Minor Faction

Throne World: Coruscant

Major Rivals: The Alliance to Restore the Republic

A New Order

It is perhaps the most infamous misnomer floating about galactic circles—particularly those disdainful of the autocratic excesses of the Galactic Empire—is that the imperial edifice simply grew out of the will of a single individual to unite the fractured Old Republic into a stronger vessel, that it might more likely survive its uncertain future. That the rise of Senator Palpatine and his opportunistic mastery of a galactic crisis simply saw the old ways slip into his grip. And, once his hand tightened, there was nothing anyone could do about it.

In truth, however, it was a multitude of factors—not least the Clone Wars themselves—and a vast array of vested interests, most of them military and corporate, which saw the rise of this singularly overwhelming entity. The Old Republic had been on its knees for centuries before the chaos of the Clone Wars finally put it to the sword, and out of the ashes of its fiery end rose the phoenix of the New Order Corporation and its cultural appellation: the Galactic Empire.

The New Order Corporation (NOC) consists of the bureaucratic appendages of the Galactic Empire in its entirety; the byzantine apparatus which undertakes all the vestigial legal, political and administrative functions that the various organs of the dying Republic once struggled to maintain. Only now, the weight of authority and responsibility have largely shifted from the bureaucracy to the military arms of government, where true power lies.

Almost universally referred to as NOC, the corporation represents the financial interests of the Galactic Empire, and invests in various enterprises in order to take hold of stock or agendas that the massive military machine cannot. Many view NOC as representative of the economic health of the Empire as a whole, and shifts in its stock price have been known to generate unrest on planets with heavy investment in the galactic exchange.

Further, NOC has created or absorbed several enormous subsidiaries—such as the BlasTech corporation—over which it maintains ostensible ownership even though its directors and executive structures remain nominally independent. In fact, almost all of the major shareholding corporations of the Galactic Trade Exchange are legal subsidiaries of the New Order Corporation, even if in practice they retain autonomy.

Recently, NOC has funded a project codenamed NMDS-1, run by the Notus Mining Collegiate, for the purposes of researching means of more efficiently mining particularly mineral-dense or rugged planets in the Outer Rim.