Battlehymn Republic wrote:Has anyone attempted to compile a list of all the major (neo-)Imperial factions and figures who appeared on the Galactic scene after the Battle of Endor? It would be really helpful for chronicling just exactly what in the hell the New Republic/Rebel Alliance was up against.
Broadly speaking, you can divide these groups into the legitimate successors to the Imperial State, and the usurpers and warlords (before Palpatine's return, and after).
First there are the legitimate successors (
de facto of course; HIM the Emperor remains alive and occulted on Byss during most of this period and therefore the Imperial Throne remains
de jure continuously occupied until 11 years after Yavin) in the Imperial State. Therefore you have the brief attempted coup by the Ruling Council, followed by Pestage's clone's acclamation as regent with Isard serving as somesort of premier or deputy. Then you have Pestage's ousting, the temporary collegial regency by the Emperor's Ruling Circle (represented formally by a regency tribunal consisting of a triumvirate). Shortly after that, they are liquidated by Isard who ascends her own regency. She abandons the Imperial State along with Imperial Center six and a half years after Yavin. Thereafter, the remaining central government apparatus of the Imperial State is assumed under the control of the reconstituted Imperial Ruling Circle. GADM Thrawn returns from the galactic halo, and is appointed Supreme Commander, and shortly after becomes the
de facto military dictator of the Empire. After his assassination, the Imperial Ruling Circle reasserts itself as the official rulers of the Empire while secretly submitting to Palpatine's renewed rule. He then launches a coalition campaign that forces the New Republic from the Core, and then causes the Imperial Mutiny to thin the weak or disloyal and to help collect Skywalker. After he collects Skywalker, the Empre reunifies under a reconstituted Inner Circle, the Shadow Hand Strategy, and the seven Dark Side Elite. After they are all destroyed in the outcome of the Battle of Onderon, the remnants of the Imperial State are seized by the conspirators responsible for Palpatine's ultimate death, the Interim Ruling Council. Jax is assassinated, and most of the rest of the council is as well. After Carivus' assassination, the Imperial State completely dismembers and the Empire ceases to exist.
Now, there are also the illegitimate pseudo-Empires, warlord states, and other competing factions. Admiral Zsinj, Delvardus, Harrsk, Teradoc, Drommel all take off with their naval/military commands and set-up local warlord fiefdoms. Admiral Krennel would eventually follow. Several legitimate Imperial governors simply stop taking orders from Coruscant (probably linked to Isard's centralization policies), including Tarkin's successor: Grand Moff Kaine, who collects his Oversector Outer into the Pentastar Alignment. This breakaway warlord fief even had its own Inquisitorius. There was the Legitimist faction, butressed by several grand admirals and the Central Committee of Grand Moffs, which elevated a mad slavelord from Kessel to the Imperial Throne, asserting him as the son of the (believed) late Emperor. In several cases, the opposition or warlord factions could become credible threats to the legitimate Imperial State headquartered on Coruscant. The Legitimist faction ended up being a threat temporarily to Isard, even though it eventually liquidated itself through farcical in-fighting. Warlord Zsinj's empire at its height exceeded the legitimate Empire in extent and encouraged a temporary alliance between both the legitimate Imperial State and the New Republicans in order to defeat him.
After Palpatine's final death and the destruction of Byss, the Imperial resurgence abruptly ended. The unifying presence of Palpatine as Emperor, the reunified Imperial ruling class, and the all-important autopilot-of-the-Empire, the Shadow Hand Strategy, was wiped out. Overnight the Empire was merely an advancing military machine without marching orders or any legitimate leadership. Without any coherent direction, most of the Empire disintegrated outright in climactic bouts of warlordism, mass defections, mass desertions, and mass surrenders. The New Republic was able to very rapidly and almost effortlessly reclaim much of the galaxy, including much of the Core and Coruscant, in the absence of any organized resistance. The bits of the war machine which remained in the field mostly joined their commanders as warlord militaries spackled across the Rim and also walled up within the enclaves Palpatine had established in the heart of the galactic core. A substantial but minority fraction of the non-deserters or defectors reassembled under the Imperial Interim Ruling Council's brief rule. It's six-month tenure marked only more infighting and ineffective rule and a continuing losing war policy. By its dissolution, the New Republic had succeeded in diminishing territory identifying as Imperial to a small fraction of the galaxy, with none of it meaningfully organized in opposition. Surviving holdouts frequently resorted to terrorism in light of the complete loss of a single coherent political faction and the dissolution of their conventional military capability.
Eventually, Corporal Daala, having failed in her terrorist campaign, managed to use more terrorist coercion to force a conclave of the most significant Deep Core warlord holdouts and then proceeded to mass murder them and usurp control of their fiefdoms and militaries. She then lost a considerable amount of her expeditionary capability in ineffective terrorist assaults against strategically unimportant targets. She then ceded control of her patchwork of warlord militaries and territories to her subordinate, Vice Admiral Pelleaon. He proceded to pillage all the military forces and resources he could manage from the Deep Core warlord-patchwork and relocate it to a fresh power base formed from Imperialist territories on the Rim. He and his zombie Empire proceeded to lose their on-again-off-again war with the resurgent New Republic until widdled down to eight sector in the Outer Rim. However, other Imperial Remnants existed and persisted, despite claims that Pelleaon's zombie Empire was a legitimate successor (it was not) or the sole representative of Imperialist forces at war with the New Republic at the time of the Pelleaon-Gavrisome Treaty (it also was not). The Empire Reborn movement coalesced around failed students of Jedi Master Skywalker's Jedi academy and the Procurator of Justice, one of Darth Vader's minions. The Second Imperium movement developed around another failed student and agent of the Inquisitorious, Brakiss, and a number of pseudo-Royal Guardsmen con men (they produced the illusion that Palpatine had yet survived once more, ostenibly with the help of his Sith lore). One must recall that several warlord states (Moff Shaegel, the second-generation warlords in the Deep Core apparently couped by Corporal Daala for a second time in order to furnish her with another failed terrorist assault, the Empire Reborn, and the Second Imperium) have never been convincingly identified with Pelleaon's zombie Empire on the Rim. The Second Imperium in particular continued a war against the New Republic and the New Jedi Order after the conclusion of hostilities between the Pelleaonists and the New Republic.
Battlehymn Republic wrote:Just off-handedly (and pseudo-chronologically) I can list Thrawn, Isard, Hissa and the Central Committee, the Reborn Emperor, Zsinj, and Daala. Then there's all the major secondary warlords and figures, such as Krennel, Kaine, Teradoc, and the rest of the fine folk who Publius has kindly profiled on his site. There's also Pestage and Dangor of course, and I can never exactly figure out how many different Imperial Ruling Circles have reconvened, and how many times they attempted to elect an Emperor, and ended up killing each other.
The Emperor's Ruling Circle was used to describe the opposition to Pestage (and the backing of the Tribunal). It was liquidated by Isard but apparently its survivors reconstituted following her desertion of the Empire, and remained the ruling class until Byss was destroyed (however they functionally danced to Thrawn's tune during his shogunate, and then took their marching orders from Byss secretly during both the coalition and it's campaigns and Imperial Mutiny, then officially during Palpatine's restoration). The next ruling class was the Imperial Interim Ruling Council, a group not identified with either the pre-Endor Imperial Ruling Council (the anti-Pestageans in this group probably formed the basis for the original Imperial Ruling Circle) or the Imperial Ruling Circle, but rather the conspiracy to assassinate Palpatine. The only two major attempts to fill the Imperial Throne by the IRC occurred after its successful recapture of Imperial Center, and precipitated the brief Imperial Civil War. However, there was a brief coup attempt by an Admiral Betl Oxtroe, who suggested placing Palpatine's grandniece on the Throne as a constitutional figurehead monarch, reconvening the Imperial Senate, and allowing the New Republic Provisional Council to assume the role that the former Ruling Council had to safeguard the transition. There was also the farcical Legitimist coronation of the Kesselian three-eyed slavelord and supposed son to Palpatine, Triocolus.
Battlehymn Republic wrote:And then there's the Force-users. I can off-handedly think of the Emperor Reborn working with his Dark Side Elite and Adepts, the Empire Reborn suckers who thought Palpatine had again returned, the Second Imperium Shadow Academicians, Jerec's Seven Dark Jedi, the Disciples of Ragnos, and Carnor Jax. Well and Lumiya, of course. Is that all there is to it?
Immediately after Endor, Palpatine reincarnates in his Hand, Jeng Droga. He is found and returned to Byss where Palpatine reincarnates in a clone but must spend the next several years recovering from his very-near-final-death-experience. He recalls all of his dark side adepts (ref: DESB) that are available or important (i.e., not Mara Jade or Lumiya, who are not very important; and not Joruus C'boath, who is insane and does not heed the recall) or places them on particular assignment (e.g., Inquisitor Jerec, who searches out the Valley of the Jedi at Palpatine's behest). Some remain on the outside of course; Shadowspawn makes a last stand on Mindor where he and his men fight to the last man against Jedi General Skywalker. Of course once Palpatine returns, his dark side adepts and his general war policy are sheparded and spearheaded by his Seven Elite - headed by Sedriss -, while the other adepts adopt various roles as outlined in his autopilot-for-the-Empire, the Shadow Hand Strategy.
Most are eliminated when the Galaxy Gun misfire wipes out Byss. However, the Inquisitorious' headquarters was on a different world sealed-in by the Imperial Hyperspace Security in the very heart of the galaxy: Prakith. Most of the Force sensitive insiders in the Inquisitorius were apparently still on Byss and killed, but apparently there were enough that Brakiss was still sent as an agent provocateur to Skywalker's Jedi academy. Then of course there was the Empire Reborn, headed by the Procurator of Justice, a dark side adept pupiled to Vader.