The Galactic Empire

The Galactic Empire did not die at Atrisia, it lost its center.

Within little more than a year, a fractured collection of Imperial remnants, dark-side powers, military commands, and ambitious warlords had been forged into something the galaxy had not expected to face again: a functioning behemoth of rallied darksiders and Imperial coalitions beneath a single throne. Its armies advanced across the stars as Imperial banners returned over conquered worlds. At last, the Galactic Alliance itself collapsed beneath the weight of the Imperial offensive. That victory terrified the galaxy more than any proclamation ever could, it proved the Empire could win. And so its enemies did what divided powers so rarely managed to do, they united.

The powers of the known galaxy rallied to ensure that nothing like the catastrophe at Tython could ever be unleashed again. At Atrisia during the Clash of Destiny, that reckoning came with the arrival of the DS-III Battlestation, better known as the "Death Star III". A planet-killing weapon designed to instill a new wave of terror not seen since the destruction of Csilla, it was destroyed beneath the combined assault of the galaxy at large. Following his confrontation with Romi Jade within the throne room, Darth Solipsis was thought to have been caught in the wreckage as the station met its end. Then came silence.

Without the Emperor, the bond between Solipsis and his Dark Side Elite weakened until little more than an echo remained. Grand Vizier Shannic Wulf held what remained of the Empire together for a time before the rising Sith Covenant seized upon the Empire's weakness, testing its boundaries before striking at the Core Worlds themselves. On Coruscant, a member of the Dark Side Elite, Meliant, betrayed the Grand Vizier and carried the war directly into the heart of the Imperial government. Turncoat stormtroopers murdered Wulf among her attendants before she could make her final stand beside the Emperor's throne, weakness was answered in kind and the Empire shattered. Its officers scattered, its soldiers disappeared into surviving commands, resistance cells, mercenary companies, foreign governments, and uneasy accommodation beneath the new order.

The Dark Side Elite endured. Despite losing some of their ranks, the propaganda of the Sith'ari's long-time enemies whom had suffered from the days of the Sith Schism and Second Great Hyperspace War were proven unsubstantiated. The dark followers of the Empire followed Ibaris Varanin into exile, searching out their Emperor. The Church of the Dark Side vanished into secrecy, continuing to spread their dark gospel into the underbelly of the Core Worlds. Across the former Empire, thousands learned how to survive beneath the banners of the victors, trading one oppressive regime for another. And yet.. the Empire had always been a force forged in the fires of adversity.

In 905ABY the first sign was not the return of the Emperor, but the return of his Empire. Dormant networks began communicating again, officers who had not spoken in years received messages through channels believed abandoned after Atrisia, ships disappeared from the Core World ports. At first, these incidents appeared disconnected, then the pattern became impossible to ignore. Among the Dark Side Elite, the bond that had faded after Atrisia stirred again, a familiar cold was felt across the galaxy at large. A miasmic presence gathers within the Force.. distant, suffocating, possessed of a cold inevitability familiar to those who once stood before him. Among the Church's hidden congregations, those who can touch the dark side recognize what approaches. Beyond his faithful, others feel it too.. that unmistakable presence. The Galactic Empire returns, united by a common banner but driven by competing ambitions, old loyalties, unfinished wars, and the belief that its defeat was never the end.

For years, the galaxy believed it had survived the Sith'ari and his Empire. Now, across the galaxy, intelligence reports begin carrying the same warning:

They are coming.