Unable to resist the seemingly mythical powers of the Jedi Knights, and the armies of loyal soldiers they commanded, in desperation the ambitious governor of the Galactic Senate, the ageing Senator Palpatine, convinced the President of the Republic to turn to the only force capable of resisting the Jedi: their long-exiled heretic brothers, the Sith.

Once merely the political arm of the Jedi, granted unique freedoms from their strict code, the Knights of the Sith grew into a shadowy organisation separate from the main body, acting often under their own direction and energies, engaged in operations for which the Jedi themselves had no stomach. The Sith were created to do all the work the Jedi could, or would, not.

Yet even the Jedi were not entirely immune from scandal, and when a string of failed Sith suppressions and assassinations became publicly known, the Sith Order, as they had since become, were stricken from the Core Worlds—the Republic itself—on pain of death. Banished to insignificance in the furthest reaches of space, with few exceptions they have been largely invisible for generations.

The Sith lurked upon the fringes of the Outer Rim, upon their shrine-worlds of Korriban and Ossus. Ever they plotted their return to the Core World of Had Abaddon, close to Coruscant, where they had once—many hundreds of years ago—been just as influential as the Jedi.

Yet the vanishment of the Sith had in turn caused one of the great scissions within the Jedi Order itself. While few on the Council legitimately mourned their exile, many of the Jedi whose task saw them overseeing planets with powerful Senators, wealthy corporations, or ties to underhanded criminal syndicates, recognised the true value of the Sith, and regretted the loss. For all their maligned darkness and stealth, the Sith could unleash their capabilities against hostile forces who did not adhere to the same code as the Jedi or, worse, whose own ethics specifically undermined the strengths of Jedi strategy, or targeted their obvious weaknesses. The Sith existed as an aberration to the Code precisely that they might counter the presence of particularly brutal or underhanded opponents, so that the rest of the Jedi Order would not be forced to compromise their ideals.

Just as the ranks of the Jedi had shrunk throughout the war, so the Sith expanded over their long exile. In times past never close to being as numerous as the Jedi, the Sith were now of a similar strength to their depleted kin, a legitimate force to be reckoned with, even after the recent experiments with clone technology. Formally recognised by the Republic once more, the Sith returned.

And burned upon their every thought was one solitary, raging mission: vengeance.

From the resurgent fortress-world of Had Abaddon, homeworld of their ancestors and recently bestowed upon them by grateful Republic leaders, the Sith fought back against the Jedi at the head of the Republic armies. Where once a solitary Jedi could turn the tide, now they stood not only against superior numbers but also mortal enemies of their own calibre.

Even as the galaxy slipped further into the chaos of war, politicians continued to bicker and jockey for position with little regard to the welfare of those they were sworn to represent. Senator Palpatine grasped an opportunity to usurp the Presidency and solidify his own personal power, having control of both the executive and the Senate itself. As architect of the expulsion of the Jedi, his was a populist platform which had become irresistible amidst the throes of the Clone Wars. To great applause, he sowed the seeds of a Republic’s end.

Losing little time, the President turned his attention to removing the last legal vestiges of the Jedi and their once-vast influence over galactic law and order. The Senate, in its haste to be done with the terrible Clone Wars, recreated the Jedi as criminals and heretics, terrorists against the great Republic. Magicians and witches, they became quickly despised, figureheads of ridicule, scapegoats for every social ill that swept the Republic. The Sith for their part, were conspicuously kept from public view.

Further increases to the strength of Republic navies, the swelling of armies, and increases to surveillance and security followed. Bloated with pride, the Republic saw the end to all its ills in the shape of the Jedi Order, hubristically welcomed the much-maligned Sith as saviours, and for the briefest time truly believed the the expulsion of the Jedi would bring peace once more. For a time, it seemed a brilliant tactical manoeuvre; the corpus of cost sacrificed upon the grand altar of expediency.

Within the space of a few years, the entire doctrinal foundation of the Republic, based as it was upon the rule of law and justice and the enforcement of that law by its elite champions, the Jedi, was irrevocably altered. Palpatine saw his chance, and adopted emergency powers to ensure his authority could not be questioned. “For Peace” was his slogan, but many of his former peers in the Sentate would jibe that his slogan should have been “For Palpatine”. He proposed the creation of a governmental corporation, which many saw for what it was: an amalgamation of vested interests and powerful allies of Palpatine himself. This new entity would hold a monopoly position on all facets of the bureaucracy and run it with the same efficiency as any other corporate organisation.

Exploiting a legal crisis in the Senate, and an uprising on Coruscant itself, Palpatine finally stripped away the last pretences to legitimacy and lay clear his true ambition. The New Order Corporation was established, and effectively took control of the operation of what had once been the Old Republic. As the First Chair of the corporation, Palpatine himself held what was effectively controlling interest over the entire Republic. While the word “imperator” was never used directly, the language of the Galactic Senate and its bureaucracy soon shifted to include repeated phrases such as ‘enacting imperial interests’ and ‘reform toward total security’, and always referred to the First Chair as the supreme authority to which any branch of government owed its fealty. While he never officially instituted the term, it was not long before Palpatine was almost universally referred to colloquially as emperor.

The Galactic Empire was born.

Yet, though he did not yet realise it, President Palpatine had made a grievous error of judgement in both the creation of the new mechanism for his personal dominance of the Senate, and also in the timing of its move to establish itself as the predominant power in galactic politics. While Palpatine was indeed first among peers, such a position did not inherently hold power; it was created to act as a figurehead, limiting its capacity for controlling the corporation directly. This was an important detail which a number of his competitors in the Senate, particularly among a cadre of former military officers, had been sure to include in the legislation which created the corporation in the first place.

There also arose a second facet of this new regime which was yet to fully manifest itself, over which Palpatine had no control whatsoever.

From the ashes of the Second Clone War arose a great shadow, and its name was Darth Vader. Among the mightiest of the Sith Lords, Vader held a special place in the history of both ancient Orders, for he had once been apprenticed to the Jedi—then exiled—and latterly become a Dark Lord of the Sith, embracing a self-imposed exile on the Outer Rim among his new cohort. Reviled by many on both sides as a traitor, an unreliable actor whose half-mechanical body was the perfect symbol of his inhumanity and inconstancy, Vader might have himself become a pariah but for the nature of his unique talents and the means by which he deployed them.

A military commander and combatant without peer, Vader oversaw the turning of the tide. Most Imperial scholars would later identify the Battle of Hoth as the final defeat which broke the will of the Jedi Order, yet in truth it was a succession of brilliant victories which allowed Vader, among other Sith Lords, to bring the Jedi to their knees.

In full retreat, the Jedi gathered at Tython—the source of their resurgence—for one final stand, where they desperately attempted to manufacture a literal means of retaliation. To no avail, an enormous Imperial Star Fleet arrived at the planet, and left it in ruins.

For the galaxy at large, that moment heralded the end of the Clone Wars. With the effective extinction of the Jedi, the New Order Corporation completed its hegemonic dominance of the galactic economy, and peace returned to the Core Worlds. While the HoloNet proclaimed complete victory for the Republic, which had seen off the greatest threat to order and security in a thousand generations, the truth was not quite so certain. Many Jedi still remained, and Vader took it upon himself, for some unknown reason, to hunt the very last of them down.

Celebrations began across the wealthy inner worlds of the new “Empire” which many citizens were eagerly calling their old Republic. Its ruler and President, Palpatine, became a hero: the man who, as bureaucratic propaganda would have it, single-handedly ended the war through a series of brilliant strategic manoeuvres which revealed his long-hidden military genius. The people of the Republic turned a blind eye to his abuses of privilege and law during the crisis, and embraced safety and order in exchange for their liberty.