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In honor of Daala becoming Chief of State, I figured a run down of nasty pieces of work was in order. Note that for body count I am only counting those directly attributable to them - in other words Palpatine doesn't get credit for everything his underlings did. I am also not counting legitimate military targets as atrocities, to do so artificially inflates some totals (eg Grevious) and puts others on the list who don't belong there (e.g. Luke Skywalker)

Who :
General Grevious

Atrocities :
BDZ of Humbarine
killing every human in a core sector with the brain plague
Forces under his command bombarded "thousands" of planets

Body count:
>10^18

Notes :Probably the single greatest bloody handed killer in SW, and unlikely to be topped given the scale of what he did. Also leads in combat deaths, as his forces killed ~2/3 of the GAR.


Who :
Tsavong Lah

Atrocities :
De-orbiting Duros cities into the planet
Using refugee ships as shield battering rams
Multiple mass sacrifices of civilians
Forces under his command "Vong-formed" the ecosystem of thousands of planets

Body Count :
>10^14

Notes :Likely has a number of noncombat deaths related to the impact of the Vong forming, but cannot be directly attributed.


Who :
Grand Moff Tarkin

Atrocities :
Destruction of Alderaan
Attack on Zenoma Sekot
Bombardment of Kashyyyk and enslavement of the Wookiees
Ghorman Massacre
Atravis Sector Massacres

Body Count :
>10^9

Notes :Atravis Sector Massacres likely up his body count several orders of magnitude, but scant details on them means we don't know their extent.


Who :
Grand Admiral Thrawn

Atrocities :
Mundicide of an unnamed world in the Unknown Regions
Limited orbital bombardments during military campaigns

Body Count :
10^9

Notes :Body count based off estimated population of a planet, may be lower.


Who :
Admiral Delvardus

Atrocities :
Limited bombardment of Metellos

Body Count :
10^9

Notes :For bombarding a city planet, the guy only killed 5 billion.


Who :
Grand Admiral Pitta

Atrocities :
Enslavement, torture, experimentation and extermination of numerous alien species in the outer rim.

Body count :
>10^8

Notes :Said to have exterminated a number of species, but the limited number of ships and their power puts some restrictions on what he could have done. If most of the work was done by parts of his command other then the Dungeon ships then this body count probably jumps to place him at #3.


Who :
Darth Sidious

Atrocities :
Multiple murders, including the Trade Federation Directorate, his Sith Master, and numerous underlings
Great Jedi Purge
Repeated use of superweapons against civilian targets in Operation Shadow Hand
Ordered Devastation of Camaas
Ordered blockade of Naboo

Body Count :
>10^8

Notes :His secretive methods and use of cats paws keeps his direct body count artificially low, even if he is ultimately responsible for far more. No numbers for the deaths on Camaas, but halved the population of Naboo.


Who :
Nute Gunray

Atrocities :
Blockade of Naboo
Murder of Trade Federation Directorate

Body Count :
>10^8

Notes : Conducted the Naboo blockade which resulted in 600 million deaths. Also ordered several other invasions and military actions, assassinations, and was a leader on the Separatist Council.


Who :
Ysanne Isard

Atrocities :
Release of the Kytos virus
Lusankya liftoff

Body Count :
>10^6

Notes :Given the population of Coruscant the virus should have been far more lethal, yet we are only told of millions of deaths. Lusankya liftoff deaths estimated at a mere 2.5 million


Who :
Darth Vader

Atrocities :
Multiple murders and instances of torture
Bombardment of Kashyyyk and enslavement of the Wookiees
Economic enslavement of the Noghri
Bombardment of Falleen

Body Count :
>10^5

Notes :Debatable whether he can lay claim to being responsible for the Destruction of Alderaan or not. As it was Tarkin's plan I do not attribute it to him even though he simply stood by.


Who :
Jerec

Atrocities :
Unleashed the Spore upon the crew of his personal star destroyer
Multiple murders

Body Count:
10^4

Notes :For a villain, he didn't really do all that much.


Who :
"Admiral" Daala

Atrocities :
Murder of the Imperial Warlords
Extermination of the Eol Sha refugees
Bombardment of Mon Calamari and devastation of its shipyards
Bombardment of multiple worlds in a strike after creating the Imperial Remnant

Body Count :
>10^3

Notes :Had her plan to attack Coruscant carried out, she would have killed more civilians then anyone but Grevious in the entire SW universe.



Just thought I would put that little comparison out there. One of the most dangerous terrorists in the galaxy, who tried to be one of the most prolific murderers in it, is now the Chief of State.

Who :
Darth Sidious

Atrocities :
Multiple murders, including the Trade Federation Directorate, his Sith Master, and numerous underlings
Great Jedi Purge
Repeated use of superweapons against civilian targets in Operation Shadow Hand

Body Count :
>10^5

Notes :His secretive methods and use of cats paws keeps his direct body count very low, even if he is ultimately responsible for far more. Prior to Operation Shadow Hand it didn't appear to be more then the Jedi Purge and a few murders on his conscience.

I'm sorry, but what the hell is your definition of direct then? Palaptine's engineering of the Clone wars puts him well above Grevious.
Even if every act of the empire can not be attributed to him, his creation of Grevious and the wars put him above everyone else on this list.

I feel like Tarkin should get brownie points for the only G-canon planetary extermination.

Actually, on that list she doesn't look that bad. Compared to the body count everyone else sports she seems kinda tame by comparison. (Heck, didn't the Sullivan Expedition rack up more civilian kills during the Revolutionary War then that? That'd make our first Chief of State a terrorist too! :p)

Some numbers appear harder to estimate than others. For example, using the Vong who basically killed all of Coruscant (lest I am mistaken), should that count as billions or trillions dead in and of itself, with the varying population estimates?

You should include in the Ysanne Isard entry the Lusankya incident on Coruscant where the Super Star Destroyer burst from beneath the surface of the planet. That had to kill a lot of people and leave more without homes.

edit: "I spel poorlee."

Darth Hoth wrote:Some numbers appear harder to estimate than others. For example, using the Vong who basically killed all of Coruscant (lest I am mistaken), should that count as billions or trillions dead in and of itself, with the varying population estimates?

Reasonable figures on the number of civilian casualties yielded by the Fall of Coruscant are hard to come by; if I recall correctly, the only references to actual numbers come from Traitor, which indicates that only a few billion died in the siege, if that. This figure seems to be oddly low, even considering the most conservative estimations of Coruscant's population; however, it is possible that by the time of the conquest of the planet, a large fraction of the populace could have emigrated off-world. After all, the Yuuzhan Vong invasion had been going on for several years by that point, and everyone must have known that Coruscant was a prime target.

In any event, I would agree that the civilian losses from the battle should be placed on the record of Warmaster Lah; even considering that atrocity, however, I doubt that he compares to Grievous. Keep in mind, the General conducted his own attack on the Galactic Center, and I suspect that that battle yielded millions of causalities by itself.

I'd say that Dooku or Palpatine would have the true responsibility for Greivous' deeds; Gen. Grievous originally said 'No, I don't want to work for your murderous group of scumbags. Kill me now' until they put things into his brain to make him do (more) bad things. I'd say that counts as the Sith being responsible for his actions from that point on. While he might have given the orders, he was no more able to show restraint and morality than a battle droid - he didn't even do such things under druess; he demanded to be allowed to die with his men than continue serving the IGBC. Torture and brain surgery followed.

Not that he should be left off the list. But Palpatine, Dooku or the IGBC have at least as much responsibility for the deaths he caused as he did, and to my mind, far more. Palpatine (or Dooku) is responsible for his own crimes, as well as Greivous'.

Wow, thanks for letting those of us who might not have read a series finale that isn't out yet know the ending. Really appreciate it.

To the topic at hand, many of the leaders in Knights of the Old Republic should be counted as well. Whoever Mandalore was lead an army that ravaged and depopulated large swaths of the Outer Rim and inflicted heavy damage on numerous Republic worlds. Malak ordered the orbital bombardment of Taris, Telos, and who knows how many other places (according to GO-TO he showed total disregard for anything but brute force warfare). Revan had untold millions slaughtered at Malachor V, and Darth Nihilus personally exterminated all life on Katarr.

What about Kyp Durron, too? He destroyed the entire Carida system.

Hell, now that I think of it, Luke Skywalker probably killed more people during the Battle of Yavin or during his stint as Palpatine's Supreme Commander than Daala ever managed.

TC Pilot wrote: To the topic at hand, many of the leaders in Knights of the Old Republic should be counted as well. Whoever Mandalore was lead an army that ravaged and depopulated large swaths of the Outer Rim and inflicted heavy damage on numerous Republic worlds. Malak ordered the orbital bombardment of Taris, Telos, and who knows how many other places (according to GO-TO he showed total disregard for anything but brute force warfare). Revan had untold millions slaughtered at Malachor V, and Darth Nihilus personally exterminated all life on Katarr.

Unfortunately, there are very few concrete numbers pertaining to the wars of the KotOR period stated in canon; Mandalore and Malak may well deserve places on the list, but the full extent of their actions have only been alluded to. The depopulation of single worlds or even star systems doesn't compare to the atrocities committed by Pitta, Lah, Grevious, and the like (although I would argue that Malak is more deserving of a place on the list than, say, Jerec or Daala). The same goes for Kyp Durron.

As for Luke Skywalker, Ender makes the (I think appropriate) distinction of not including deaths yielded from legitimate military targets, which the Death Star indisputably was.

Noble Ire wrote:Unfortunately, there are very few concrete numbers pertaining to the wars of the KotOR period stated in canon; Mandalore and Malak may well deserve places on the list, but the full extent of their actions have only been alluded to.

Irrelevant. We can at least reach low limits in the billions of people, which is about as much as can be hoped for in terms of statistics as nearly any of the people already listed.

The depopulation of single worlds or even star systems doesn't compare to the atrocities committed by Pitta, Lah, Grevious, and the like (although I would argue that Malak is more deserving of a place on the list than, say, Jerec or Daala). The same goes for Kyp Durron.

So we can strike Tarkin, Delvardus, Thrawn and Isard off the list, then?

As for Luke Skywalker, Ender makes the (I think appropriate) distinction of not including deaths yielded from legitimate military targets, which the Death Star indisputably was.

How many Mon Calamari do you suppose died due to the World Devastators?

DEATH wrote:I'm sorry, but what the hell is your definition of direct then? Palaptine's engineering of the Clone wars puts him well above Grevious.
Even if every act of the empire can not be attributed to him, his creation of Grevious and the wars put him above everyone else on this list.

I'm making the distinction between command responsibility and direct responsibility. Ultimately, Sidious is responsible under command responsibility. But directly, it was Grevious who decided to launch those attacks and direct wholesale genocide. Sidious is shown to have little direct control over most of his underlings, and instead puts them in situations where they decide to do the wrong thing that advances his goals, rather then him micromanaging them in their evil.

Straha wrote:Actually, on that list she doesn't look that bad. Compared to the body count everyone else sports she seems kinda tame by comparison. (Heck, didn't the Sullivan Expedition rack up more civilian kills during the Revolutionary War then that? That'd make our first Chief of State a terrorist too! :p)

I think you are missing the rather important distinction between a retaliatory strike for your nation's actions during a war and genocide for shits and giggles.

Darth Hoth wrote:Some numbers appear harder to estimate than others. For example, using the Vong who basically killed all of Coruscant (lest I am mistaken), should that count as billions or trillions dead in and of itself, with the varying population estimates?

1) the stated dead from the war was 365 trillion. Take that as you will
2) I tried to cover that in the notes - yes, disrupting things like that probably caused far more deaths through starvation, disease, etc, but we have no way of estimating them.

Darth Fanboy wrote:You should include in the Ysanne ISard entry the Lusankya inciedent on Coruscant where the Super Star Destroyer burst from beneath the surface of the planet. That had to kill a lot of people and leave more without homes.

Yes some died, but given that we don't know the population where it was buried we can't estimate it. Remember that there are sections of Coruscant relatively uninhabited, like The Works. Frankly, Isard should have deaths in the trillions on her hands, but the numbers we have say that isn't the case.

NecronLord wrote:I'd say that Dooku or Palpatine would have the true responsibility for Greivous' deeds; Gen. Grievous originally said 'No, I don't want to work for your murderous group of scumbags. Kill me now' until they put things into his brain to make him do (more) bad things. I'd say that counts as the Sith being responsible for his actions from that point on. While he might have given the orders, he was no more able to show restraint and morality than a battle droid - he didn't even do such things under druess; he demanded to be allowed to die with his men than continue serving the IGBC. Torture and brain surgery followed.

What is the source for this? Labyrinth of Evil shows his decision of "die from your wounds or work for us" to be of his own free will, rather then him having a death wish that they thwarted.

Not that he should be left off the list. But Palpatine, Dooku or the IGBC have at least as much responsibility for the deaths he caused as he did, and to my mind, far more. Palpatine (or Dooku) is responsible for his own crimes, as well as Greivous'.

I again point to command responsibility vs direct responsibility. Bush is ultimately responsible for Abu Grhaib as he is the CinC and his orders created the situation where the abuse was able to take place, but George Tenet and CPT Wood issuing the directives to his agents and MilInt has direct responsibility. (yeah this is a poor metaphor, but I've never been good at defining military roles)

TC Pilot wrote:Wow, thanks for letting those of us who might not have read a series finale that isn't out yet know the ending. Really appreciate it.

Apologies, and I will edit it.

To the topic at hand, many of the leaders in Knights of the Old Republic should be counted as well. Whoever Mandalore was lead an army that ravaged and depopulated large swaths of the Outer Rim and inflicted heavy damage on numerous Republic worlds. Malak ordered the orbital bombardment of Taris, Telos, and who knows how many other places (according to GO-TO he showed total disregard for anything but brute force warfare). Revan had untold millions slaughtered at Malachor V, and Darth Nihilus personally exterminated all life on Katarr.

I wanted to keep this limited to those of a comparable time frame to Daala so that it served as a better reference.

What about Kyp Durron, too? He destroyed the entire Carida system.

I was looking at more statesmen and military commanders, as that was the roll Daala fills. If I want to go into pirates, rogues, and others then the list expands quite a bit.

Hell, now that I think of it, Luke Skywalker probably killed more people during the Battle of Yavin or during his stint as Palpatine's Supreme Commander than Daala ever managed.

Skywalker attacked only legitimate military targets and actively sabotaged efforts to go after civilian targets while serving as Supreme Commander. This is quite a different scenario.

TC Pilot wrote:So we can strike Tarkin, Delvardus, Thrawn and Isard off the list, then?

Yes, how dare I stick to things not in shitty video games.

How many Mon Calamari do you suppose died due to the World Devastators?

You mean the machines that Luke was actively sabotaging? That Sidious directed against the planet, and Luke halted? I suppose a few might have been under them when they were deactivated and crashed into the planet, but as they were evacuating, I find it unlikely.

Ender, I have to agree that Grievous should be directly attributed to Palpatine, and his numbers as well. Basically Palpatine made an AI that does his bidding.
Yes, Grievous had the smarts and tactical know how to direct individual campaigns or attacks, but the initiative and orders to do so came from Palpatine. It's not like he had a choice in the matter. He was rewired to obey.

Any death and suffering that took place during the Blockade and subsequent Battle of Naboo during Episode One should be attributed to Sidious for sure. Palpatine is also the likely candidate as to who ordered the destruction of Camaas.

Tarkin is likely deserving of credit for the deaths suffered when he ordered the Death Star to blow up Despayre.

With Ysanne Isard and the Krytos virus, the virus was designed specifically not to be too lethal. This was to influence the demand and consumption of Bacta and give more power to the cartel she eventually controlled.

Ender wrote:I wanted to keep this limited to those of a comparable time frame to Daala so that it served as a better reference.

Ah, alright. Perfectly understandable.

In that case, Nil Spaar of the Yevethan Dushkan League might be a contender.

I was looking at more statesmen and military commanders, as that was the roll Daala fills. If I want to go into pirates, rogues, and others then the list expands quite a bit.

True, though he did eventually become a Jedi Knight within the New Republic and the Galactic Federation, too. But I suppose that's stretching it all a bit.

Yes, how dare I stick to things not in shitty video games.

I'm sorry, is your name Noble Ire? Do you even know what we were talking about?

Ender wrote:Yes some died, but given that we don't know the population where it was buried we can't estimate it. Remember that there are sections of Coruscant relatively uninhabited, like The Works. Frankly, Isard should have deaths in the trillions on her hands, but the numbers we have say that isn't the case.

True, but it shouldn't be hard to get an estimate if one knows the population density and figures out just how much area was actually destroyed.

According to the Wookiepedia article, almost 260 square kilometers were destroyed and billions were killed. It doesn't give a source, but even if those numbers aren't accurate, it should not be too hard to come up with a population density for Coruscant and then figure out just how much space the SSD would have had to clear out in its path.

Even without a specific number, I think it is safe to say that the incident adds millions, at least, to her total. If you are going to include the Ghorman massacre, which killed a few hundred people at best, you have to include Lusankya's departure.

If I remember correctly, Krytos Trap has the Lusankya buried beneath a residential area, not some abandoned industrial zone like the Works, so civilian casualties would be huge.

Ender wrote:What is the source for this? Labyrinth of Evil shows his decision of "die from your wounds or work for us" to be of his own free will, rather then him having a death wish that they thwarted.

The book Visionaries depicts San Hill effectively coercing Grievous into becoming the head strongman for the Banking Clan by threatening to withhold desperately needed aid from the Kaleesh. He initially agreed to undergo the cyborg process to save his world, after which they removed chunks of his brain and added assorted mind-controlling and aggression-enhancing components (per the ROTS Visual Dictionary).

The Krytos Trap wrote: As exciting and dramatic as the dogfight raging above the mountain district was, Wedge remained cold and in shock. Out there a white needle stabbed skyward. The Lusankya--a Super Star Destroyer eight kilometers in length (Sigh. - Ed.) --laid waste to the area beneath which it had lain buried for years. Green turbolaser bolts pounded the cityscape, freeing the ship from the ferrocrete and transparisteel prison in which it had laired.

Wedge knew Super Star Destroyers had only come into service after the Battle of Yavin, which meant the Lusankya had to have been created and hidden on Coruscant before the battle of Endor. Unless the constructor droids just built it there, then built over it. The idea that a hundred-square-kilometer area of the planet could have been razed and re- built to hide a Super Star Destroyer seemed beyond belief especially with no one noticing the ship's insertion into the hole. Could the Emperor's power through the dark side of the Force have been sufficient to compel thousands or millions of people to forget having seen the Lusankya being buried?

As hideous as that idea seemed, Wedge hoped it was the truth. The likely alternative--that the Emperor had ordered the deaths of all the witnesses--seemed that much more horrible.

"Lead, you have a squint coming up from below."

"Thanks, Five." Wedge rolled to port, then dove into a looping roll that took him out and around the Interceptor's attack vector. He let his dive carry him down into the upper reaches of the city. Using control telemetry from a skyhook to keep track of the squint, he cut around one of the star-raking spires and came up at it on a nearly vertical run. It started to roll to elude him, but a little left rudder kept his lasers tracking. Half the quad burst missed, shooting past the cockpit windscreen, but the other two bolts hid dead on. They cored through the Interceptor's starboard solar panel and pierced the cockpit. The squint continued its lazy roll then tightened it into a spin that sped the ship in an ugly, squared-off tower.

Out to the south the Lusankya's aft came free of the planet. The superstructure of the Super Star Destroyer and its general outline fit with what he remembered of Vader's Executor at Hoth and Endor, but the Lusankya hull appeared to be resting on a massive platform made up of hexagonal cells.

It fit the bottom of the starship perfectly, with openings in the hexagonal field so weapons could fire down at targets below and TIE fighters could launch from the ship's belly. Wedge frowned. What is that? It reminds me of a Hutt's repulsorlift couch, but the Lusankya is a warship, not a lounging crime boss. Suddenly he realized his analogy wasn't that far off. The Lusankya is built for space travel, not fighting its way free of a planet. That must be a lift-cradle designed to get it up and out of the hole in which it was entombed.

With the prow stabbing up into the sky, the Lusankya's thrusters ignited. Searing blue plasma vaporized huge chunks of cityscape beneath the ship's aft end. The destroyer began to move forward and upward out of the column of smoke that marked its birth. A ship that boasts a crew of over a quarter of a million individuals must have killed ten times that many lifting off.

The massive ship turned its attention on a skyhook floating off its starboard bow. Altering course slightly, the ship gave more of its turbolasers and ion cannons a chance to bear. A Super Star Destroyer possessed enough weaponry to reduce a city to rubble from an orbital assault. At point-blank range, the weaponless skyhook offered the gunners a deliciously easy target.

The turbolaser batteries in the bow started firing at the skyhook as they came into range, then the broadside assault shifted to other weapons as the ship slid past. The verdant laser-bolts came so fast and so close that whole sheets of energy seenled to pulse from the Lusankya to the skyhook.

In seconds what had once been an elegant disk with an lthorian jungle paradise at its heart became a melted demi-lune with a forest fire crashing into the mountain district's towers.

The casualty figure on the area it lifted off from is bare minimum 2.5 million, but that's speculation by Wedge. Plus the skyhook, plus where the skyhook crashed.

Shouldn't Daala's bodycount be much higher? I thought that Cronus's rampages were far more bloody (and he did do them on her direct orders)

And you forgot Kyp Durron and Carida. (Alderaan had some military utility, since it was funding the Rebellion. And we wouldn't consider it odd if say Bush blew up the Taliban's Treasury for carrying Al Qaeda's money.

TC Pilot wrote: Irrelevant. We can at least reach low limits in the billions of people, which is about as much as can be hoped for in terms of statistics as nearly any of the people already listed.

True enough. However, the actual extent of their atrocities are still impossible to estimate save by the lower limit you gave; for all we know, Telos and Taris were the only worlds Malak ever had depopulated (the same goes for Mandalore, although I imagine that the KotOR comic series sheds a bit more light on his campaign; I am fairly unfamiliar with it). Were we to continue with the current list, they'd have to be placed somewhere between Lah and Tarkin.

So we can strike Tarkin, Delvardus, Thrawn and Isard off the list, then?

I apologize; for some reason, I was only thinking of them in regards to the bloodier members of the list. Certainly, I would approve their placement on its lower levels.

How many Mon Calamari do you suppose died due to the World Devastators?

I'm afraid I don't understand your objection. As I understand it, Luke Skywalker almost single-handedly saved Mon Calamari from Palpatine's World Devastators.

You should add the colony worlds of the Huk/Yam'ri that Grievous waged a bloody war of genocide upon when he was still a normal Kaleesh. (It speaks of "mass destruction" of entire planets).

This isn't covered under legitimate military - he actually pursued the Huk even after he'd liberated his homeworld. Grievous turned into from a war of "liberation" into a war of aggression.

Grievous was a nasty, thuggish piece of work even before the CIS got hold of him. The only reason he refused to work for them was because he hadn't totally wiped out the Huk, and thought the work that San Hill wanted him to do would distract him from that task.

Pelranius wrote:Shouldn't Daala's bodycount be much higher? I thought that Cronus's rampages were far more bloody (and he did do them on her direct orders)

And you forgot Kyp Durron and Carida. (Alderaan had some military utility, since it was funding the Rebellion. And we wouldn't consider it odd if say Bush blew up the Taliban's Treasury for carrying Al Qaeda's money.

The planet Khomm was bombarded; that definitely was not a legitimate military target by any stretch. From what I remember of Darksaber, the attack crippled the planetary infrastructure, even if no hard casualty estimates were given.

FA Xerrik wrote: The book Visionaries depicts San Hill effectively coercing Grievous into becoming the head strongman for the Banking Clan by threatening to withhold desperately needed aid from the Kaleesh. He initially agreed to undergo the cyborg process to save his world, after which they removed chunks of his brain and added assorted mind-controlling and aggression-enhancing components (per the ROTS Visual Dictionary).

I doubt that Visionaries trumps LoE in the Canon. After all this is the same book where Darth Maul survived and actually travelled across the galaxy (including Geonosis and Mustafar in the midst of those conflicts) and then dueled Obi Wan on the Lars homestead.

EDIT:

I cannot find anything detailing which stories in Visionaries are and are not canon, but I would side with the LoE version either way unless it's stated somewhere else.