopers, magmatroopers, airtroopers, underminers, and mine troopers). Superior performers received transfer to the elite Imperial Guards units in the Core, such as the famous Guards Legion I, Guards Legion XII, and Guards Legion CXII; the Guards legions in turn provided the elevated recruitment ground for still more rarefied heights, such as the Storm Commandos (Thirteenth Imperial Guards Regiment), the darktroopers of the Black Watch (1st Battalion, Seventh Imperial Guards Regiment), and the scarlet-cloaked Imperial and Royal Guard (1st Brigade, Imperial Guards Legion I); from the Royal Guard were drawn the deadliest and most elite troopers in the whole of the galaxy, the Sovereign Protectors (1st Battalion, First Imperial and Royal Guards Regiment). Together with the Navy's Star Destroyers and TIE fighters, the stormtrooper — and with him, the Imperial Marines' official motto "Morituri Eum Salutamus" — remains one of the most iconic images of the Galactic Empire. [15]

The Imperial Army

Vast beyond the ability of the human mind to truly grasp, the Imperial Army was the largest terrestrial fighting force ever assembled in the whole of galactic history. Like the Marines, the Army was prepared to fight in any environment known to man, from the scorching heat of Serapis's lava fields to the crushing depths of Iskalon's oceans; the Army's proud boast of having the training, motivation, and tools to fight and win on any surface or subsurface in the universe was borne out by a long and impressive list of battle honors whose fields included everything from the asteroids of Teradnix to the subterranean tunnels of Glorfayne. The official motto of the Imperial Army was the somewhat opaque "Tenka Fubu" (an archaic phrase in High Galactic), but this was far less common than the decidedly less friendly unofficial motto "Peace Through Superior Firepower." Nor was this an idle boast; when Colonel General Dmitri Balan was lost his patience after months of stubborn resistance by the Partisans in the mountains of Gor on Walkan-bi, he ordered an artillery strike which literally flattened the entire mountain range — and Balan's 603rd Imperial Army Group did not even control the largest concentration of heavy artillery in the Army. The Navy may have controlled the largest stockpile of WMDs in the Empire, but it would be a fatal mistake to underestimate the firepower of the Army, which was perfectly capable of rearranging continents in its pursuit of the Empire's goals. It is a well-known fact that sightseers who visited the Army Command's headquarters complex at Triumph House (located opposite Unity Gardens on Basilica) often described it as a palace fit for a king; this was not a coincidence. The professional head of the Army, the Chief of Imperial General Staff (CIGS) — who bore the unique rank Marshal General of the Armies, and was dual-hatted as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces (CINCFOR) — was popularly nicknamed "King of Kings Ruling Over Rulers" for the sheer number of heads of state who had surrendered to his forces. The decidedly imperious tone of the CIGS's nickname and the majesty of his headquarters was noteworthy in that — unlike many other such nicknames in the Empire — they trickled down to his subordinates. Army officers, and especially graduates of the Army's premier school, the highly prestigious Raithal Academy, were known throughout the Empire as "Little Kings" (in contrast, Naval officers were simply "Nominals," an ancient nickname whose origins are lost). The tradition was manifested elsewhere, as well. Prisoners of war were commonly called "His Majesty's Guests" (not, contrary to popular belief, a reference to the Galactic Emperor), and rocket artillery units frequently adopted the name "Royal Mail" (i.e., their profession was the prompt delivery of packages on the King of Kings' behalf). The remnants of the Gor mountains were henceforth known as the King's New Tennis Court. [16]

The Ministry of War managed the Army's administration in much the same way Mininav did for the senior service (and the Minister of War had much the same relationship with the CIGS that the Minister of the Navy had with the 1SL/CNO); in addition to Miniwar, Army silent fractions typically owned the Munitions, Colonies, and Industry portfolios, and jelligatoring was as rampant among the senior Little Kings as it was among senior Nominals. But the King of Kings was decidedly more autocratic than the King of All Space, and instead of a collegial board like the Admiralty, the Army itself was run by the strictly top-down Imperial General Staff (IGS). Where the Space Lords and bureau chiefs were nominally equals, the CIGS's subordinates were unambiguously inferior vice, deputy, and assistant chiefs of the IGS, in charge of such offices as personnel, intelligence, operations, logistics, war plans, communications and autoprocs, and civil affairs; in most cases, the office chiefs continued to use such traditional titles as adjutant general, quartermaster general, and surgeon general. In addition were certain subject-matter commands dealing with specialized fields like special operations, medical, military engineering, signals, research & development, training & doctrine, security, and legal affairs. Like the Supreme Commander's Staff, the IGS formed a distinct corps of GECOs within the Army; graduates of the Command and General Staff College Nimur Chabir alternated between command of units on colonial duty and service on the IGS, simultaneously strengthening Army Command's hold on its disparate forces — no mean task, considering the authority of the Regional Governors and the Governors General over the forces within their areas of responsibility (which left Army Command naturally suspicious of the entire College of Moffs) — and ensuring that the IGS itself was composed entirely of professional military experts with extensive experience both in combat and in staff work. The work load was ferocious; Little King's working for the IGS often worked twelve to fourteen hour days, drafting reports and contingency plans, conducting detailed studies, and managing enormous dockets of flimsiwork. The War Plans Office (G5) had case scandocs prepared for some seven million different war scenarios; some of them were sufficiently advanced as to have qualified as doctoral theses in military science. The IGS has been regarded by many strato-psychohistorians as the most potent weapon in the Army's entire arsenal. [17]

Unlike the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Marines, the Army was largely structured for war of attrition and occupation rather than war of maneuver. Consequently, it was not nearly as flexible; because of the Army's larger organizational mass, it took considerably longer to mobilize for deployment (with the natural side effect that once it got moving, it was proportionately more difficult to halt). The reverse side to this coin was that the Army's logistics train and its ability to reinforce its units were similarly subject to the force of momentum; it was a great deal easier to move a numbered starfleet or Marine Expeditionary Force from one Sector to another than it was to shift a numbered army or army group. To compensate for this, the IGS instituted a policy of widespread use of the sepoy model, whereby Imperial GECOs and NCOs were seconded to auxiliary militaries to form a professional cadre facilitating integration into the Imperial system (the model was used sporadically by the Navy, and was exceedingly rare in the Marines and Intelligence); service as "military advisors" with the sepoy forces was less prestigious than service in the AFI proper, and to compensate these "Native" officers and NCOs for the loss in prestige, they received additional pay and allowances, and frequently served in positions several grades higher than their actual permanent ranks, as when Lieutenant Colonel Pal Gernadon served as a general of infantry (equivalent to an Imperial major general) in the Galrai Protectionary Force. It was fairly common for corporals and sergeants to serve as "Native" sergeants major or warrant officers, with more senior NCOs serving as subalterns, company officers as field officers, and field officers as general officers; members of the auxiliary militaries who distinguished themselves could become Governor's Commissioned Officers (GCOs), and serve with the AFI proper. Additionally, the Army aggressively pushed for allied militaries to integrate, reserving millions of slots in its finest training institutions, in a bid to standardize military practice throughout the Empire. These policies would eventually come to full fruition with the rise of the "bait-and-switch" strategy during the Civil War and beyond. [18]

Imperial Intelligence

Whereas the other branches projected images of themselves covered in glory and honor, Imperial Intelligence went out of its way to appear as sinister as possible. Intelligence officers and men demonstrated peculiar behavior in public; in conversation with outsiders, they would often casually reveal an unsettling familiarity with people's personal affairs (most famously when a deputy director testifying before the Senate riposted a question about Intelligence's funding by blandly mentioning certain questionable charges appearing on a hostile Senator's most recent bank statement). They made cryptic responses to simple questions, used peculiar terminology, and frequently implied that they know far more than they let on about just about any subject. "The All-Seeing Eye" (as it was often known) made no effort at presenting a friendly face. Even Intelligence's motto was decidedly more unpleasant than its counterparts'; where the others made grand claims of fidelity or strength, Intelligence opted for the unsettling "Semper Te Spectat" (the unofficial motto was equally dissonant: "Out of Sight, Out of Mind"). Intelligence made frequent use of its rights under various Decrees and orders in council to decline to answer inquiries from the Senate about funding and operations, and the professional head of the service, the Superintendent General of the Ubiqtorate — the actual title was rarely used outside of official documentation, as most referred to this officer by his unique rank of Director of Imperial Intelligence — rarely appeared before the Senate Committee on the Armed Forces. With its 'black' budget and close ties to the Ruling Council and the College of Moffs, Intelligence had little need of placating the Senate; what's more, its controlling interest in the Interior and Information portfolios made it unwise for a politician with something to hide to meddle in Intelligence's affairs. Although the allegations were never proven, Intelligence was accused of routinely feeding incriminating or embarrassing materials on its critics to the holomedia. Intelligence Command played dirty, and it played for keeps; few Senators cared to venture anywhere near its headquarters, the Panopticon. Even there, Intelligence was different; where Naval Command and Army had palatial headquarters complexes at Unity Gardens and Triumph House and the Central Command had a largely functional complex at The Citadel, Intelligence Command's headquarters were contained in a single building, an featureless black monolith on the northern stretch of Basilica (and featureless it was: there was absolutely nothing on the surface, no external antennae, vents, windows, or even doors). The Panopticon's size was prodigious, but it was its shape and appearance that made it famous: Millions of citizens reported feelings of unease, discomfort, and even fear and nausea at the mere sight of it, leading to rumors that Intelligence was using hurlothrumbic gases or mind-control waves to enhance the monolith's sinister appearance — and declassified records have revealed that the Panopticon was deliberately constructed according to precise specifications to cause visceral psychological distress in as many species as possible. No one was ever seen to enter or exit the Panopticon, thus leading to the famous stack of subpoenas left piled out front. Further enhancing Intelligence's reputation for unnatural awareness, no Intelligence officer was ever late to a court or Senate hearing, despite the subpeonas being left obviously undelivered in front of the building. [19]

Imperial Intelligence differed from the other branches in that it was relatively young. The Imperial Navy and Imperial Army were "upgrades" of the Republican Navy and the Republican Army, while the Imperial Marines were descended from the Grand Army of the Republic. In contrast, there was no single Republic unified intelligence service handling all disciplines of intelligence (espionage, sabotage, covert operations, cryptography, &c.) the way Imperial Intelligence did for the Empire; the Republic's intelligence needs were performed by a community of agencies, with little to no communication or coordination with each other. The deficiencies of this system were painfully clear by the time the Count of Serenno's Separatist movement had appeared, and with every indication the Senate had no intention of fixing things, Armand Isard, Director, Senate Bureau of Intelligence — "Palpatine's Left Hand" — arranged a private meeting with his counterparts the Administrator of the Republican Security Organization, the Chairman of the Interstellar Consortium on Technology, and the Chief of the Special Acquisitions Branch of the Library of the Republic, where they agreed to pool their resources and establish a secret steering committee to provide leadership and direction for the entire community. Thus was born the Ubiqtorate, whose full membership remains unrevealed even to this day (records remain unclear as to how many of the "Silent Four's" subordinates were aware of the secret steering committee). Over time, the Ubiqtorate evolved into a secret society, with some of its members having no official role at all; Ubiqtorate members spread out, infiltrating corporations, universities, banks, and even governments (in 45 rS, it was discovered that Corulag's Senator Foghorn Ashton of Ashton-on-Rhyne, the eccentric Ranking Opposition Member of the New Republic's Council on Security and Intelligence, had been a member of the Ubqitorate for 30 years). There was no general staff to oversee Intelligence; the Ubiqtorate controlled strategic direction and policy, which was distributed to the branches anonymously (the Superintendent General was the only acknowledged member of the Ubiqtorate, and both Isard and his successor, his daughter Ysanne Isard, variously pretended that they were merely mouthpieces of the Ubiqtorate, that they were the entire membership of the Ubiqtorate, or that the Ubiqtorate did not exist; rumors abound that the Minister of Security, Intelligence's counterpart to Mininav and Miniwar, was also always a member). Beneath the Ubiqtorate were the autonomous divisions, the Inquisitorius, the Bureau of Adjustments, the Internal Organization Bureau (IntOrg), the Analysis Bureau, the Bureau of Operations, the Bureau of Intelligence, the Sector Plexus Bureau, and the Bureau of Regulation. Beneath these branches were the subject-matter branches, dealing with such matters as internal security and counterintelligence, signals intercept, cryptanalysis, interrogation, surveillance, espionage, assassination, counterinsurgency, and counternarcotics. [20]

The All-Seeing Eye was the most notorious among its brethren in the AFI. For one thing, it was the only branch of the AFI that was openly comfortable with its decidedly unfriendly role: The Assassination Branch was openly unapologetic about its mandate to kill people outside of combat (even bounty hunters employed by the Office of Criminal Investigations were supposed to take their quarries captive unless it proved impossible), and Destabilization Branch (Destab) made no pretense that its function was anything but "taking the fabric which holds a people, society or government together and unraveling it." On one of the rare occasions he appeared before the Senate, the longtime Sub-Director (Operations), Executive Director Sir Miklos haut Rezhdenyei, stated quite matter-of-factly that the Bureau of Operations had the largest stockpiles of hurlothrumbic agents, hallucinogens, psychoactive drugs, and truth serums in the known universe. Interrogation Branch's use of psychic probes, hypnotic suggestion, and mind-weakening drugs was the subject of widespread (and accurate) rumors, and the dealings of the Inquisitorius were the stuff of nightmares; other rumors (equally true) circulated of secret torture chambers and detention camps, including the notorious Lusankya penitentiary, ultimately revealed to be on board a Super Star Destroyer secretly buried in the cityscape of Imperial Center about fifteen kilometers west of the Panopticon — nor was the Lusankya the only nasty surprise kept hidden by Intelligence, who was also responsible for selecting and screening the population imported to Palpatine's narcotic paradise world of Byss. Despite the existence of laws expressly prohibiting it, it was common knowledge that Intelligence routinely spied on Imperial citizens and employed a vast network of billions of informants and informers. More so than any other agency of the Imperial State, Imperial Intelligence routinely and flagrantly violated Imperial law, engaging in countless crimes and atrocities ranging from unlicensed bio-experimentation on non-consenting sapient beings to outright murder and cultural annihilation (in one case, Intelligence's cloak-and-dagger intrigues resulted in the extinction of an entire species by the inadvertent destruction of its gestalt consciousness; data from the incident resulted in the successful creation of a psychocidal weapon of mass destruction known to have been used at least 38 times). As the Revisionist school has long maintained, Intelligence got away with it for decades because their behavior had left most Senators uncomfortable with the thought of confronting them. So long as Intelligence's outrages remained in the periphery or maintained plausible deniability, the Senate's cognitive bias kept them off the political radar. It was all there in the unofficial motto: "Out of Sight, Out of Mind." [21]

[Publius]

Endnotes

[1] The Republic is described in Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker as being "like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack." The Empire's superiority in terms of hard power is derived from The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Second Edition's claim that Palpatine "used political threats and vague promises of foreign invasions to spearhead the most massive military build-up the Known Galaxy had ever seen" (the Imperial Sourcebook quotes "The Imperial Army — A Guide to Army Training for New Recruits" as saying that the Imperial Army is "the largest army that the galaxy has ever seen"). The identification of the Clone War era Republic with the Empire (despite the legal change not yet having taken place) is seen in "The Search Begins" (Star Wars Vol. 1, No. 68), in which the Mandalore (né Fenn Shysa) comments that "when Palpatine made his move to set up a Galactic Empire, the Government o' Mandalore sent us inta the Clone Wars on the Emperor's side."

Psychohistory is defined in Isaac Asimov's Foundation as "that branch of mathematics which deals with the reactions of human conglomerates to fixed social and economic stimuli," where "the human conglomerate is sufficiently large for valid statistical treatment"; its existence within the Star Wars universe is unattested.

Ebenn Q3 Baobab is mentioned to have been two-time Laureate of the Empire in the Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide. His description of Palpatine is paraphrased from English playwright William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

[2] The unattested name 'Armed Forces of the Imperium' is preferred herein to the canonical 'Imperial Armed Forces' (mentioned in the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook); it is based on the occasionally-used British name 'Armed Forces of the Crown' and the term 'Executive of the Imperium' mentioned in "Soldiers of the Empire!" (Star Wars Official Poster Monthly No. 4). The stormtroopers — specifically said to be a separate branch of service from the "Imperial army and navy" in the "Technical Journal of the Imperial Forces" (The Official Star Wars Technical Journal No. 2) — are identified as the Imperial Marines in "Pax Empirica — The Wookiee Annihilation" (Galactic Battlegrounds: Prima's Official Strategy Guide), and Imperial Intelligence is called "an official arm of the military" in the Death Star Technical Companion.

The Rebellion Era Sourcebook notes that after his acclamation as Galactic Emperor, Palpatine "increased military budgets across the board, from research and development to recruitment." The armed forces' massive growth after the Battle of Yavin is derived from the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook's claim that "since the destruction of the Death Star, the Emperor has shifted the focus of his limitless military and industrial power almost exclusively toward crushing this upstart Rebellion; as a result, the Imperial Armed Forces have nearly doubled in strength."

The Core Rulebook describes Imperial officers as being "admired, respected, and in some cases, feared," and Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope adds that "those that distinguish themselves [...] can go on to become the authority over entire star systems, and consequently become entitled to all of the many fringe benefits accorded the position." The Hero's Guide Web Enhancement: Character Templates and Prestige Classes desribes Moffs as being "drawn from the upper crust of the Imperial military," and that "for the shrewdest and most ambitious officers [...] the rewards are well worth the risks."

Strike Force: Shantipole establishes that the 194-million-credit Nebulon-B frigate costs "less than one twentieth of the price of an Imperial Star Destroyer" (i.e., no less than 3.88 billion credits), and Specter of the Past intimates that the Imperial Starfleet included at least twenty-five thousand Star Destroyers. To wit, the Armed Forces spent more than 97 trillion credits on the purchase of Star Destroyers alone, not counting the costs of fuel, ordnance, and maintenance, let alone the cost of training and supporting ship's companies to crew them, or the expenses implied by a support infrastructure (to say nothing of the cost of other warships, support ships, fighters, bombers, and other small craft, and the entire body of the Imperial Army, Imperial Marines, and Imperial Intelligence).

According to the Imperial Sourcebook, the Imperial Army stations no fewer than "774,576 troops and 1,180,309 personnel in total," indicating a lower limit of 4.7 billion soldiers on garrison duty (the Empire contains at least two Regions of "thousands" of Sectors). These figures' unsatisfactory nature is illuminated by Coruscant and the Core Worlds, which claims that Kuat Drive Yards' main shipyard alone "employs billions of beings."

[3] The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Second Edition states that Palpatine "used political threats and vague promises of foreign invasions to spearhead the most massive military build-up the Known Galaxy had ever seen." Revenge of the Sith Incredible Cross-Sections states that "the Imperial Starfleet will justify its existence in unending war against Separatist holdouts, dissident rebels, and even, it is rumored, deterring barbarian invaders from outside the galaxy." Star Wars: The Visual Guide says that "the Imperial Navy's key directive is to combat space piracy and transport military personnel," and Pirates & Privateers notes that "piracy provided an excuse for many of the Empire's excesses: increased shipbuilding (ostensibly to suppress pirates), restriction and increased registration of civilian ship's weapons (to cut the flow of arms to pirates), garrisoning of worlds (to provide security against pirate raids), and even increased voluntary enlistment (hundreds of thousands of young people signed up to "Join the Crusade against Piracy and Restore Order to the Galaxy," to quote an early recruitment poster)." It goes on to say that "the Empire seeks to assert and maintain control of all known space," that "aside from responding to the threat posed by the Rebel Alliance and hunting it to extinction, the Empire also seeks to control and assure safe passage of commerce," and that "protecting civilians from the dangers of space remains a primary Navy mission — piracy has traditionally been the target of Navy attention when no overt military threats loom."

The Armed Forces' role in law enforcement is less explicit. Pirates & Privateers notes that "Imperial controlled systems are patrolled by Imperial Customs ships and Sector Rangers, as well as whatever Naval forces are in the area"; it goes on to say that "the duties of a patrol force include law enforcement, planetary customs support, search and rescue, orbital boarder patrols, general security patrols, and on-station hyperspace jumps zone duty," and that "increasingly the Empire is assuming these duties, but few system governments are thrilled at the idea of leaving their security in the hands of the remote and uncaring Empire" (the descriptor "remote" implies that the rise in Imperial policing is in the periphery rather than the Core). The use of martial law to supercede normal governance is derived from Children of the Jedi, in which the Will cites the Senatorial Amendments to Constitutions of New Order (Decree 77-92465-001) as establishing that "all military offensives shall be considered under law as states of emergency, and subject to the emergency military powers act of the Senate."

[4] The Core Rulebook states that most Imperial officers are "inducted straight into officer training academies, instructed in doctrine, leadership, and tactics, and then awarded commissions"; The Far Orbit Project establishes that these academies offer "both Army and Navy undergraduate and graduate programs." The Imperial Sourcebook identifies the Army's as Imperial Army Officer Training Academies (foremost among them the Raithal Academy) and the Navy's as Sector Naval Academies (foremost among them the Imperial Naval Academy); "Into the Core Worlds" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 7) reveals that both Raithal Academy (along with its "sister school" Corulag Academy) is a "branch of the Empire-spanning Academy" (note that the Academy par excellence lacks any disambiguation). The Military Academy at Cliffside on Carida was the premier Marine service academy, first clearly seen in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire. The Star Wars Sourcebook mentions the Imperial Naval Academy on Prefsbelt IV, while the Imperial Space Academy is mentioned in Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama (both the Star Wars Encyclopedia and A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, Third Edition conflate the Space Academy with the Academy proper).

Imperial commissioned officers — the term "Galactic Emperor's Commissioned Officer" is unattested — are described as carrying sabers at ceremonials in the Star Wars Sourcebook (a "Naval sword") and The Hutt Gambit (a "ceremonial officer's saber"); in the latter, the breaking of the officer's sword is part of the ceremony of degradation for an officer dismissed in disgrace. Officers' automatic advancement is derived from Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope, which notes that "unlike some military organizations, promotion of Imperial officers is mandatory within a certain amount of time, unless adequate proof of incompetence or dishonesty exists" (the Star Wars Sourcebook describes naval aviator T. Alvak's advancement to "Flight Leader" by a promotion board, which may be required for early advancement)."Soldiers of the Empire!" mentions that retired stormtroopers are generally sent to the "Troopers' Rest camp on the holiday planet of Sochi" (the Star Wars Sourcebook also describes "designated Imperial R&R [rest and recreation] planets"); the practice of bestowing dachas on senior officers is unattested.

The practice of secondment is conjectured to explain the frequent appearance of officers in civilian posts.

[5] The Imperial Sourcebook describes Navy basic training as taking place at "fleet camps," and Army basic training at "drop camps" ("You're in the Army Now!", The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 2, sets Army basic training at "basic training camps" instead). Specialty training for the Navy took place at "advanced schools for further education in the technical specialties of their assigned branches" (Imperial Sourcebook), and for the Army at "advanced training centers" and "special environment operations camps" ("You're in the Army Now!"

The rate of master chief petty officer is seen in Death Star; the rank of sergeant major is seen in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire. The rating of boatswain's mate is implied by the existence of the warrant officer rank of boatswain ("Bosun"), as seen in The Far Orbit Project. The rank of master technarch (the Intelligence equivalent to master chief and sergeant major) is unattested (as is, for that matter, the term "His Imperial Majesty's Enlisted Man").

[6] The swift advancement of the Armed Forces is demonstrated in The Empire Strikes Back (in which a post captain is advanced to fleet admiral), "Pax Empirica — The Wookiee Annihilation" (in which two corporals are advanced to first sergeant), and (most strikingly) in The Stele Chronicles and TIE Fighter: The Official Strategy Guide (in which a naval aviator is advanced from first obtaining his commission to post captaincy within rather less than one year).

The Imperial Sourcebook states that "it is not unknown for a commander to be summarily executed for his violation of Surface Operations Training Doctrine, and then have his methods evaluated and subsequently adopted as new doctrine."

[7] The Imperial Sourcebook mentions the "Imperial military high command" as one of the groups that "can seize control of sector group fleets at any time." The term Imperial Command is seen as a number of sources (e.g., the Star Wars Sourcebook), as is High Command (e.g., "The Longest Fall," The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 11). Its role as a replacement for the War Council Advisory Panel (mentioned in Revenge of the Sith: The Visual Guide as having been "responsible for the deployment of clone specialists" during the war) and the unattested Supreme Defense Council is conjectural, as is its specific place in the Imperial system of command and control.

The title Supreme Commander is first mentioned in Dark Empire, in which Luke Skywalker is said to have "taken his father's [Darth Vader's] place as the Emperor's protégé and Supreme Commander of the Imperial forces" (capitalization in original); the Supreme Commander's role as head of the High Command is conjectural. The expansion "Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet" is cited for Fleet Admiral Gilad Pellaeon (of the Imperial remnants in the Outer Rim Territories) in Specter of the Past, but this is a more restrictive title, and the unattested form SCAFI is preferred herein for its closer identification with the original description.

High Admiral Terrinald Screed first appeared in "Tail of the Roon Comets" (Droids); his role as Supreme Commander is conjectured from Rebellion, which describes him as "formerly the Emperor's right-hand man and a distinguished military commander" (the Star Wars Encyclopedia adds that he was "one of the Emperor's top aides during the early days of the Empire." Admiral Teren Rogriss's tenure is unattested, but inspired by his command of the large Imperial campaign to reconquer the late Warlord Zsinj's holdings (mentioned in Starfighters of Adumar). Grand Admiral Thrawn's place as Supreme Commander is conjectural (his official position in the Empire by the time of his campaign in The Last Command has never been clarified).

[8] The Battlefield Holographic Control Interface (BHCI) is Grand General Brashin's pet project in Force Commander, although its specific use and origin here is unattested (as is Brashin's staff service on the High Command).

The Imperial Military Oversight Commission and the Imperial Commission on the Conduct of the War are both mentioned in the Star Wars Sourcebook, although there is no canonical relationship with the High Command; the Military Oversight Commission and Senate Budgetary Committee's opposition to the Imperial Star Destroyer is described in the same source, which notes that the Navy carried the debate by use of "a combination of bribes, political pressure and a rash of mysteriously-crushed tracheas" (note that the official description of this conflict was over the design and construction of the Imperial class; the treatment here revises this to its mass production, as Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross-Sections establishes that the ship was already in service as the Imperator class prior to the formal creation of the Empire). Screed's role in the controversy is unattested.

The Imperial Sourcebook describes an Admiral Jerjerrod testifying at the "Senate Security Hearings, Naval Subcommittee, Procurement Panel" during "the days of the Old Republic." The context makes clear that this testimony took place before the Clone War, making it highly improbable he is the same man as Moff Jerjerrod from Return of the Jedi; his retirement and subsequent service as an Imperial Senator are unattested.

The Star Wars Sourcebook adds that "some of the Empire's top designers have criticized the decision not to go ahead and give the new ship [the TIE interceptor] hyperdrives, but Imperial Command has a long-standing commitment to Star Destroyer-based starfighters."

[9] The Imperial Sourcebook notes that "Imperial military high command" is one group that "can seize control of sector group fleets at any time."

The Star Wars Sourcebook notes that "much of the Imperial Navy is permanently deployed in reserve in the Galactic Core, ready to swiftly respond to any threats, anywhere" (the Star Wars Encyclopedia goes further, saying that "all told, the Empire built more than 25,000 Star Destroyers, holding half of them on reserve in the Galactic Core to protect key military, industrial, and political systems" and "could strategically deploy the ships anywhere at short notice"). Goroth: Slave of the Empire mentions "a task force of Star Destroyers" appearing to depose the unduly independent "Trans-Nebular Sector Moff," whereupon "the majority of the task force quickly moved on" because "there were other provinces that needed the same 'shock treatment' as the Trans-Nebular Sector," detaching "a small force that would become the core of a new sector fleet" (i.e., the task force was sufficiently large and powerful as to overwhelm a Sector Command, and then to detach the core of a new Sector Command before proceeding to campaign elsewhere).

Azure Hammer Command is identified as the military/naval component of Imperial Center Oversector in Coruscant and the Core Worlds.

Tarkin's desire to usurp the throne of the Galactic Empire is mentioned in a number of sources (e.g., The Essential Guide to Characters). The specific strategic strength assigned to the central strategic force is derived from General Dodonna's remark in A New Hope that the Death Star wielded firepower "greater than half the Starfleet."

[10] The Imperial Sourcebook notes that "the need for a TIE escort carrier became apparent after the Battle of Ton-Falk," whereat "two Imperial frigates and a Dreadnaught were lost due to, as Naval Command reported, 'inadequate TIE support'"; it also mentions that "following the Battle of Yavin, Naval Command experienced an exaggerated but understandable case of phobia concerning Rebel starfighters." In both cases, Naval Command is seen to have the final word in the construction of new ship classes; its position as the overall command apparatus of the Imperial Navy is conjectural.

The Imperial Ministry of InterGalactic Transit (sic) is mentioned in "A Free-Trader's Guide to Sevarcos" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal Vol. 1, No. 2), and the Imperial Space Ministry in Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters. The Imperial Survey Corps (ISC) is mentioned in the Imperial Sourcebook, and the Space Rescue Corps (SRC) in Heroes & Rogues.

The Imperial Naval Academy (location classified) is mentioned in the Imperial Sourcebook, as is the fact that "an admiral in the Imperial Navy commands forces over 10 times as great as an admiral did during the Old Republic." The motto "Service, Fealty, Fidelity" is mentioned by Fleet Admiral Holt at an "Academy cadet indoctrination speech" quoted in the Imperial Sourcebook.

[11] The Admiralty is mentioned in Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope, which comments that "no longer is the Admiralty just a stage before a healthy retirement or the first step toward the lucrative military consulting and procurement offices." Its specific role at the head of Naval Command is conjectural (the full name "Board of Admiralty" is unattested, as is its composition). The Line Branch (Deck, Logistics, and Administration Divisions), Flight Branch (Flight), Fleet Support Branch (Engineering Division and Technical Services), and Support Service Branch (Ordnance, Gunnery, Communications, Biological, and Astrogation) are all mentioned in the Imperial Sourcebook.

[12] The Imperial Sourcebook states that "a Sector Group can be expected to contain at least 2,400 ships, 24 of which are Star Destroyers, and another 1,600 combat starships," then adds that "thousands of Sector Groups are at the Emperor's command as he seeks to bring the galaxy firmly under his control," while elsewhere it mentions that there regions "can contain from as few as three to upwards of thousands of sectors" (emphasis in original). The Star Wars Encyclopedia says in turn that "all told, the Empire built more than 25,000 Star Destroyers, holding half of them on reserve in the Galactic Core to protect key military, industrial, and political systems" (hitherto treated herein as belonging to the Empire's mobile strategic force). Seeing that thousands of Sector Groups implies the existence of no fewer than 48,000 Star Destroyers deployed to Sector commands, an additional force of no fewer than 48,000 Star Destroyers must have existed in strategic reserve, to wit, the Empire at its height boasted of no fewer than 96 thousand Star Destroyers alone, plus at least 3.2 million more "combat starships" and 1.5 million support ships (this latter body of more than 4.7 million ships being only those deployed to Sector Groups; it remains unknown what ratio of Star Destroyers to lesser warships and support ships was maintained for the mobile strategic forces). It should be noted that this does not take warships larger than the common Imperial Star Destroyer into consideration, and assumes that there is only one Region with two thousand Sectors (even if only one Region has "thousands," it could contain significantly more than merely two thousand). Revenge of the Sith reveals that a coalition of two thousand Sectorial senators was insufficient to break Palpatine's supermajority in the Senate, indicating that the late Republic contained at least 4,001 Sectors, which would yield an Empire of no fewer than 192 thousand Star Destroyers, 6.4 million combat starships, and 3.1 million support ships (Coruscant and the Core Worlds does reveal that the Empire reorganized existing Sector borderss, and Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds shows the Empire also dismembered client states to form new Sectors).

The Sector Group and Sector Army are identified as the Navy and Army components of a Sector's unified forces structure in the Imperial Sourcebook (Before the Storm notes that the Imperial order of battle identifies such a grouping as a "combat command," hence the unattested term "Sector Command"); the strategic force's naval component obviously cannot be composed of Sector Groups (which are defined with reference to particular Sectors), and the OB in Before the Storm explicitly mentions forces "assigned to every fleet and combat command," implicitly contrasting fleet forces with combat command forces. For clarity's sake, this separate category of fleet is identified herein with the term "starfleet" used in The Empire Strikes Back: The Original Radio Drama and Return of the Jedi: The National Public Radio Dramatization to refer to a discrete naval echelon (as opposed to the Imperial Starfleet mentioned in A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, referring to the spacegoing component of the Imperial Navy). The firepower of the 'combined starfleet' (which contains half the Star Destroyer battle force) is derived from the statement in A New Hope that the Death Star's total firepower was "greater than half the Starfleet."

Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters explicitly states that "the Empire controls virtually all of the bulk cargo vessels plying the spaceways," either "directly through Imperial ownership" (i.e., the spacelift command and fleet auxiliary force) or "indirectly through intimidation of large shipping corporations" (the remainder of the merchant navy), and goes on to say that "roughly one-third of the large ship cargo carried in the galaxy is war materiel for the Empire's forces."

The Star War Encyclopedia describes the Academy par excellence as an "elite educational and training institution" that "turned unseasoned youths into highly trained members of the Exploration, Military, and Merchant Services," and notes that "under Emperor Palpatine, the Academy slowly became a training ground for Imperial officers"; Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker establishes that there was some concern that Academy graduates who'd opted for mercantile service might be conscripted into the Navy against their will. "Darklighter" (Empire Nos. 8, 9, 12, and 15) shows an increasingly militaristic merchant navy, wearing navy-style uniforms, operating Navy-grade combat equipment (including TIE/ln space superiority starfighters), undertaking armed patrols of space, and engaging pirates and armed insurrectionists, whose officers were trained at the Academy by instructors in Imperial uniforms on Imperial equipment, and who were encouraged to identify with the Empire rather than the merchant service.

The autonomous Bureau of Ships and Services (BoSS) is described in Cracken's Rebel Field Guide as "one of the oldest institutions in the galaxy," "as much a star-spanning tribe as it is a civil bureaucracy," which maintains a "long-standing policy of neutrality, such that "each power that rules or manages the galaxy simply inherits BoSS." Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters identifies it as a bureau of the Imperial Space Ministry, but Platt's Starport Guide notes that "it's not really a bureau attached to any government or other institutions like other bureaus; it doesn't owe loyalty to anyone."

[13] The standard stormtrooper's armor is said by "Soldiers of the Empire!" to be made of "Impervium" (presumably a trade name; The Visual Dictionary calls it "plastoid composite armor"). The "Technical Journal of the Imperial Forces" claims that the stormtroopers "operate independently of the military and answer directly to the Emperor" with "their own chain of command" (hence the non-canonical Commandant General's special relationship with the Emperor and the Ruling Council). Central Command is mentioned in Crimson Empire, but its status as the headquarters of the Imperial Marines is unattested.

"Pax Empirica — The Wookiee Annihilation" indicates that at least 40 per cent of all stormtroopers belong to a single clone template of "GeNode," and mentions the existence of at least three other templates. "Soldiers of the Empire!" describes a different cloning process used to produce stormtroopers; the interpretation here is that the GeNode process is the most commonly used, but others remain in limited service. "Stormtroopers" (Star Wars Databank) states that "the health of stormtroopers was the responsibility of the Naval Biological group (sic)," while the Imperial Sourcebook refers to it as "Biological section" and says "they are directly responsible for the health of stormtrooper units." The Dark Empire Sourcebook calls cloning "a science of infamy and horror to most citizens of the galaxy due to the pain of the Clone Wars," and calls it a "long-banned technology"; "Republic Stifles Non-Military Cloning Research" (CIS Shadowfeed Dispatch 14:7:01 Edition, Star Wars Insider No. 68) notes that the Senate passed Decree E49D139.41, which "effectively prohibits all non-military cloning activity throughout its member worlds," during the Clone War (it did not, however, outlaw cloning altogether). Captain Gilad Pellaeon reflects in The Last Command that "given the destruction they'd unleashed on the galaxy, Pellaeon had always assumed the clonemasters had eventually found at least a partial solution to the problem [clone madness]," and in Heir to the Empire that "the early clones — or at least those the fleet had faced — had been highly unstable, both mentally and emotionally" (thus establishing that the Clonemasters produced unstable clones who had fought against Republic or Empire — the text is unclear on this point — , thereby separating them from the Kaminoan cloners of Attack of the Clones).

The Marines' lack of support infrastructure is established by the Imperial Sourcebook, which comments on their "complete lack of support personnel," saying that they "do siphon off some supplies from the normal chain of logistics, but not nearly enough to support a force as large as the stormtroopers appear to be," and "whether they can somehow 'live off the land,' have a shadow network which resupplies them in order to enhance their mystery, or really not be in need of resupply is simply not known."

[14] Pollux Hax appears in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, in which he is identified as the former "chief of the Emperor's propaganda dissemination section." The campaign to disguise stormtroopers' origins as clones is conjectured from the deliberate engineering of GeNodes not to realize they are clones ("Pax Empirica — The Wookiee Annihilation") and from the general shock and dismay at the thought of Grand Admiral Thrawn's overt use of clones (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command), despite the prevalence of clones in the Imperial Marines ("Soldiers of the Empire!", the "Technical Journal of the Imperial Forces," and "Pax Empirica — The Wookiee Annihilation").

The Empire's secret involvement in human trafficking is seen in "The Search Begins" and "Death in the City of Bone!" (Star Wars Vol. 1, No. 69), and mentioned in the context of sex slavery in The Paradise Snare.

[15] The Imperial Military Training Base, Carida, appears in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire, which states that it is "home to more than one hundred and fifty thousand recruits, cadets, and instructors," and goes on to observe that the Military Academy at Cliffside "took up less than one-tenth of the sprawling base, but produced a high percentage of the Empire's officer corps."

The ubiquity of the stormtroopers is explicitly stated in the Imperial Sourcebook, which notes that they are "the Empire's calling card" and "wherever the Empire goes, stormtroopers will be found, acting as ship's troops aboard Star Destroyers, accompanying visiting dignitaries to outlying worlds, and maintaining garrisons on trouble-torn worlds"; their status as shock troopers is established as "the ability to rapidly overwhelm and capture energy positions makes them the first choice for leading assaults on important worlds," and were often "used to clear away the enemy's first line of defense and establish a ground base to allow the unopposed landing of transports carrying regular Army units," whereupon they were "withdrawn once they have secured a landing zone." Likewise their status as loyalty police: "While stormtroopers continue to do his bidding, no decree passed by the Emperor will ever fail to be implemented," and "contingents of stormtroopers aboard Imperial Navy vessels ensure that no Navy captain or admiral will actively disobey the Emperor's wishes."

The Imperial Academy of Science and Methodology is mentioned in "Old Corellian: A Guide for the Curious Scholar" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 7).

The stormtrooper's standard armor is identified as the "T.I.E. Armored Spacesuit (sic)" in "Soldiers of the Empire!"; the unusual deference of the common citizen to stormtroopers is first seen in Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker ("No one stared angrily back at them; no one shouted imprecations or mouthed obscenities. These armored figures moved with the authority of the Empire, their sidearms boldly displayed and activated."), while Cracken's Threat Dossier has a New Republic Intelligence (NRI) analyst, Captain Baden Lathe, noting that "it was a proven fact that whenever stormtrooper numbers began to dwindle, so too did the people's confidence in Imperial rule."

Sandtroopers appear in A New Hope, snowtroopers in The Empire Strikes Back, and scout troopers (also called "stormtrooper scouts") in Return of the Jedi. Spacetroopers were introduced in The Star Wars Sourcebook. Seatroopers first appeared in "The Iskalon Effect" (Star Wars Vol. 1, No. 74), and were reintroduced in Battle for the Golden Sun. 'Bombtroopers' — the name is unattested — appear as a stormtrooper bomb squad in "Coffin in the Clouds!" (Star Wars Vol. 1, No. 56). Radtroopers appear in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim, while magmatroopers, airtroopers, and underminers are mentioned in The Visual Dictionary. Minetroopers appear in "A Free-Trader's Guide to Sevarcos." The Storm Commandos appear in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim, and the darktroopers appear in Dark Empire II; the Imperial Royal Guard is first seen in Return of the Jedi, and the Sovereign Protectors in Dark Empire (but were first identified in the Dark Empire Sourcebook). The Imperial Marines' use of the term "legion" vice the Imperial Army's "battlegroup" or the Republic Army's "division" is confirmed in the Imperial Sourcebook.

[16] Iskalon is a water world first seen in "The Iskalon Effect"; "You're in the Army Now!" reveals the somewhat surprising fact that submarine warfare is the responsibility of the Army, mentioning the existence of the Deep Ocean Operations Camp among the Army training facilities on Sirpar (presumably a component of Imperial Military Training Base, Sirpar, by analogy to Imperial Military Training Base, Carida in Dark Forces: Soldiers for the Empire). A surface flotilla of the Empire's 'wet navy' is seen in Galactic Battlegrounds.

General Balan is mentioned as having celebrated a triumph in recognition of his reconquest of Coruscant in the Dark Empire Sourcebook; his given name and specific rank of colonel general are unattested (as is, for that matter, the massive artillery bombardment attributed to him herein).

Army Command is mentioned by name in the Imperial Sourcebook.

[17] The general staff's extensive paper work is conjectured from the note in the Imperial Sourcebook that the entire seventh chapter is composed from "various reports from Army Command to Grand Moff Selit in response to the Grand Moff's request for suggestions on dealing with rebellious elements entrenched upon worlds in his sector of influence," and the statement that Army Command was evaluating the Atgar 1.4 FD P-Tower light anti-vehicle laser cannon for "inclusion on the updated standard issue list."

[18] The Imperial Army's focus on war of attrition vice war of maneuver is derived from the Imperial Sourcebook, which states that "often stormtroopers are used to clear away the enemy's first line of defense and establish a ground base to allow the unopposed landing of transports carrying regular Army units," that "the Army, in these situations, is used to mop up resistance and maintain an Imperial presence," and that "except in systems where prolonged struggles threaten to disrupt the Empire's industrial capacity or weaken its strategic positions, stormtroopers will be withdrawn once they have secured a landing zone" and "the complete subjugation of a world is left to the Imperial Army." The same source also explicitly states that "stormtroopers can be transported and deployed far more rapidly than regular Army units, who rely on large transport ships or the Navy for interplanetary travel."

The Imperial Sourcebook mentions that "when Imperial troops are working with auxiliaries local to the planet of operation," the unit commander is "expected to allow the native units to operate unit sizes most closely matching the Imperial Army equivalent, but not completely force the Imperial method of operation upon allies." Elsewhere it is mentioned that the Golan Arms DF .9 anti-infantry battery is "'officially' only available to the Empire or Imperial allied military forces."

The authority to appoint locally-commissioned officers is derived from the claim in The New Essential Guide to Characters that Corporal Natasi Daala's commission as a fleet admiral was "an unofficial promotion outside of Coruscant's naval hierarchy, but a legitimate one among Tarkin's forces in the Outer Rim."

[19] The office of Director of Imperial Intelligence first appeared in Rogue Squadron; it is treated herein as the personal rank of the professional head of service rather than the title, but this usage is not canonical.

The Imperial Sourcebook contains an organization chart showing Imperial Intelligence directly responsible both to "Moffs and Grand Moffs" and to "The Emperor."

Planet of Twilight mentions "the perfumes and incense and subtle hurlothrumbic gas with which the Emperor had flooded his court hall," which triggered an involuntary reaction of fear and anxiety. The adjective 'hurlothrumbic' is clearly derived from Dr. Lorenz Hurlothrumb, late of the Encephalo-Research Division of the Imperial Medi-Center, who in The Game Chambers of Questal created the Hurlothrumbic Generator, a device that "produces waves stimulating the base of the brain, causing unexplainable, but perceptible, fear in the victim," and can induce reactions ranging from "mild anxiety and sweating" to sending "any creature screaming for cover."

[20] The origin of the Ubiqtorate as a secret steering committee of the unofficial merger of the Republican Security Organization, the Senate Bureau of Intelligence, the Interstellar Consortium on Technology, and the Special Acquisitions Branch of the Library of the Republic is described in the Imperial Sourcebook (the title Director, Senate Bureau of Intelligence, is the only one attested). Armand Isard is confirmed as Palpatine's SBI Director in "Isard Spearheads Republic Intelligence Reform" (HoloNet News Vol. 531, No. 50), and was confirmed by Rogue Squadron to have served as Director of Imperial Intelligence (the same source confirms that his daughter Ysanne Isard also served in this office).

The Imperial Sourcebook notes that "the members of the Ubiqtorate are anonymous," "unknown to their subordinates," and "likely to be acquainted with the identities of perhaps a third of the members, and to have personal contact with only a handful." Its nature as a secret society infiltrating other spheres of society is derived from the Lords of the Expanse Gamemaster Guide, which reveals that Carill Benton, the CEO of Data Equity Management, Incorporated, an information management company serving companies in the Tapani Sector, is actually Devton Cirrilla, "an Imperial Ubiqtorate official" who uses his company as "his main source of information to keep tabs on the Tapani sector" and is "well-respected in the Ubiqtorate for his bold ideas and successfully implementing the DEMi charade."

The Imperial Sourcebook states that the Ubiqtorate "oversees all of the activities of Imperial Intelligence at the highest levels" and "formulates strategies for the bureaus of Imperial Intelligence or, as has recently become common, presents the bureaus with a set of goals and very broad grand strategic considerations and asks them to plan an effective strategy"; "details and tactical considerations are decided by the appropriate bureau or branch."

The Rebellion Era Sourcebook calls the Inquisitorius "a secret division of Imperial Intelligence." Adjustments, the Internal Organization Bureau (IntOrg), Analysis Bureau, the Bureau of Operations, Intelligence, and Sector Plexus are specifically identified by the Imperial Sourcebook; each of the subject-matter branches are also specifically described (with the exception of counternarcotics) as being subdivisions of the bureaux.

[21] Assassination Branch, Destablization Branch (Destab), and Interrogation Branch are specifically named in the Imperial Sourcebook (the description of Destab's function is quoted verbatim from its official specialization). The use of hypnotic suggestion in interrogation is established in Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama, while Return of the Jedi mentions the use of "mind-weakening chemicals"; the Princess Leia of Alderaan recalled vivid memories of "efficient pain-droids" using "needles, pressure points, fire-knives, electrojabbers," but Darth Vader explicitly rejects the use of actual physical torture in Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama, saying that she was "specifically trained and prepared to withstand conventional questioning," and would require "levels of pain so high as to risk killing her" — hence his use of "mind-drugs and tele-suggestions" to inflict "phantom pain" instead of the real thing (therefore, the Princess Leia's recollections of having been tortured are in fact false memories).

The Imperial Office of Criminal Investigations (IOCI) is an independent agency first mentioned in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim, which confirms its practice of employing bounty hunters to collect bounties posted to the Imperial Enforcement DataCore.

Lusankya was first mentioned in Rogue Squadron, and was revealed to be on board the Super Star Destroyer Lusankya buried in the cityscape of Coruscant in The Krytos Trap.

Intelligence's role in the creation of Byss's population is explicitly mentioned in the Dark Empire Sourcebook.

Intelligence's participation in unethical biological experimentation is seen in Rogue Squadron, in which it engineered the deadly Krytos virus to affect only nonhumans.

[phongn]

Superb work as always, Publius.

[Ender]

So did you rename the battlestation command That Titus Kiev in Dark Empire was assigned to to the Shore Establishment, or is that one of the subject-matter branches?

Also, structural thing - you use the acronym IFA before explaining the acronym. Was a bit confusing, I speant a few minutes rereading and using "Find" to try and figure it out.

Good work!

[Illuminatus Primus]

That wasn't part of the Shore Establishment; it was a mobile siege craft, the "Dedicated Siege Platform."

[The Original Nex]

Good show as always Publius.

I thoroughly enjoy this delightful mixture of your essays and inventions into a comprehensive, if speculative, look into the Imperial era.

As always (which I find myself say ad nauseum in reference to your work) I look forward to your future work.

[Publius]

THE NEW ORDER IN POWER

Chapter Six: The Ersatzstaat

The insinuations of certain 'popular historians' notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to call the Galactic Empire a "one-party state." For one thing, it is factually inaccurate: Pre-Empire political parties continued to function and participate in the political process, even in direct opposition to the New Order. At the "All-Empire" level, most of the old Republic's 'grand old parties' continued to enjoy powerful voting blocs in the Senate, and it is a matter of fact and historical record that the Group of the Interstellar Renewal Union and Neo-Democrats (IRU-ND) coalition was frequently in opposition rather than in government. Despite the myth of the "goosestepping in Senate Hall," the New Order faced a great deal of legitimate opposition within the framework of lawful government ('Alanahrmaas has suggested in Legitimacy and Novel-Republicanism that the persistence of the myth of the one-party state owes to historiographers' bias in focusing on the active resistance of the rebel Alliance, implicitly deprecating the oppositionists in favor of the insurrectionists). The truth is somewhat more complex: It is true that the Imperial State was largely a bastion of Monarchism and that the IRU-ND controlled an enormous amount of patronage in the Civil Service almost to the exclusion of Republicans and members of other voting blocs, but the Senate nevertheless retained extensive oversight powers over the Imperial State and its dealings, oversight powers frequently used to take the Monarchists to task; a not inconsiderable number of Moffs and ministers were disgraced by Senate investigations. Still and all, both the Historicist and Revisionist schools readily concede that there is some basis after all to the notion of the "one-party state" insofar as "the state" refers to the Imperial State's overtly political twin. In his landmark treatment of the subject, De la Hauterie makes the case that COMPNOR — long treated by 'popular historians' as the so-called "fifth branch of government" or "Fourth Estate" — was part of neither the Galactic Empire's 'normative state' nor its 'prerogative state' (itself subject of De la Hauterie's celebrated The Para-State) but rather was in fact an entirely separate "alternative state," a shadow government (in the parliamentary sense) that duplicated nearly all the functions of the Imperial State. It was, in short, exactly what the title of De la Hauterie's magisterial study calls it: A State in Parallel. [1]

The Rise of COMPNOR

Just as Palpatine's war cabinet was more or less elevated en masse to become the first intake of the Privy Council and the Defense Staff became the core of the new Supreme Commander's Staff, COMPNOR has an institutional history that predates the Empire. Its earliest clearly identifiable form was the Students Union for a Popular Movement (SUPMo), a grassroots group formed in the 70s BrS at the University's Dornick College of Public Sciences at Chommell Minor. SUPMo was a relatively innoccuous group, more or less indistinguishable from the countless other such organizations established by starry-eyed students; its executive committee was generally unremarkable, and none of its founders ever rose above planetary office. The most significant member in the club's early days simultaneously held the offices of secretary to the executive committee and chief secretary of correspondence. An history and moral philosophy (H&MP) major, he used his official position to shape much of SUPMo's agenda and long-term strategy; it is clear in retrospect that by the time he graduated, he'd quietly usurped de facto control of the organization from the phlegmatic union chair despite his youth. After graduating and leaving for the Paliu J. Teldrana School of Government at Alderaan University, he allowed his membership to lapse; he later went on to serve as Senior Senator for the Chommell Sector, and was elected Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic after a political crisis involving the Trade Federation and an illegal blockade of his homeworld, Naboo. Obviously, the man responsible for SUPMo's transmogrification into a minor student political advocacy group run by a relatively benign "dictatorship of the secretariat" was Palpatine of Naboo, later Galactic Emperor. Historians have identified many familiar elements of Palpatine's political programs in the ideology espoused by SUPMo at his instigation — as it was, the Palpatinified SUPMo was totally compatible with the New Order as it was initially introduced — , but without any of the political cunning and thoroughness of his later efforts. It is difficult to resist the Revisionist conclusion that SUPMo's chief utility was as serving as a testbed for his strategy of concealing his agency in arranging events from behind the scenes. By all evidence, he really did let lapse all his ties to SUPMo when he left for Alderaan; it appears to have been pure happenstance that it would later return to the narrative of his career. [2]

In the late 10s BrS, long after Palpatine had left the organization, SUPMo's executive committee unwisely chose as its secretary Coluan medical student Iosif Antonius, who promptly seized control of the organization via an influx of new members under his patronage. Antonius's successful administration of the organization led to the abandonment of his medical career, as he transformed SUPMo into a real force in local politics, eventually succeeding in gaining a beachhead in the sector assembly and opening chapters outside Chommell Sector. Still, SUPMo was only one of many grassroots populist groups coming to prominence in the Republic at the time, and generally lacked any especial distinction to set it aside. This Antonius provided after reviewing the group's records; discovering that the newly-elected Supreme Chancellor had been a member, Antonius changed the name to the Union for a Popular Movement (UPMo) and played up the name-recognition factor (for his part, there is no evidence at all that Palpatine even knew of UPMo's newfound relevance in the astronomical neighborhood's politics). When Palpatine announced the "First New Order" policy initiative package, Antonius took the opportunity to rename UPMo again, this time to the Union for the Popular Movement (UPM) and cast himself as Palpatine's man in the Rim, riding the giant's coattails to further power. UPM's growth remained modest but steady throughout the "Second New Order," and apparently attracted the notice of powerful figures in galactic politics, most importantly Palpatine's good friend the Senex aristocrat Crueya Vandron, Marquess Vandron of the Blood Royal. After a series of secret meetings with Iosif Antonius and his cohort, the Lord Vandron became UPM's secret patron, providing money and connections and making possible an explosion in membership during the early days of the Separatist crisis, when the organization's vocal support of Palpatine and the New Order marked it out as being different from the older parties like the Conservative Caucus, the Democratic Center, the Rationalist Party, the Ishtarakists' Union, and the Societalist Group (statistical records show that Palpatine's chief supporters in the Senate, the Neo-Democrats, enjoyed a similar dividend for having invested in the popular Palpatine Government). In recognition of its newfound relevance as the foremost of the pro-Palpatine populist groups, Antonius changed UPM's name yet again, this time becoming the Galactic Movement. [3]

As the Republic lurched from the tensions of the Separatist crisis into the Clone Wars, Palpatine's Vice Minister of Finance, Ishin-Il-Raz, took a leading role in the establishment of the Commission for the Protection of the Republic (COMPOR), which absorbed the Galactic Movement and a host of other populist groups secretly sponsored by the Lord Vandron and certain others of Palpatine's inner circle. It is difficult to say what precisely COMPOR was; its charter was not very helpful in that regard, defining COMPOR only as "a coherent movement committed to the support of the positive reform of the Republic, and to the holistic defense of its integrity from external and internal contamination," and although it displayed many traits of a political party, including members in the Senate, it did not behave like a conventional party, and was actively involved in a number of activities outside the traditional realm of the galactic party, and more closely resembled an all-encompassing social movement. Antonius was elected as the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Commission for the Protection of the Republic, and was responsible for much of its early character, creating both its "credits for clones" resource drives and its enthusiastic rallies. But the vagaries of war brought a sudden end to the ci-devant medical student's career, as he was caught behind what abruptly became enemy lines on Brifadel, and was thrown into the infamous Gaolhouse of Narglon V, where he spent two years before execution as a Republican collaborator (hence his honorary title "First Martyr of the Movement"). The eccentric Il-Raz resigned from the Cabinet to take over for the "Absent Leader," and under his leadership COMPOR's youth component, the Sub-Adult Group (SAGroup) underwent a veritable explosion in membership, tripling in size within one year. Il-Raz's rise to power brought with it a second and more sinister change: the growth of human supremacism within COMPOR. In early 14 rS, COMPOR successfully pressured the Coruscant Ministry of Ingress into deporting millions of aliens whose species homeworlds had joined the Confederacy of Independent Systems (the fact that only a tiny fraction of the deportees were even citizens of the homeworlds notwithstanding). It was to be only the beginning of human-supremacist pressure from Il-Raz that would ultimately culminate in the repeal of antislavery laws, and the establishment of segregationist "health codes," "domestication codes" applying to entire species, and the creation of species-specific taxes designed to reengineer the economy itself into something more ideologically flattering. Under Il-Raz's skilled direction, COMPOR became a massive complex of social programs, initiatives, and organizations. The holomedia quickly took to referring to COMPOR as a "replacement state" — or, perhaps more telling, "the Republic's human face." [4]

On 16:5:23, Palpatine of Naboo was acclaimed Galactic Emperor. On 16:5:24, the newly-established Imperial Chancellery published an Imperial Decree reorganizing COMPOR as the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order (COMPNOR), and granting it tax-exempt status. Newly-appointed as Chairman of the Select Committee of the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order, Ishin-Il-Raz became embroiled in a fight for control of COMPNOR's future direction, as his Neo-Social politics rapidly lost favor to the aggressive Techno-Dictation advocated by the likes of Wilhuff Tarkin and Ardus Kaine in a series of popular books, including Tarkin's Visions of the New Order and Kaine's The Doctrine of Totality. A lengthy and ugly struggle followed, during the course of which the Techno-Dictators gained the upper hand, designated Palpatinism-Tarkinism as COMPNOR's official ideology, and ousted the mercurial and temperamental Il-Raz from control of the Select Committee (he was given a seat on the Palpatine Foundation's Board of Trustees as a consolation prize, and later became one of the Emperor's first grand admirals in 35 rS). Popular historians have often treated this "CompCoup" as a repudiation of the political power of the "Names and Numbers" (as represented by Palpatine's former finance minister Ishin-Il-Raz), but this view neglects the continued influence of "Names" like Tarkin and the Lord Vandron. It is certainly true that a large number of the camisas viejas responsible for the ouster of the Neo-Socialistas in favor of the more radical Techno-Dictation were actually opponents of the "monarchical" direction of the New Order under the Empire. Nevertheless almost all of them would later complain that COMPNOR wasn't quite what they'd wanted it to be, even if they were at a loss when it came to explaining how. The declassification of records has now revealed that despite the supposed Anti-Monarchism of the Techno-Dictation, Palpatine himself ghostwrote Tarkin's seminal Visions of the New Order, and Tarkin was a knowing agent of Palpatine in subverting the takeover of COMPNOR by Palpatine's would-be opponents. In essence, Palpatine tricked his opponents into changing COMPNOR into what they thought was something he did not want; in a characteristic move, he arranged for something he did want to be done by someone else, without ever risking his own dignitas or auctoritas in the endeavor. [5]

Under the Empire and the ruling Techno-Dictation faction, the COMPNOR Family, or Ersatzstaat, came fully into its own as an alternative state, parallel to the Imperial State and the governments at the dominion, regional, and sectorial echelons. There were few functions performed by the government that were not duplicated by COMPNOR. Politics was conducted and monitored through the New Order Party of the Galactic Empire, the dominant partner of the Group of the Interstellar Renewal Union and Neo-Democrats (IRU-ND) in the Senate; its central coordinating body, the New Order Galactic Committee, dominated the nominally independent local chapters throughout the Empire. Social and cultural affairs were handled by "the twins," the Coalition for Improvements and the Coalition for Progress. Defense was provided by the CompForce regimental system, which also closely monitored the Armed Forces of the Imperium. COMPOR's SAGroup was revived and expanded, becoming one of the largest organizations of any kind in the Empire. Internal security and policing were the province of the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB). External affairs were monitored and duplicated through the Queen Amidala Cultural Institute, while the Palpatine Institute of General Economy duplicated the functions of the Ministry of Finance and His Imperial Majesty's Treasury; even the courts had their counterparts, in the Khil-Parud Office of the Law Review. Under the COMPNOR umbrella was a whole complex of programs, offices, and organizations, offering everything from health care to labor statistics, to the extent that COMPNOR was fully prepared to step in to take control in the event that the normative state should falter (most vividly demonstrated by the COMPNOR takeover of the Chalderine Sector). What's more, it was well-known that the New Order Party encouraged its members to take jobs in the officially non-partisan State Services of the Imperium and the dominion civil services, ultimately to the extent that the Select Committee's control of the Imperial bureaucracy rivaled the Senate's. In this way, COMPNOR was simultaneously a check on the dominions' control of the Empire, and also on the Council of Ministers and the College of Moffs, whose members were compelled to work with staffs riddled with COMPNOR loyalists. The Ersatzstaat was so well established that the dissolution of the Senate in 35 rS resulted in virtually no disruption to the SSI's conduct of official business; the Select Committee merely took over where the Senate left off. [6]

The Select Committee

The Select Committee of the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order oversaw the entire range of COMPNOR programs and organizations and acted as the supreme authority of the Ersatzstaat, combining the functions of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Records of the Select Committee's membership remain sketchy, ranging from 25,000 at its height to perhaps 150 at the time of the Battle of Yavin. The Charter allowed for election or honorary appointment, but over time these fell into disuse in favor of co-optation, whereby the Select Committee (like the Supreme Court) became a self-selecting elite. Under Ishin-Il-Raz, the Chairman of the Select Committee had been the virtual dictator of COMPNOR, subject only to the check of the Lord Vandron, COMPNOR's court patron and informal representative to and from The Throne. However, the lengthy contentions of the CompCoup led to the use of co-optation to bolster the opposition's numbers, and once Il-Raz was ousted the chair of the Select Committee became a chiefly honorary position, with actual power being vested in the Standing Conference of the Select Committee (a small circle of the most powerful 'insiders' in the organization). Like the Privy Council, the Select Committee's composition reflected no astrographical influence, but was rather decided by the personal clout of the individual would-be member. Given the full-time nature of their work, most Select Committee members were co-opted from New Order Party leadership roles, particularly from the local parties in the Core Worlds, where the New Order Parties were more fully-developed — with annual budgets in the trillions of credits — and a leadership role would provide the prospective member with greater experience than a comparable role in the outlands regions. [7]

The Select Committee made its home in Terannô House, a palatial estate in the Colroi District of Coruscant (the only major organization in the Empire headquartered on Coruscant outside of Imperial City). There, the party bosses were surrounded by the incessant bustle of the Premier Secretariat, which managed the Committee's affairs and handled its correspondence with the various other organs of the Ersatzstaat; Erzébet Dar bi-Heur notes in The Dynamics of Alternate Power Structures that at some points in time the Premier Secretary (whom the holomedia quickly dubbed "COMPNOR's prime minister") actually wielded more power than the Chairman of the Select Committee, what she wryly calls "the power behind the throne behind the power behind the throne, the gray eminence's gray eminence." As a result, there is some dispute among historians as to who was truly in control of COMPNOR and the Ersatzstaat at any given time, as there were a number of officials — Chairman of the Select Committee, Deputy Chairman for Ideology, President of the Standing Conference, Premier Secretary to the Select Committee — who could potentially be seen as being "in charge" (there was never any question that the Lord Vandron had the last word, but as a Clean Hand he naturally kept his overt involvement to a minimum, being in effect the Palpatine of the Ersatstaat); the matter would be even further complicated when some of the most powerful party bosses would opt for offices outside COMPNOR proper, such as the Chairman of the IRU-ND Group in the Imperial Senate, the Chairman of the New Order Galactic Committee, or the General Secretary for the Galaxy.

The New Order Party

The political arm of the Ersatzstaat, the New Order Party was the single largest pan-galactic political party in the Empire, and was at the center of its own small constellation of organizations (such as the New Order Leadership Council, the Antonius Institute, and the New Order Rectors Association). At its height, it had chapters in more than 25 million jurisdictions and claimed 30% of the Senate's votes (the "Iron Thirty" was the largest single voting bloc recorded in some fourteen thousand years, surpassed only by the Ruling Revolutionary Party's famous "Velvet Sixty" in the early New Republic). Its party platform was unabashedly both populist and authoritarian (and it openly embraced the contradiction, seeing it as an opportunity to develop and apply "doublethink"); it advocated sweeping changes to existing power structures to make them conform with the Party's official ideology of "Correct Thought," a totalitarian system designed as a practical application of Palpatinism-Tarkinism, and boasted that vigorous application of Correct Thought allowed an individual to live his entire life without ever having to make a single decision for himself. In theory, the local party organizations were more or less autonomous, but in practice it had a strictly enforced system of party discipline, with all major policy decisions dictated from further up the chain of command, ultimately culminating in the New Order Galactic Committee, the unelected junta that controlled the overall New Order Party of the Galactic Empire. As with COMPNOR itself, the NOP did not entirely live up to the Palpatinist-Tarkinist "Leadership Principle"; although the Chairman of the New Order Galactic Committee was in theory the head of the party, in practice more power was actually concentrated in the hands of the General Secretary for the Galaxy, who was the permanent head of the party machine, and the Chairman of the New Order Policy Conference, who had charge of the legislative fraction in the Senate and was the Party's chief representative within the IRU-ND. [8]

The NOP was the single largest partner in the Interstellar Renewal Union (IRU), a coalition of center-right and right-wing political parties and blocs chiefly concentrated in the Core Worlds; other prominent members of the IRU included the Democratic Center, the Rationalist Party, the Core Worlds People's Party, the Impressionists, and the Galactic Liberals. Beyond the IRU's stronghold in the Core, it had subsidiary organizations like the Colonial Renewal Union, the Expansion Renewal Union, and the Renewal Union of the Inner Rim, which were essentially regional versions of the IRU itself. Part of the NOP's strength in the IRU was derived from its disciplined fraction in the Senate, but still more important was the fact that it had significant clout even in those dominions where it was not the ruling party. Many IRU senators not affiliated with the NOP nevertheless owed much of their power to the support of the local NOP chapter; Senator Piotr Changrevin (CWPP - Mircédès III), for example, achieved his office in the usual fashion, appointment by the First President of the Parliament of the Mircédois. Seeing that the First President, Sieu Dalthavoeur-Pelanquin, was himself head of the CWPP local affiliate, superficially Changrevin's loyalty would be to the CWPP and the IRU without any particular consideration for the will of the NOP. This was untrue however; fully 30% of Dalthavoeur-Pelanquin's support in Parliament was from the New Order Party of the Mircédois, making the NOP-Mircédois a key constituency Changrevin could not afford to ignore. As a result, the NOGC did indeed have influence over Changrevin's vote, even if he himself was not responsible to it directly. The IRU's influence beyond the Inner Rim was substantially reduced, and there it had to rely on the support of its ally, the Neo-Democrats, Palpatine's old base in the Mid-Rim and Outer Rim. The alliance became the most powerful bloc in the Empire, and the Group of the Interstellar Renewal Union and Neo-Democrats (IRU-ND) remained a fixture of galactic politics for decades, surviving even the collapse of the Empire and finding a respectable percentage of votes in the New Republic Senate (albeit the post-Palpatine IRU-ND cut ties to the NOP). [9]

The Coalition for Improvements and the Coalition for Progress

The Coalition for Improvements was the Ersatzstaat's social-engineering branch, charged with the implementation of long-term modifications to existing social structures. Like each "pillar" of the Ersatzstaat, it controlled its own constellation of subsidiary organizations and think tanks such as the Committee for the Imperial Way and the Ixnas Institute of Social Studies, but Improvements saw less overlap with the normative structures of the Imperial State and the dominions because its whole raison d'être was to change native structures rather than to duplicate them (hence the court nickname "the Reform Candidate" for the General Secretary of Improvements, ensconced in his colossal office in the rather gruesomely-named Crematory of the Vanities). Improvements took a particular interest in universities and education, and several of its subordinate organizations were known to have become active in infiltrating and "reforming" them, with the intention of turning them into training grounds for future New Order loyalists; it quickly gained a reputation in academia of being composed largely of unimaginative zealots and unprincipled influence-mongers. Its most important agency — and also most notorious — was the Permanent Committee on Sector Development, which maintained offices in every Subject of the Union under the overall direction of an Assistant General Secretary of Improvements for Sector Development. Each Sector Development office was only vaguely subordinate to the Regional Governor, and maintained two departments, Modification and Redesign. [10]

The Department of Modification was officially an "uplift" organization providing technologists and systems administrators to planetary systems for the sake of upgrading their technology to Imperial specifications. In reality, each Subject's Secretary of Improvements for Modification was the resident New Order "dirty tricks man," using the department's privileged accesses and superior technology to modify social conditions and institutions to favor the New Order and its local partisans, first manipulating events and trends to benefit the Empire's quislings and then stage-managing the rise of a local New Order Party to take control of the reins of power more openly; in many cases Modification would gradually discredit their own sficca-republic stalking horses in order to improve NOP candidates' reputations. The Department of Redesign was Modification's more aggressive counterpart, used for large-scale systemic transmogrification; Redesign's purpose was essentially to dismantle a given society and then to rebuild it in the New Order's own image, using methods and tools very similar to those of Imperial Intelligence's Destabilization Branch (in the process cultivating a reputation as one of the worst perpetrators of atrocities in the whole of the Empire). The techniques used by Redesign throughout the Empire were such that the entire department was declared a criminal organization by the New Republic, and every single Secretary of Improvements for Redesign ever appointed was charged with war crimes in New Republic courts; most were convicted and sentenced to death (in all but a few cases this was a largely ceremonial gesture, as most of these sentences were promptly commuted to life imprisonment). [11]

Playing the role of the "Right Hand" to Improvements' "Left," the Coalition for Progress was the Ersatzstaat's cultural branch, and one of the largest of its "pillars." Progress was one of the most efficient information-processing bodies ever assembled, with a Sector Monitor office in every Subject of the Union. From his headquarters at the Hall of the Mirrors, the General Secretary of Progress oversaw an enormous body of experts on art, science, commerce, education, industry, business, law, and entertainment. Through its countless subisidiaries and administrative corporations, Progress gathered information and statistics about nearly every aspect of social and commercial life in the Empire, enabling the Ersatzstaat to detect trends and act on them far sooner than any other organized body (often including the Imperial State itself). Such wildly varying entities as the Imperial Board of Culture, the Imperial Business Bureau, the Imperial Chamber of Musicians, and the Office of Progressive Justice were part of Progress's constellation; it coordinated the activities of a dizzying array of corporations, committees, and boards, and served as the parent organization to the majority of the Palpatinist-Tarkinist assimilation efforts. In fact, Progress was the agency of primary responsibility for the policy of "CoOrdination," by which the twin doctrines of OrgHol and SysCoh were integrated into the social fabric; it encouraged the creation of guilds, vertical syndicates, and corporations throughout the Empire, intending to consolidate and Palpatinify whole fields of sapient endeavor (in the process gaining easier access to information about that field's participants and leading experts). Progress earned a reputation for meddling, but for all that remains one of the only neutrally regarded aspects of the Ersatzstaat. Some scholars, foremost among them Mieke Nierosolović, contend that this is because a large portion of Progress's records was either redacted or destroyed, and it will probably never be known how much of its information was passed along to the Coalition for Improvements and the Imperial Security Bureau for action. [12]

CompForce

CompForce was the military wing of the Ersatzstaat, and earned a reputation as one of the most ruthless and brutal organizations in history. Despite its role of providing the entire military capability of the COMPNOR collective, CompForce leadership was obsessed almost exclusively with their role as Ersatzstroßtruppen; the whole of their training, equipment, and doctrine was centered around the concept of being the Palpatinist-Tarkinist version of the Imperial Marines, to the near-total neglect of their intended duplication of the Imperial Navy and Imperial Army's roles (the corporate obsession with replacing the stormtroopers is especially fascinating in light of the galaxy at large's perception of the stormtroopers as the Emperor's housecarls). Strictly speaking, the whole organization was actually named the Captain General and Company of the Heroic Legions of Palpatine's Faithful Sons and Eager Martyrs (due to a technicality in the COMPNOR Charter, it did not share the main body's tax-exempt status and was incorporated on Corellia for tax purposes); a "CompForce" was actually more or less an independent, self-contained and self-sufficient regiment (all Army official correspondence consistently referred to CompForces as "COMPNOR Regiments"). The bombastic full name was rarely used outside of the most formal internal correspondence; the Ersatzstaat was fairly consistent in referring to the corporation as "the Forces," and the rest of the galaxy simply called it by the generic name "CompForce" (or, perjoratively, "CompFarce"). Officially, CompForce claimed Palpatine himself was chairman of the board of directors, and listed him on its rolls as Supreme Commander in Chief, with the unique rank of Captain General of the Forces (a deliberate jab at both the Army and the Marines, as the Chief of Imperial General Staff was dual-hatted as Commander in Chief of the Forces and the Commandant General Imperial Marines held the unique rank of Captain General of the Marines; there is no evidence Palpatine ever acknowledged CompForce's addition to his titles); the other directors were appointed by the Select Committee from its own membership. The actual head of the Heroic Legions, the CompTroller General, was technically only the chief executive officer. The senior staff, referred to collectively as the CompTrol Fraction, managed general policy, administration, and regulation of the corporation from its headquarters in the J. Pierce Dollan Building in the Salusa District of Imperial City (the Fraction maintained a perfunctory office on Canisary Avenue in Coronet City). It has not escaped notice that the corporation's headquarters was in a building named after a vicious species-baiting thug killed in street-fighting with Separatists during the Second New Order (Ersatzstaat publicists refurbished his image and canonized him as a valiant opponent of corruption assassinated by agents of a vast alien conspiracy, dubbing him the Second Martyr of the Movement). [13]

The Company had several operating departments to manage such quotidian affairs as accounting and legal affairs, but for all intents and purposes these departments existed solely to support the two main divisions, Observation and Assault, whose operation more closely resembled corporate brand management than military command and control. Each division maintained what amounted to franchises in every Subject of the Union, where they were placed at the beck and call of the local party machines. CompObserve was purportedly intended to monitor the AFI for the purpose of improving the Company's military knowledge, and also monitored weapons testing and development for the purpose of providing the Company's procurement department with feedback on desirable acquisitions; in practice, it was nothing more and nothing less than a cadre of professional zealots and political officers who openly spied on the military-industrial complex, shamelessly stealing military appropriations, equipment, and training materials when it wasn't busy reporting on ideological infractions with poorly-concealed glee. After a tour as Ideological Monitor or Political Reliability Observer, many CompObserves moved on to jobs in the Imperial Security Bureau, the Coalition for Progress, or the Civil Service. CompAssault was rather more narrow-minded; composed chiefly of enthusiastic SAGroup volunteers, it was the manifestation of the CompTrol Fraction's fetish for outstorming the stormtroopers. Although each CompForce included a detachment of CompObservers, they were essentially CompAssault franchises employing the regimental model, recruiting, training, equipping, and deploying their own personnel in accordance with the directives of the local party machine. Training was as straightforward as it was brutal (CompForce drop camps were openly referred to as Martyr Factories); training was by simple attrition, with nearly 90 percent of all recruits failing basic training, and fully 23 percent of all failures were fatalities. The result was that many CompForces were well-equipped, highly-motivated, and poorly-trained; they were also disproportionately prone to violations of the Law of Civilized Conflict (one study has found that a CompForce trooper was 985 percent more likely to commit a war crime than his counterpart in the Army or the Marines). When assigned to work with regular military forces, CompForces were often used as forlorn hopes; a tour of duty with a CompForce was often described by Little Kings as "skinny dipping in a meat grinder." [14]

There were, of course, exceptions; a CompForce with a powerful or well-connected patron often had its training cadre imported from first-rate private mercenary companies. Wilhuff Tarkin, for example, was colonel of the regiment to some twelve CompForces; to train this personal army, he established at his own expense the Ranulph Tarkin Military Academy, whose faculty was recruited entirely from Pickering's and the Military Academy at Cliffside, Carida. Like most CompForces, Tarkin procured a private fleet of spacecraft to provide his forces with organic aerospace support; unlike most CompForces, however, Tarkin's fleet was staffed by Nominals on extended "thirdment," eager to ingratiate themselves with the dictator of the Outer Rim. On the other end of the spectrum, party boss Pembert Bel Pembert was colonel of the regiment of a single CompForce, whose membership was entirely composed of local mafiosi who skipped the Martyr Factory altogether (not unexpectedly, the Pembert CompForce was completely annihilated when Tarkin deliberately deployed it in combat as part of a scheme to punish Bel Pembert's court patron, whose nephew had been caught in flagrante delicto with one of Tarkin's favorite cousins).

Sub-Adult Group

The oldest and best-established branch of the Ersatzstaat, the Sub-Adult Group (SAGroup) was the largest single component of COMPNOR and its extended family of organizations — and had been the largest single component of COMPOR before it (strictly speaking, a SAGroup, like a CompForce, was a single local-level chapter; the main body, headquartered at SAGroupHQ, was the Galaxy Alliance of SAGroups). Far and away the most popular part of the old UPM, SAGroup was a voluntary unincorporated association devoted to a holistically fostering "full-spectrum development and improvement," at both the individual and social levels. It provided education, sports, personal fitness, child care, overnight camping, employment preparation training, and private recreation, and spent credits hand over fist to ensure that all of its services were the best available wherever it operated; as a result, SAGroup became the Neo-Democrats coalition's most powerful recruiting tool, and it solidified its standing in the public's estimation during the Clone War, when it became known for staging lavish rallies and demonstrations to sustain public morale, often producing spectacles with casts of thousands. Under the Empire, SAGroupHQ's propensity for sparing no expense became even more pronounced, and the uniform quality of resources and facilities found at SAGroups throughout the Empire gained nearly universal praise (only the Palpatine Foundation had a comparable record of making first-rate resources and facilities available on such a wide basis). Unlike the quango structure favored by the rest of COMPNOR, SAGroup was organized more as a voluntary unincorporated association; except for its relatively small cadre of professionals, the majority of its participants were members rather than full-time employees. Even such vocal critics of the Ersatzstaat as the ill-fated Duke of Pelriofask would readily concede that SAGroup generally displayed enthusiasm where other COMPNOR branchs displayed zealotry. [15]

SAGroup's largely unspoilt, upbeat flavor of Palpatinism-Tarkinism occasionally clashed with the more cynical fanaticism of the other branches like Improvements, CompForce, and the ISB, where the same cognitively-dissonant doublethink that enabled curmudgeonly anti-intellectuals to revere an ivory-towered populist permitted both admiration for SAGroup's unqualified enthusiasm and contempt for its starry-eyed idealism. SAGEducation, SAGroup's educational division, was criticized by ideological monitors, political reliability observers, cultural regulators, and thought-policemen as being far too open-minded in its approach ("Too much critical thinking, not enough Correct Thought," was the perennial complaint). The high success rate of SAGEducation kept interference to a minimum, and most graduates went on to take jobs with the SSI, the New Order Party, Ersatzstaat affiliates, or even COMPNOR itself — the most enthusiastic "True Believers" it produced accounted for most of CompAssault's seemingly limitless pool of volunteers — , making it too valuable as a recruiting ground to risk much tampering. Other programs were victims of subtle manipulation; SAGRecreation gradually shifted toward much more competitive sports, and in many sectors became a sort of junior-varsity CompForce, and many SAGroups used the Motivation and Recruitment program chapters in decidedly less friendly fashions than were envisioned by SAGroupHQ (in the Terdian Sector, Iosif Carran Moff the Garland Mór made Recruitment into a janissary factory and Motivation into an extralegal "protective custody" dumping ground for hooligans who eluded JuveCourt convictions). Here, the federated associational structure of SAGroup worked against it: It was extremely difficult for SAGroupHQ to rein in the activities of these deviant SAGroups, who could defend any deviations from the ideal on the grounds that they were adapted to "local conditions" (and the truth is that the Select Committee and local party machines were generally on the deviants' side, limiting the options for recourse available to the idealists at HQ). [16]

The Imperial Security Bureau

The Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) was by far the best-known and most-invasive of COMPNOR's creatures. Like CompForce, it was never clearly identified as an official arm of the Empire, but nor was it ever clearly separated and defined as a private organization. Dwelling perpetually in the penumbra of quango officialdom, it behaved for all intents and purposes as a government agency; its standing to act was only rarely challenged in court, and that, almost never successfully — most courts instinctively shrank from the question, issuing the stupefying hand-washing opinion that it was "a political question beyond the competence of this court." Officially it was supposed to serve as a secret police force, intended to protect the Empire from infiltration by Separatist saboteurs (in later years its mandate was extended to anarchists, insurrectionists, and seditionists), with at best ancillary roles in general counterintelligence, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism. In practice, it functioned as the Empire's thought police and the Ersatzstaat's alternative to the Imperial State's various intelligence, security, and police agencies, and entertained a cordially vicious rivalry with Imperial Intelligence. Although pound-for-pound Intelligence enjoyed a clear superiority in terms of quality, the ISB came in time to control a substantially larger organization, whose effectiveness was often comparable, if marginally inferior. The rivalry between the Central Office and the Panopticon was one of the most rancorous in the history of the Empire, characterized by hundreds of thousands of jurisdictional grievances filed every week; each routinely spied on and stole from the other, and frequently terrorized, intimidated, kidnapped, and assassinated rival operatives (one study found that as many as 26 million ISB and Intelligence agents were killed in the internecine fighting, far more than were ever killed by all of the Empire's criminal, terrorist, or rebel groups combined). The bad blood eventually grew to be so great that they took to openly proscribing each other at the start of the Time of Destruction, and the fighting between them proved to be the catalyst for the near-total anarchy that followed. It was a source of considerable rancor that because the ISB was never designated one of The Throne's armed forces they never earned the privilege of wearing jodhpurs or carrying sabers or cutlasses in dress uniform; their ceremonial pistols were widely seen as poor substitutes for the coveted officer's saber (fist fights were known to break out at formal receptions when Intelligence officers offered to teach ISB special agents how to fence). [17]

At the head of the ISB stood the Central Commander, an iron-fisted dictator who fancied himself an equal to the members of the Supreme Commander's Committee. From the gargantuan Central Office in Imperial City, he controlled one of the largest organizations in the galaxy, a vast army of humorless special agents from the Surveillance, Investigations, Internal Affairs, Interrogation, Re-Education, and Enforcement divisions whom the Commission of Operations placed at every echelon of the Imperial government. Resplendent in their white tunics and polished-to-a-mirror-finish black leather shoes, the Central Commander's legions were virtual avatars of Correct Thought, and were notorious hairtriggers, at that — at the least provocation, whiteshirts were known to haul suspects off to "protective custody" in extrajudicial penal camps, or to blacklist anyone whose cooperation they thought insufficiently enthusiastic ("unmutual"); ISB firearms were 45 percent more likely than OCI investigators' to "accidentally discharge" while making an arrest, and suspects arrested by whiteshirts were 50 percent more likely to be "shot while resisting arrest" (or, for variety's sake, "shot while in commission of sedition"). So fervent were his subordinates that in court circles the Central Commander was widely known instead as the "Commander of the Faithful," whose great virtue was that he represented an alternative to the unsettling and manipulative Superintendent General of the Ubiqtorate. Despite the marginal inferiority of the Central Commander's Commission of Operations to the Superintendent General's Central Intelligence, the ISB was by and large a frighteningly effective organization, and far more active in suppressing dissent — which made it far more accessible to the court as a tool for settling disputes, as any bar, cross, or impediment to the All-Seeing Eye was medicinable to Sword and Shield of the Emperor. The Commander of the Faithful was happy to collect favors from courtiers in exchange for striking blows in his-ongoing kanly with the Isard family business. [18]

In the present day it has become fashionable to joke about the "White Death," and just about any politician considered objectionable for whatever reason by today's youth is smeared as an Ordinal or a True Believer. Policemen breaking up riots are jackboots, Enforcements toughs, thugs of the Commander of the Faithful. Nearly every uniform in the universe has been excoriated as a white shirt, and every chief of police or sheriff is a latter-day Central Commander. Every state capitol is Terannô House, every government ministry is the Crematory of the Vanities, every legislator is a Shiyukhfrayer, every statement of political belief a new edition of the New Order Manifesto, every leader is a new Palpatine, every press secretary a new Hax, every party chair a new Il-Raz. Every speech reads like a new verse of the "Pierce Dollan Song," and every party rally is a torchlight COMPNOR happening. Indeed, as former ISB Special Agent (Lieutenant General) Tallisibeth Chambertin famously remarked at her wedding reception, "These people think 'Palpatinism' means 'something not desirable.'" This flippant attitude toward the very real state terrorism practiced by COMPNOR throughout the galaxy for nearly thirty years has left them more a figure of fun than the object of fear they once were. Whole worlds were been left desolate and whole species exterminated as a direct result of the "White Terror." It is well to remember that in its day, the Ersatzstaat was quite popular, and showed substantial growth on an annual basis; its trillions of faithful were willing to stand by while it perpetrated unspeakable atrocities of genocide and democide, with the promise that just one little bit more would be enough to refashion the galaxy into what it "ought" to be. It is well to remember that Correct Thought was an idea, and that ideas have consequences. [19]

[Publius]

Endnotes

[1] The continued existence of organized pre-Empire political parties is attested in "Rawmat Recession Threatens Ralle's Coalition" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 8) and "New Order Captures Parliament Majority" (id.), which show that the Cambira Ralle government fell in 37 rS after the group of the Forad Party and Cardean Party lost its majority in the Hall (the Esselian Empire's parliament) to the Esselian New Order Party, sending Ralle into opposition "for the first time in over two decades."

The Senate's continued control over the Imperial civil service is indicated by General Cassio Tagge's reaction to the Senate's dissolution in A New Hope: "Without the bureaucracy, how will the Emperor maintain control?" (Evidently he assumed that the Civil Service would be effectively destroyed without the Senate; in Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker his objection is more finely worded: "How will the Emperor maintain control of the Imperial bureaucracy?" (The film version may be read as intensifying Tagge's identification control of the civil service with the Senate's authority, in having him assume that doing away with the one would automatically entail the loss of the other.)

[2] Republic Commando: True Colors cites Order 5 as establishing that the Chief of the Defense Staff would take command of the Grand Army of the Republic "in the event of the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) being declared unfit to issue orders."

Alderaan University is described by The Illustrated Star Wars Universe as "the famous galactic learning center" and "one of the oldest and most widely revered learning institutions in the galaxy." Palpatine's attendance of any college of Alderaan University is unattested.

Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross-Sections mentions the "lightly populated Chommell Sector" in the Mid-Rim, consisting of "36 full-member worlds, more than 40,000 settled dependencies, and 300,000,000 barren stars," and identifies the Sector's representative as Senator Padmé Naberrie, Lady Amidala, who occupied the same seat previously held by Palpatine of Naboo as of the Naboo Crisis of 3 rS (as seen in The Phantom Menace, which also depicts his election to the office of Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic).

[3] The Star Wars Encyclopedia says that COMPNOR "started as a populist movement against the chaos of the final days of the Old Republic." The Rebellion Era Sourcebook agrees, stating that "during its early years, the New Order was a populist movement" and that "grassroots organizations sprang up, and commoners became actively involved in the shaping of local and galactic politics as they hadn't been for centuries." It quickly adds that "these citizen groups — foremost among them the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order, or COMPNOR — became absorbed into the Empire's evolving political structure," thereby confirming that they were not formally part of the Palpatine Government in the late Republic or the Empire's constitution. The Imperial Sourcebook describes the transformation of COMPNOR from "little more than a social gathering for idealistic young beings who saw in the New Order a deliverance from the chaos of the dying days of the Old Republic" into "a useful political tool" through the agency of Crueya Vandron (identified only as "one of the Emperor's advisors"; his background as a Senex Lord was established by Cloak of Deception, and the title "Marquess Vandron of the Blood Royal" is unattested), who "saw the potential worth of a populist movement" and "gave COMPNOR the resources to grow" by way of "overt encouragement and discrete funding" designed to give "the appearance of a spontaneous organization enjoying phenomenal growth." The Imperial Sourcebook dates this to "months after Palpatine assumed power," herein understood as his election as Supreme Chancellor vice his acclamation as Galactic Emperor.

The New Order as a package of policy initiatives and government programs is conjectured from statements in the Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook and the Imperial Sourcebook referring to the New Order prior to the establishment of the Empire. The Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook describes the Galactic Corporate Policy League (GCPL) as "a cabal of plutocrats with ties to Palpatine and his New Order" some considerable time before his election as "President of the Republic." Likewise, the Imperial Sourcebook describes the secret meetings that led to the creation of the Ubiqtorate, which desired "a strong central government" such as "the sort of government which Palpatine and his New Order promised," again, some indeterminate time before "Palpatine was in power and the Empire was formed." The delineation of a First and Second New Order is based on the four-year term of the Senate described in Cloak of Deception (like Palpatine's third term, the Third New Order would be extended indefinitely).

The Separatist crisis refers to a movement fostered by former Master Jedi Dooku, Count of Serenno, calling for secession from the Galactic Republic in view of its allegedly irreformable corruption and unresponsiveness. It is first intimated in "Ando, Sy Myrth Secede" and "A Closer Look" (HoloNet News Vol. 531, No. 45), and made more explicit by "Corellia Closes Borders" (HoloNet News Vol. 531, No. 47), which dates the crisis's beginning to 11 rS, "Palpatine to Separatists: Let's Talk" (HoloNet News Vol. 531, No. 48), and "Dooku Spotted in Gree Enclave" (HoloNet News Vol. 531, No. 54). It is not specifically tied to COMPNOR's history in any existing accounts, but conveniently establishes an ideological alternative to the New Order, and explains the enthusiasm for the New Order as an alternative to widespread political disunity and social disorder.

Cloak of Deception mentions "the factions of Bail Antilles, and those who allow Ainlee Teem to speak for them" (Supreme Chancellor Valorum mentions both floor leaders alongside Palpatine as being qualified candidates for the Supreme Chancellery). Senator Prince Bail Antilles (Alderaan)'s party is identified herein as the Conservative Caucus (Palpatine notes that "Senator Antilles thinks only of the Core Worlds"), while the party of Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum is identified as the Democratic Center ("The rueful middle ground had been Valorum's domain for too many years"); Senator Ainlee Teem (Malastare)'s party of free-marketeers is identified with the Rationalist Party of Planet of Twilight, a post-Endor pan-galactic political party of technophile free-marketeers. The name Neo-Democrats is used here for the Mid-Rim party formed by Senator Orn Free Taa (Ryloth) in Cloak of Deception for the purpose of replacing Valorum with Senator Palpatine of Naboo (Naboo).

[4] "Praji, Tannon" (Star Wars Databank) establishes that the "newly formed Commission for the Protection of the Republic (COMPOR)" came into existence "after the Clone Wars began." "COMPOR Reorganized" (Republic HoloNet News Special Inaugural Edition, Star Wars Insider No. 84) mentions that COMPOR was "known for its 'credits for clones' resource drives and its enthusiastic rallies."

According to "Praji, Tannon," "[First Minister of Ingress Tannon] Praji, along with countless other government officials" was pressured into ordering the deportation of "members of species who's [sic] homeworlds had sided with the Separatists," and that "observing the executive safety measure to the letter, it meant deporting vast communities of Quarren, Aqualish, Koorivar, Neomidian, Gossam, and more." In 14:9, "Republic Youths Hold Patriot Parade" (Republic HoloNet News, Star Wars Insider No. 70) shows that human supremacism was already on the rise within COMPOR itself, noting unattributed criticism of SAGroup "because its membership is composed almost entirely of humans," with "less than five percent" being nonhuman, and all of those "of near-human descent." Labyrinth of Evil depicts "a public service ad extolling the virtues of COMPOR — the Commission for the Protection of the Republic," with the caveat "NONHUMANS NEED NOT APPLY."

Ishin-Il-Raz's leading role in COMPOR is stated in "COMPOR Reorganized," which calls him "the former spokesman for COMPOR and head of COMPNOR's Select Committee." Il-Raz is not named in connection with any of the early examples of human supremacism, but his involvement is conjectured from "Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals," which notes that he "helped found the Committee for the Preservation of the New Order (COMPNOR) and its core precepts — institutionalized discrimination and rule by dictatorship." The Rebellion Era Sourcebook states that "the Emperor's New Order cajoled the Senate into repealing antislavery laws, passing laws that discouraged or outright restricted aliens from leaving their native worlds, declaring entire species property of the Empire, and impossing stiff tariffs on alien-owned businesses that attempted to engage in commerce with anyone but Imperial-controlled institutions."

[5] "COMPOR Reorganized" indicates that the reorganization of COMPOR into COMPNOR took place on 16:5:24 ("today"), while "Palpatine's Triumphs: A Celebration" (Republic HoloNet News Special Inaugural Edition, Star Wars Insider No. 84) establishes that Palpatine was acclaimed Galactic Emperor on 16:5:23, the day before. "COMPOR Reorganized" also calls Ishin-Il-Raz "head of COMPNOR's Select Committee." His eventual appointment as a grand admiral is established by "Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals." His eccentricity and emotional instability is conjectured from his depression in that source and his eventual suicide (first mentioned in The Essential Chronology).

The Rebellion Era Sourcebook establishes that Wilhuff Tarkin was an influential thinker of the New Order, and "lent his vast intellect to providing the framework for the New Order's founding precepts, providing scholarly and well-reasoned arguments to Emperor Palpatine's emotional speeches," and that he was the author of the "seminal text Visions of the New Order," which "served as the blueprint for COMPNOR-related organizations such as the Imperial Security Bureau and the paramilitary group COMPForce [sic]." His friend Ardus Kaine is said by "The Pentastar Alignment" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 3) to have been "among Palpatine's earliest converts to the principles of the New Order and one of his most ardent supporters during his rise to power," and that he "helped found COMPNOR when there was some concern over the rapid reorganization of Imperial Intelligence."

The ideological struggle within COMPNOR is derived from the Imperial Sourcebook, which notes that "the Emperor took a hand in the shaping of the organization," and that "his methods were patient, defeating his opponents within COMPNOR not through violence or threats, but with a hidden, gentle, consistent pressure which wore the opposition down," noting that "those who opposed the change in COMPNOR never even knew the Emperor had done anything to instigate the changes," and that "most could not even explain how the nature of their organization differed from what they had envisioned," ad that "he had succeeded in having his enemies unknowingly choose exactly the course of action he desired them to choose." Thus, it is clear that his opponents were actually in control of COMPNOR's direction, but were tricked into taking it precisely where he wanted it to go. Kaine's identification with this group is derived from "The Pentastar Alignment," which notes that he "felt betrayed by the Emperor."

[6] The Imperial Sourcebook calls COMPNOR "a powerful tool for the New Order" that "actively attempts to build the ethic of the New Order into the life of the average galactic citizen," noting that it "has made great pains to recruit from or insert members into the massive Imperial bureaucracy" so that "in time, COMPNOR's influence became so pervasive that the Imperial bureaucracy was under its complete control, and thus absolutely dedicated to the whims of the Emperor," despite the fact that "during that era, the bureaucracy answered to the Imperial Senate (in theory). Likewise, it "also took great pains to insert its members into local bureaucracies, on the sector, system, planetary, and even city level."

The New Order Party is mentioned in "Into the Core Worlds" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 7). The Imperial Sourcebook describes the Coalition of Improvements, the Coalition for Progress, CompForce, the Sub-Adult Group (SAGroup), and the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB). The Finance Minister is mentioned in "The Path to Nowhere" (Dark Times No. 1 - 5); the remaining organizations (the New Order Galactic Committee, the Queen Amidala Cultural Institute, the Palpatine Institute for General Economy, HIM Treasury, and the Khil-Parud Office of the Law Review) are unattested.

COMPNOR as a check to the Moffs' power is described in the Imperial Sourcebook, which notes that "the regional Moffs and governors had control over their systems, but also know that they will be observed by countless COMPNOR loyalists below them." COMPNOR's readiness to take over for the normative state is described in the same source, which notes that "after Palpatine dissolved the Senate ('for the duration of the emergency'), COMPNOR's Select Committee was more than adequately prepared to fill the void, directing virtually every policy decision made by the bureaucracy."

[7] The Imperial Sourcebook describes the Select Committee as "the ruling body for COMPNOR." It is said that "at its height, the Select Committee contained over 25,000 members," but "no one knows exactly how many members there are now" (as of 35 rS), and that "those in the lower echelons of COMPNOR believe there are still 15,000 or more members," but "those who are higher up quietly guess that there are perhaps one hundredth that number." The use of co-optation vice election or appointment is also explicitly stated, as the sourcebook notes that the Select Committee has "a variable number of members, and the COMPNOR charter provides for electoral and honorary means of being named a member of the Select Committee."

Crueya Vandron's official position vis-à-vis COMPNOR has never been described. The Imperial Sourcebook indicates that he was the chief architect of COMPNOR's growth, and remains a decisive force in its affairs (at one point Vandron's influence over COMPNOR is directly compared to Palpatine's). In light of Ishin-Il-Raz's role as chairman of the Select Committee, the Lord Vandron is rationalized herein to be the court patron and the Emperor's personal envoy to COMPNOR (cf. the privy counselor detailed as the Emperor's nuncio to the Corporate Sector Authority in the Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook).

The Dark Empire Sourcebook refers to "party officials, admirals and advisors" as being among the Empire's most powerful figures in the post-Endor period, and refers to the "COMPNOR leadership" as "wealthy party functionaries and corrupt officials." "Into the Core Worlds" states that the Empire "has devoted several hundred trillion credits in New Order Party funding, propaganda, and public education programs in a titanic effort to supplant local traditions with its own philosophy of universal Human High Culture."

[8] The New Order Party's populist platform is derived from the Rebellion Era Sourcebook's statement that "during its early years, the New Order was a populist movement" and that COMPNOR was one of the "grassroots organizations [which] sprang up, and commoners became actively involved in the shaping of local and galactic politics as they hadn't been for centuries." The advocacy of reforming local government to conform to the Imperial model is derived from the Imperial Sourcebook, which states that "the Empire also encourages the constituent planets to reform their own governments to conform to the Imperial method," and that "in this way, individual worlds eliminate laws and freedoms, replacing them with doctrines and statutes more in line with Imperial edicts." A specific example of this behavior is cited by Coruscant and the Core Worlds, which notes that "most Esselians considered themselves loyal to Esseles first, the Empire second," but that "this situation began to change slowly with the rise of a local New Order party, which developed years to the task of transforming culture and taking over Esseles's parliament." "Rawmat Recession Threatens Ralle's Coalition" and "New Order Captures Parliamentary Majority" show that the Esselian New Order Party captured the majority in the Hall (the parliament of the Esselian Empire) in 37 rS; this is particularly noteworthy in that it shows the New Order participating in representative democracy, and shows a hint of the Party's particular flavor of populism: Jamson Freller, the ENO party leader and presumptive President of the Hall, was openly nativist and human supremacist.

Correct Thought as a coherent ideology is conjectured from The Imperial Military Guide to Correct Thought, a publication mentioned in Force Commander.

[9] The Rationalist Party, an organized political party of technophile free marketeers, first appeared in Planet of Twilight; in 48 rS it was represented in the New Republic Council, and was said to "have adherents both in the Republic and in nearly every piece of the Empire still big enough to field a fleet" (with "too much influence in both the New Republic and in the various fragments of the old Empire" for the Party's wishes to be disregarded out of hand). It is identified herein as the same pro-business party that nominated Senator Ainlee Teem (Malastare) for the Supreme Chancellery in The Phantom Menace.

Senator Orn Free Taa (Ryloth)'s leadership of a sizeable tertium quid (herein referred to as the Neo-Democrats) in opposition to Ainlee Teem's pro-business party (herein identified with the Rationalist Party) and Senator Prince Bail Antilles (Alderaan)'s Core Worlds conservative party (herein referred to the Conservative Caucus) is first established in Cloak of Deception; it is this party that nominated Senator Palpatine of Naboo (Naboo) for the Supreme Chancellery in The Phantom Menace (hence its reference as "Palpatine's old base in the Mid-Rim and Outer Rim").

[10] The Imperial Sourcebook describes the Coalition for Improvements as having responsibility for "long term solutions" to "cases of system deviance from the ideals of the New Order," "especially where those solutions are best not associated with the Empire" (incidentally cementing the distinction between COMPNOR and the Imperial State). It explicitly states that "resources available to each Sector Development agency vary greatly" (establishing that several different offices are maintained), and that "Sector Development contains two departments, the Department of Modification and the Department of Redesign." The titles General Secretary of Improvements and Assistant General Secretary of Improvements for Sector Development are unattested.

[11] The Imperial Sourcebook states that Modification maintains a public façade as "an association of technologists and system specialists who help local systems modify their technology to Imperial standards," but in reality "their primary and secret purpose is to slowly modify social conditions and institutions to cement a system's loyalty to the New Order," and that it "covertly promotes the careers of beings whose politics match the Empire's more closely than their rivals," creating social problems which it then helps its quislings to solve. Sficca is mentioned as a kind of plant in the Dark Empire Sourcebook ("things weren’t all chav and sficca blossoms"), and here stands as a convenient substitute in the term "banana republic."

Redesign is said to have responsibility for dealing with systems that Improvements deems "virtually unsalvageable in its current form," such that "no degree of small modifications will suffice to move it securely into the fold of the New Order"; it is noted that it is responsible for "some of the most evil actions taken on behalf of the Empire," and calls it "a small mercy for the citizens of the Empire" that Redesign agencies "rarely have the resources to handle more than one world in a sector at a time."

The New Essential Guide to Characters calls Bevel Lemelisk "one of the only individuals executed by the New Republic for war crimes" ("Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals" identifies Grand Admiral Osvald Teshik as another). Therefore, most war criminals were not executed.

[12] The Imperial Sourcebook calls the Coalition for Progress "the central authority and clearinghouse for the reports of all the Sector Monitors" and "a large bureaucracy with surprising efficiency at gathering and analyzing the information which pours in from the Sector Monitors." Each Sector Monitor office is called "a collection of agencies which theoretically report on the cultural progress within a sector toward the perfection of the New Order," and these agencies are said to be "loosely grouped by the type of social activity on which they are reporting," citing the Art, Science, Commerce, Education, and Justice agencies. The Imperial Board of Culture is mentioned in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim, and its identification as an agency of Progress is conjectural; likewise the identification of the Imperial Business Bureau from "Underworld: A Galaxy of Scum and Villainy" (Star Wars Insider No. 89). The policy of "CoOrdination" is not attested as such, but rather is conjectured from the repeated references to the Empire's totalitarian tendencies (such as the Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook's claim that "the Empire wants to run every little person's part of the pie"), and serves as a narcotic alternative to outright nationalization (as mentioned in Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker) pursuant to the official policy of Imperialization described in the Star Wars Encyclopedia.

The Imperial Sourcebook does specifically note that Progress analyzes "any pattern of activity which strikes Progress as suspicious," and "the findings are passed on to the ISB"; elsewhere it adds that the Coalition of Improvements is tasked from "cases of system deviance" reported by Progress to the ISB. That is to say, although Progress engages in no 'wet work,' it is a facilitator and an enabler for that activity by Improvements and the ISB.

[13] CompForce is explicitly called "the military arm of COMPNOR" by the Imperial Sourcebook, and its obsession with being ersatz Marines derives from the Imperial Sourcebook's statement that CompForce was "created to give the Emperor large forces other than stormtroopers on whose loyalty he could absolutely rely." The neglect of Army/Navy analogues is conjectured from the lack of material describing these functions in relation to CompForce. In its overview of the average Sector order of battle, the Imperial Sourcebook states that "a COMPNOR Regiment (CompForce) has a structure like a line regiment with the exception of the lack of security platoons," establishing that "CompForce" is actually a name for a particular type of formation; the Dark Empire Sourcebook reinforces this, observing that the bureaucracy had "regional armies and CompForces [sic] at their disposal." Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForce Handbook observes that CompForce is "universally referred to as CompFarce by both Imperials and Rebels."

The sanitization of a dead man into a hero is inspired by the vignette "Picturion Viewed from the Top" (Imperial Sourcebook), in which an ISB special agent arranges for the deaths in battle of two Imperial soldiers: "If they take this station, COMPNOR will again make them heroes [...] for propaganda purposes, dead heroes are nearly as good as live ones. And dead heroes cannot defect to the Rebellion." COMPNOR, then, has no moral aversion to manipulating posthumous reputations for its own ends.

Coronet City is the capital of Corellia, as seen for example in Coruscant and the Core Worlds.

[14] The Imperial Sourcebook divides CompForce into Observation and Assault; the subordination of CompForces to the party machine derives from the Dark Empire Sourcebook's description of "the COMPNOR leadership" as "wealthy party functionaries and corrupt officials" who "exploited the fervor of their supporters," including "CompForce chiefs and other New Order purists in the government" (and the comment that the bureaucracy, notoriously a bastion of COMPNOR power, had "regional armies and CompForces at their disposal"). The name "CompAssault" is used in Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForces Handbook; "CompObserve" is an unattested but parallel construction.

The Imperial Sourcebook states that "in theory, [Observation members] are then sent to observe the Imperial military in action so they might learn how the Imperial war machine works, but that "in practice, they are spies who insure that the officers and enlisted folk of the Imperial military are acting with the proper respect for the New Order." The Dark Empire Sourcebook mentions the offices of Political Reliability Observer and Chief Ideological Monitor (the latter is explicitly associated with Observation), while Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForces Handbook states that "after Observation volunteers finish a tour of duty, they rarely join Assault or the conventional military," and that "most join the ISB or another COMPNOR branch, with the bulk of the remainder joining another branch of the Imperial bureaucracy." The presence of Observation

The Imperial Sourcebook attributes Assault's recruitment to SAGroup's "large supply of primed volunteers," and observes that its recruitment pipeline is so productive that it "can afford to train by attrition," such that "of the 88 percent who fail to make it through training, nearly one quarter of these are combat fatalities." Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForces Handbook cites similar, but subtly different statistics: "CompForce has an 88 percent failure rate, and some drop camps have a fatality/crippling disability rate as high as 22 percent." Both sources agree that CompForce troopers tend to be enthusiastic but poorly trained, and were frequently assigned to high-casualty operations.

[15] The Imperial Sourcebook calls SAGroup "the larges branch of COMPNOR," whose membership "has recently exceeded two trillion"; "COMPOR Reorganized" specifically calls SAGroup "the largest division of COMPNOR." SAGroup as a federated association rather than a single entity derives from the comment in the Imperial Sourcebook that SAGEducation "continues to be popular on almost every world served by SAGroups" (the name "Galaxy Alliance of SAGroups" for the whole organization is unattested). "Republic Youths Hold Patriot Parade" (Star Wars Insider No. 70) describes a demonstration including "over 6,000 young Republic loyalists" participating in "SAGroup, the youth chapter of the increasingly popular Commission for the Protection of the Republic (COMPOR)."

[16] The unspoilt idealism of SAGroup is stated outright in the Imperial Sourcebook, which states that SAGroupHQ "most resembles the original COMPNOR, an enthusiastic group who firmly believes the New Order is the best regime for the galaxy," that SAGroup generally is "intentionally kept ignorant of most of the darker aspects of the Empire," and that "it is largely unaffected by the changes in the rest of the organization." SAGEducation's largely positive reputation is derived from Imperial Sourcebook's observation that it is "the program which gained COMPNOR a positive reputation on thousands of worlds," it "succeeds in bringing learning to billions of young beings," and that it "continues to be popular on almost every world served by SAGroups." It also notes that "they believe in the future of the New Order, and they believe in teaching their charges to become as well educated as they can in order to be better galactic citizens," an attitude which "has caused the occasional confrontation with the ISB," but "the continued popularity of SAGEducation has moderated the ISB reaction."

The Imperial Sourcebook notes that "some branches of SAGRec have been filled with future CompForce hopefuls," and that "these SAGRecs engage in harsh physical training and wargames as an introduction to military training." Both Recruitment and Motivation are mentioned in the same source, which notes that Motivation is used to indoctrinate persistently ungood SAGroup members on "how to become useful citizens supportive of the New Order," with a reputation for "making sure no troublemakers are released before their compliance with the New Order" (the Dark Empire Sourcebook observes that arresting a delinquent is said to be tantamount to "dooming him to slavery in JuveCourt," making the proposed choice one between a rock and a hard place). Recruitment is said to be "gently wriggling from the control of SAGroupHQ, goaded by support from the ISB."

[17] The ISB's role investigating political affairs and rivaling Imperial Intelligence is expressly stated in the Imperial Sourcebook (it was "created to increase the Emperor's knowledge of political events, and as an intentional rival to Imperial Intelligence", and "has more of a police function than does the Ubiqtorate in Intelligence"); likewise its one-to-one inferiority but numerical superiority ("the ISB does not have the quality of intelligence operatives that Imperial Intelligence does, it is now the larger organization").

The Dark Empire Sourcebook says that because "the Emperor had given his two major secret police agencies overlapping authority, they fought constantly" and "even assassinated each other's operatives on a regular basis"; with the outbreak of outright fighting in the Time of Destruction, "their tenuous truce collapsed" and Imperial Intelligence "published proscription lists naming 'enemies,'" and "initially very successful, this method of operation was duplicated by ISB, and eventually by others as the sides splintered further."

The Star Wars Sourcebook mentions a "Naval sword," while The Hutt Gambit mentions a "ceremonial officer's saber"; as the Death Star Technical Companion calls Imperial Intelligence "an official arm of the military," it therefore follows that Intelligence officers would carry sabers in full dress. A loose precedent for the ISB's unattested ceremonial pistols is offered by Planet of Twilight, in which the Chief of State of the New Republic was escorted by an honor guard bearing an otherwise unidentified "sleek white-and-silver ceremonial blaster rifle."

[18] ISB Central Commander Sollaine appears in "Small Favors" (The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal No. 12), while the Imperial Sourcebook describes the ISB Central Office as "a mammoth complex in Imperial City which handles all of the communications and coordination tasks for the whole of the ISB," and specifically names the Commission of Operations and Surveillance, Investigations, Internal Affairs, Interrogation, Re-Education, and Enforcement (occasionally seen as Enforcements) branches. ISB special agents are seen to wear black trousers and caps with white tunics cut similar to but distinct from those worn by military and naval officers in A New Hope.

The ISB review of Cadet Han Solo's ideological suitability in the Dark Empire Sourcebook cleared him of "'unmutual' intent or anti-Imperial actions," according to Senator Simon Greyshade (Vorzyd V). The Imperial Office of Criminal Investigations (IOCI) was first mentioned as the Empire's primary federal police agency in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim.

[19] The Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook observes that "in the Corporate Sector, you won't see robed COMPNOR faithfuls holding torchlit ceremonies."