Major Faction

Throne World: varies

Many students of galactic history frequently make the mistake of pointing to the most obvious sources of power as being responsible for the crisis of the Clone Wars, namely the Jedi Order, even the burgeoning military, or particularly influential Senators such as Caius Palpatine. What most scholars seek to teach such students is to look beyond, or behind, the conflict itself to seek what other interested parties might be found.

When they do, they often come to recognise that corporate interests are invariably tied to the fate of those dark days. It was corporations who first came to the aid of the Jedi as they fought their brutal civil war, corporations who funded mercenary armies and recouped their costs many times over as planet after planet fell beneath their influence. Similarly, even the Galactic Senate was forced to rely on corporate manpower and resources to create fleets of sufficient size and power—and quickly enough—to challenge the burgeoning Jedi threat.

But perhaps the most obvious example is the notion of Palpatine’s rise to power as emperor. He did not claim power by a military dictatorship over which he had control, as a typical despot might. Instead, he engineered a corporate takeover of the bureaucracy itself, creating the New Order Corporation (NOC) to do his bidding. Palpatine’s genius was to be the head of this corporation and control its hierarchy. It takes an emperor to create an empire, and so the Old Republic did not die the day he became First Citizen of NOC. It was not until the “throne” was later created and he assumed the formal title of Emperor that the Galactic Empire as it is now known came into being.

Corporate powers have long been a part of galactic political and economic affairs, dominating industry, manipulating both manpower and propaganda to their own ends, and waging endless wars of sabotage and espionage against their most bitter rivals. Just as the arms of the Imperial military are endlessly at odds with one another, so are rival corporations constantly attempting to destabilise one another for their own eventual gain.