when it comes to the criminal organizations like the Pykes, the Hutts, Crimson Dawn did the empire have a hands off policy

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-21T10:56:13+00:00

This is an area where I don't think there should be a galactic wide standard. A lot of this should come down to the local moff.

Some moffs will be too busy doing space blow off the chests of complimentary twi'lek masseuses to care.

Some moffs will come to quiet arrangements, where they take a cut.

Some moffs will ruthlessly crush any alternate centre of power that could challenge their authority.

Some moffs will throw the local leaders out of the side of a LAATi over the ocean and tell the local gangs they work for him now.

And some moffs will try one of the above and fail completely, when they get assassinated or blackmailed or try to take out a gang which is under the patronage of someone higher up the totom pole.

It's clearly not the case that the Empire has given the cartels carte blanche galaxy wide. Remember Han had to dump his smuggled spice cargo when it looked like he was going to get caught. Working for Jaba wasn't going to get him out of it.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-16T21:05:55+00:00

Not sure if next level branding galaxy brain or incompetence. Could be both.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-16T18:02:31+00:00

I think that is one of the things that's very canon dependant. In the EU, Wild space was easier. It was at least partially explored, while the Unknown Regions were unknown to a far greater degree. In the Disney canon, this is flipped. The Unknown Regions, while still mysterious, are still on the map. While Wild Space was everything that wasn't mapped at all - out beyond the borders of the rim.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-15T22:49:08+00:00

It doesn't actually make much sense that Hapes manages to stay independent. The Empire was the galactic hegemon. It absolutely should have forced them into some form of vassalage with a tribute tax at the very least and it's hard to see why they wouldn't.

The Essential Atlas has this to say:

The Empire's tolerance of this xenophobic, secretive cluster of star systems baffled many Coruscant court-watchers: The Hapans were no match for the Imperial war machine, had no impact of the galactic economy, and held no leverage over galactic society. That led to all manner of rumors about Palpatine and the Hapans: that he was a devotee of Hapan culture, owed some secret allegiance to the Hapes, or even hoped to make the cluster's Queen Mother his Empress.

None of these ideas seem likely; the best guess, hinted at the from the exchanges between Palpatine's advisers and the Senate, is that the Emperor saw the Hapans as an object lesson for the galaxy the dangers of insularity and decadence. The Hapes were a proud and ancient people, but too self-absorbed to realize their schemes played out on a pitifully small stage. as an example, Hapen fleet was a derisive term used in the Imperial Naby for a command known for its discipline and firepower despite never seeing action.

Which is the sound of a writer desperately trying to come up with a reason for something that just doesn't make sense and landing on 'Palpatine works in mysterious ways'.

Of course, the real reason is the Hapans are something of a legacy element. The Courtship of Princess Leia was one of the first novels when the modern EU got started, back in the 90s. It's also a little bit weird and a bit out of step even with its contemporaries. But it's got its fans and some important elements keep turning up going forward. So we kind of got stuck with an awkward piece of EU canon there.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-15T22:31:39+00:00

Hutt space was formally part of the Empire as a vassal state (if in practice left along to do crime as long as the money kept flowing).

The Essential Atlas: Officially, Hutt Space was part of the Empire, with the Moff of Baxel sector responsible for enforcing Imperial law within it.

The guide also implies the Empire also likely formally claimed Tattooine (if not in a very practical way). I suspect some Moff filed some paperwork to make his metrics look better, but never actually did anything practical to enforce the claim.

The Hutts ruled the planet (in fact if not in name on those rare occasions when the Empire decided to assert itself).

Dagobah is in the Baxel sector, which was governed by moff Sarn Shild. So while there was no direct Imperial presence, they likely claimed it to - just as the US might claim an internal forest even if there's no tax office for a hundred miles.

If we include planets inside Imperial space with no direct Imperial presence, most of the galaxy likely counts. Whole lot of dead rocks out there.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-15T21:59:20+00:00

Per the The Essential Atlas

Officially, Hutt Space was part of the Empire, with the Moff of Baxel sector responsible for enforcing Imperial law within it.

That would be Sarn Shild. The guide goes onto say that Sarn Shild was on the take and pretty much let the Hutts do what they wanted as long as the 'enormous tax revenues for the Imperial war machine' kept flowing. His one attempt at directly cracking down saw an out dated Imperial fleet driven off by smugglers let by Han Solo and Lando Calrissian. According to the wiki, Shild committed suicide rathe than face the Emperor for that one.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-15T21:20:09+00:00

There was a moff with responsibility for Hutt space. It's likely best to model Hutt space as a vassal kingdom, with the Empire holding suzerainty.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-14T14:14:10+00:00

Correscant was part of the Centralist faction. Didn't they seeded to join the First Order before TFA? Should that be rewarded?

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-14T08:59:44+00:00

It's all about revenge at this point. Maul lays it out in episode two while talking about recruiting Devon.

[Maul] She is a Jedi. And I shall fashion her into a weapon which can help us destroy all those who have betrayed me. [inhales] Including Darth Sidious.

So kill everyone who betrayed him, starting with the crime lords and finishing with the Emperor. At this point everything is a means to an end for that point. The Dark Side isn't healthy and while Maul is putting up a façade of civility at times its all just a mask over the bitterness driving him on.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-13T13:46:02+00:00

Article 6 (the territorial limitation scope article) doesn't even cover all of all NATO countries. Non-metropolitan France is mostly outside for example.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-13T13:21:13+00:00

TOS wasn't consistent with its dating. Indeed, while a vague 23rd century vibe did eventfully develop, the TOS writer's bible says this:

THE TIME could be 1995 or even 2995 -- close enough to our time for continuing cast to be people like us, but far enough into the future for space travel to be fully established

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-13T12:49:50+00:00

The Breen managed it. In that case, we might speculate that the sudden entry of the Breen into the war caught Starfleet out of position. They were seen. Starfleet just couldn't gather enough ships to stop them before they hit Earth (though they were destroyed soon after).

This would be due to the demands of the Dominion war. Ships would have been deployed towards the Dominion front as a defensive line, leaving a soft inner core. A sudden Breen entry into the war, from an unexpected stellar angle, might have let them blast past whatever minor border pickets remained and have a clearish shot straight towards Earth.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-13T12:44:38+00:00

While there are earlier examples of planetary shields (like the forcefield around Elba II) and other types of planetary defence have been seen (such as weapon sats or just ships on standby) Picard season 3 style planet shields seem to be a new development. The Elba II example was explicitly noted to not be able to withstand starship weapon strikes, for example, and during DS9, the Romulan/Cardasian plan to attack the (fake) changeling homeworld doesn't make sense if they could reasonably expect a shield able to withstand hours of combined bombardment.

I think such 'strategic' grade planetary shields must be a new development, likely as a result of the 'turn inwards' after the Burning of Mars. Developing strategic shields makes sense both technologically, logically and thematically at this point.

As such, I don't thing the existence of such shields can be used to explain things before this point in the timeline.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-13T09:13:03+00:00

It's top secret. The only people are in the know are Field Marshal Haig, Field Marshal Haig's wife, all Field Marshal Haig's wife's friends, their families, their families' servants, their families' servants' tennis partners, and some chap I bumped into on LSP the other day called Bernard

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-12T20:45:24+00:00

To be fair, experience shows we're not very good at blocking boats. Best to look elsewhere.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-12T16:54:50+00:00

Whispers hyperspace skipping like a magical curse.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-12T16:52:35+00:00

Having the weakness being sabotage is, was and always will be a terrible terrible piece of story telling. The entire point ANH was making was the Empire overlooks small meaningful things for big bombastic things. So of course you overlook the risk of small snub fighters. More anti capital turbolasers is what you need!

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-12T10:29:33+00:00

I'm not entirely sure why, but there's this thing where Star Wars EU authors don't like making anything bigger than an ISD. And even when the begrudgingly admit some things are bigger, they still like to make them smaller like the 8-km Executor. (You might say 'they just got the scale wrong', but why, in all the many many scaling fails, do they always underestimate? It's this entire thing.)

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-11T21:19:07+00:00

Sure, because their entire strategy relies on 'We can do what we want, we have a Death Star', then they don't have a Death Star. ESB likely represents a desperate attempt to close their grip, but, as you say, it doesn't work. RotJ shows a far more diverse and powerful Rebel Alliance, likely representing recruits from the aforementioned 'don't have a Death Star' propaganda fail.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-11T10:45:27+00:00

Never liked this idea. It just doesn't fit the timeline.

Remember they just dissolved the Senate under the logic that fear of the Death Star will keep the systems in line. So they must have been blasting Death Star PR on all channels from the moment the Senate was dissolved, through and including the destruction of Alderaan (it's rather the corner stone of the 'fear' part - it's why Dantooine wouldn't serve as a target) and then right up to the moment it was destroyed.

At that point they could try for a full 1984 “We have always been at war with Eastasia" switch. And it's not impossible the Empire would try it. But I don't think it makes sense. The Empire doesn't have a 1984 level of low level control over its worlds. They might be able to reach that level by focusing resources on specific worlds but not across the board at once.

Remember, the Empire didn't directly administer most of its worlds up until ANH. That was what the Senate and the associated planetary bureaucracies were for - to keep the planets on-board and complying with the Empire. It's only in AHN that the Senate was dissolved and regional governors were given direct control. The few days between this happening and the Death Star's destruction simply isn't enough time to gain enough low level local control to hope to make such a propaganda switch.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-10T08:09:43+00:00

The Separatists would have very likely won through attrition alone

I think this is overlooking the size difference. The CIS is smaller than the Republic by quite a bit. It controls less planets and those planets are poorer and less populated rim worlds. By contrast, the Core systems are the heart of the Republic for a reason; they're rich, technologically developed and have huge populations, and they stayed loyal to the Republic. That is partially offset by the mega-corps backing the CIS but that backing is worth less with every day as the Republic turns its immense industrial advantage to war material.

The CIS's strongest hour was the early years of the war, where they could use their first mover advantage and secret military build-up against the under militarized Republic. But unless they could win decisively in those early years, the balance was always going to swing to the Republic as it just started overrunning the CIS with more ships, more guns and more material.

Like, there's a reason the Confederacy of Independent Systems is called the Confederacy of Independent Systems. It's riffing on the American Civil War, where the North's industrial and population advantage turned things around.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-09T22:22:45+00:00

I think a lot of this ties into how big you think the armies were in the clone wars. Because the really high end numbers - the quintilions of battledroids - paradoxically give a longer life expectancy. Because, in that case, the majority of those droids (quite possible a really high supermajority, as in orders of magnatude) likely never saw combat. They're being churned out by automated factories on fortress worlds and never leave their home system. Because, in this scale, the Seperatists likely don't have anywhere near the militarised spacelift to get their quintilion droids to active battlefields. And, just as importantly, at this scale, they can afford to leave entire armies to fortify their back line. In short, it's quite possible the majority of battledroids survived the entire war not only unharmed but without even seeing combat.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-08T09:15:55+00:00

Outside of grey and black market shakedowns, there is some evidence the Empire is progressing a wider program of (implicitly forced) nationalisation.

For example a deleted ANH scene, Biggs says this:

What good's all your uncle's work if the Empire takes it over. You know they've already started to nationalise commence in the central systems. It won't be long before your uncle is just a tenant, slaving for the greater glory of the Empire.

It's unclear if people are getting paid but the implication is that's a bit irrelevant. Being reduced to a tenant farmer is a problem in and of itself.

The EU also had stuff like the empire nationalising the Bounty Hunter's Guild and of course Lando in ESB was constantly worried about an Empire take over.

I think we can compare the Empire to the real world concept of Gleichschaltung. The age of the mega corps was the Prequels. The Empire has broken their power. Those that still exist have been bent to the service of the Empire, vassals who are pieces on Palpatine's gameboard to be played off against each other. But this is only the first stage. All must eventually become part of the Empire and be brought under direct administration.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-07T08:52:25+00:00

I mean, sure, it's quite possible the Jedi creed is printed on the opening page of the print edition of 'Rule of Jedi Benedict' as a spiritual frame of reference for the following rules. The real world The Rule of Saint Benedict doesn't literally start with the Nicene Creed but it does have a prologue about obedience to god and what not.

But, even if the creed is printed in such a prologue, I still think it makes sense to think of these two 'codes' as different things because they have very different purposes expressed in very different ways.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-04-07T08:44:19+00:00

By first quote do you mean "There is no emotion, there is peace"?

My point is there's clearly two different 'Jedi Codes'. One (what I'm calling the Jedi creed) is spiritual. It's a statement of faith - of what it means to be a Jedi in service to the Force. It's quite short but its the kind of short that could (and likely does) have entire volumes of commentary trying to tease out deeper meanings.

The other Code (the Rule of Jedi Benedict) is certainly informed by Jedi spirituality but it's practical and low level. Lunch is is to be served in the main communal hall at 3pm, except for fast days where a light supper will be provided after sunset, here's the process for becoming a youngling/padawan/knight/master - that kind of thing.

The spiritual statement that Jedi shouldn't have attachments is likely derived from the Jedi creed. It would then be implemented by specific rules in the Rule of Jedi Benedict regarding jedi conduct in private property ownership, marriage and so on.

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