Star Wars Setting

This article or section is about a topic that is particularly prone to Skub (that is, really loud and/or stupid arguments). Edit at your own risk, and read with a grain of salt, as skubby subjects have a bad habit of causing stupid, even in neutrals trying to summarize the situation.

This article or section involves Plot Armor so asinine, that its sheer bullshittery warps and breaks the very fabric of the setting's universe. Expect Rage, Butthurt and accusations of Mary Sue being flung around in an endless Skub debate. THEY MAKE IT HAPPEN. You have been warned.

Describing even the cursory information on the sheer number of characters, amount of history, and various factions in Star Wars is a massive undertaking, and one that cannot be folded into another page. As such, here is a summary of things who either are influential, Awesome, Fail, hilariously meme worthy, or all of the above.

Main Characters

• Luke Skywalker: All-round good guy and idealist, despite being a complete idiot, Luke wishes to learn the ways of the Force to defeat the Emperor and save the galaxy. A Jedi prodigy, he can lift heavy ton space fighters with just his force powers, though he struggles with doubts. Although he starts all brash and teenage and shit, by the conclusion of the trilogy, Luke is well on the way to becoming a wise and powerful Jedi ready to rebuild the Order.
  • In Legends continuity, after Return of the Jedi Luke works to restore the order and trained many generations of Jedi including his niece Jaina and nephews Jacen and Anakin as well as his future wife and son. About Luke's family? Long story short, Luke met a vengeful agent of Palpatine called Mara Jade, and she was trying to avenge the Emperor by killing Luke. But he and Mara were forced to work together to survive before Luke freed her from Palpatine's lies and Mara joined the Jedi Order where the two eventually fell in love, married and had a son - Ben Skywalker. Before and after this, Luke destroyed massive remnants of the Empire over and over again, and then fought off an even bigger threat in the form of an extragalactic invasion by Force-resistant space Cenobites called Yuuzhan Vong, where he bested many including killing their best fighter. Years late, Luke nearly turned to the Dark Side after his wife was murdered, but overcame the temptation though he violated the Jedi Code by attempting to murder her enemies in revenge. Following this he killed a resurrected Palpatine repeatedly and even took on his most dangerous single foe in the form of a Force-Cthulhu called Abeloth (who was so dangerous Luke had to make a temporary alliance between the Jedi and the Sith and even team up with a rogue Sith Lord to defeat her). After this he continued to be a great hero until he died in an unspecified manner some time before the Cade Skywalker era, but still existed as a Force Ghost who guided future Jedi.

• Han Solo: Dashing rogue and space cowboy who somehow shoots his way out of debt to the mob, ends up a general, and bags himself a princess. Not a bad series' work. His ship, the Millennium Falcon, deserves a mention too for being as iconic as he is. In pre-Disney continuity he was once a Swoop (flying motorcycle) racer turned Imperial Officer who shot his superior that was beating a Wookiee to death and gained a lifelong friend in said Wookiee - Chewbacca. He also had three kids with Leia pre-Disney with two sons called Anakin and Jacen and a daughter called Jaina.

• Princess Leia: The regulation piece of lady crumpet in the movies, Princess Leia was a leader in the rebel alliance and (spoiler!) Luke's long lost twin sister. Also both a capable soldier and politician. Her being forced to wear a metal thong by an overweight space slug named Jabba the Hutt has since cemented her role as sex idol to legions of adoring fan boys, while her general door-kicking deadshot sarcastic asskickery made her a feminist icon as well (this was back in the 80's when the two could be the same). With her home planet and entire adoptive family destroyed by the Death Star, she became a General although somehow retained her princesshood (yes, she's now a Disney Princess). In the pre-Disney EU Leia became a full-on Jedi warrior in the and had three kids with Han, one of whom had a daughter of his own.

• Obi-Wan Kenobi: If, at any point, in any work of fiction, the hero has an old master/father figure who teaches him part of what he knows, makes sure that he will grow up to be a virtuous and decent hero, but ultimately dies fighting a great evil to buy the hero time to escape, then returns as a spirit guide for the hero later, the Internet has probably accused that character of ripping off Obi-wan Kenobi. The prequels show him as a young Jedi and a deuterotagonist to Anakin Skywalker, acting as his master, teacher, partner, and dear friend before their eventual falling out ends with Anakin losing most of his major extremities and organs and Obi-wan hiding out in a cave waiting to turn into Alec Guinness. In hindsight he was a fucking moron to expect Anakin stay sane with his mother separated forever from him and doomed to slavery in a shithole planet. Certainly this won't torment the kid's thoughts about her, what's that? Tuskens tortured her to death? We are the Jedi, we do not take reve- oh well he went Sith. So much for Jedi and their wisdom. He is a great source of memes within the SW fandom, as well as jokingly referred to as Jesus due to his hairstyle in Episode II.

• Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker/"The Chosen One": The black-helmeted face of evil and the most well known villain from Star Wars (and arguably the most recognisable character in cinema, full stop). Has become an iconic and memorable figure due to his menacing, robotic appearance and ultra-deep, wheezy respirator voice. He is (spoiler!) secretly Anakin, Luke's fallen Jedi father, thus allowing him to be able to say the most memorable line in the film series, "I am your Father!" Abaddon wishes he could be this sinister. His children eventually manage to rekindle the spark of human decency in his heart, and he redeems himself by giving up his own life to save them and destroy the Emperor. Hates sand. Fun Fact: his portrayal required four actors in the original trilogy: body, voice, face and a stunt double. His scene at the end of Rogue One, where he goes absolutely berserk and tears some puny rebels to shreds, is probably the best in the movie, and one of the best in Star Wars as a whole. It ends with him standing in open space, something originally intended for the original film and the original reason he was designed with the armor in the first place. The scene was well received, so Disney decided to have him go berserk agin in the Star Wars: Rebels TV show (several times) and the video game Jedi: Fallen Order, before giving Maul a scene like it in Clone Wars. To this end, Vader’s recent portrayals (which have taught both neckbeards and the new generation of fans alike to be fucking terrified of him) have led many to claim that the changes to his character is the only thing Disney got right in their ownership of Star Wars (well, that and The Mandalorian. And the Clone Wars). Hreeeeee-kchooooooosh...

• Padmé Amidala: Darth Vader's waifu who spends most of the prequel trilogy being a hopeless pacifistic idealist (which makes her a hypocrite with all the fight scenes she's in.) Get's choked by Vader and dies giving birth to Luke and Leia, which ironically Vader was trying to prevent in the first place after seeing a vision. Way to go, dumbass. Haven't you read a work of fiction with that kinda prophecy in it before?

• Qui-Gon Jin: Liam Neeson as a Jedi. He was the only one smart enough to recognize a Sith plot, and would've uncovered and exposed Palpatine if it weren't for Darth Maul's sword going through his gut. Was the master of Obi-Wan, and tried to teach Anakin the basics from beyond the grave.

• Ahsoka Tano: An orange, female togruta jedi padawan that helps tell the story of growing up. When she was first introduced in the skubtastic Clone Wars movie, she was basically annoying beyond belief and attached to the notoriously reckless Anakin Skywalker. However, she began to grow on fans, eventually becoming a fan favourite. Initially, she dressed only a little better than a Dark Eldar wych, raising serious moral questions about a girl her age dressing that way, but this issue was resolved in season 3 of the clone wars. Her character grows from beyond the simplicity of an (un)amusing wisecracker, much like her master, into a wiser, kinder woman, whose actions speak louder than her words. In the final season of the Clone Wars, she leaves her master and the Jedi order, and some believe that she unintentionally caused Anakin Skywalker to fall to the Dark side (It certainly denied him the title of master since the standard way of gaining that is to raise a Padawan to knight). She reappears in Rebels, where she takes on the wise guide and teacher for Ezra and Kanan, two other jedi who are fighting the Empire. Thought to have died in the second season, she is revealed to have been saved, and was alive even up to Return Of The Jedi.

Disney Main Characters

• Rey: Protagonist of the new trilogy. Most people either think she's a sloppily written Mary Sue and wish-fulfillment character for the writers' female-empowerment fetish or that she's a fine protagonist and the former group is just being salty about new things. The sequel trilogy's Jedi and maybe the most immediately competent of the three (the others being Luke and Anakin). What invited critique in the first place is the fact she is readily bestowed new, often unexplained abilities as the means of moving the plot forward, and the few failures she has either turn to successes, or have next to no consequences. While it was foreshadowed she would have piloting skills with the pilot memorabilia in her home from which the audience was supposed to infer she knew how, Disney had to later specifically point out "she literally plays flight sims anytime she isn't working, that's the shit on her table". But since the memorabilia didn't look like a flight sim, some viewers concluded this was an asspull by Disney. To the credit of the writers however, the foreshadowing implies X-Wing obsession so it makes sense that she royally trashes the Falcon trying to escape TIE Fighters with it (like everyone else who played the old X-Wing video games). She also has fucking god tier Force talent, able to pull off Force techniques that took the previous protagonists years to learn such as the Jedi Mind Trick. The sequel semi-explained this with an actual asspull by suggesting the Force balances itself and with only one remaining trained Force user below a master left alive she pretty much got cheat-coded to be at his level as Light Side opposite...although that ignores Luke not gaining the same cheats and the Force users left alive in the Disney EU who have no Dark Side opposites while also relying on information from that same EU (the trippy metaphysical Force entity kind) so it only works if you turn off your brain and give up. Apart from all that, Rey is a scavenger who grew up parent-less in a wreck on a desert planet, earning from the scraps of old Rebel and Imperial machinery. While she's been seen using the Light Side of the Force for the most part, the Dark Side allegedly tugs a great deal in her. She also has a vision of herself as a Sith with a double-bladed red lightsaber similar to Luke's tree vision on Dagobah. Due to a spate of leaks, numerous details were revealed before the release of the film such as her being Sheev's grandaughter and the fate of her parents; Rey's parents hid her on Jakku because they were being hunted and were killed shortly after leaving. After Rey joins forces with Kylo to defeat Palpatine, she actually dies... only to be brought back to life by Pokémon tears true love's first kiss Kylo Ren using the Force to give his life to save hers, and the two share a kiss before Kylo dies. She ends up on Tatooine and with the last of the Skywalker line dead (by technicality, the Force powers always came from Palpatine so it just means Shmi's bloodline is dead) Rey, while gaining no new personality to speak of, takes the Skywalker last name as her own since she will never know her actual last name now. As one might expect from a character touted as a strong female protagonist, Rey is propped up by failures of men, sometimes turned failures after the fact for the purpose of redistributing their successes to her. Because of this Rey remains the only character alive with any Jedi training.

• Finn: A First Order Stormtrooper (serial code FN-2187) who has doubts about the First Order after a battle where he has to shoot innocent civilians and ends up defecting to the Resistance, allowing him to actually aim worth a damn. Finn ends up carrying The Force Awakens thanks to the acting talents of John Boyega. He probably would have made a much better main character than Rey because at least he has a fucking reason to go on a space adventure and undergoes actual character development. He’s basically Kyle Katarn, only he didn’t get to steal the Death Star plans or become a Jedi. The second movie unfortunately rendered Finn a character without an arc, as discussed below. Had a really cool scene where he fights a former squadmate with a lightsaber, before said squadmate beat him with a big electric stick. He also had a second cool scene where he attempts to fight on a trained dark Jedi (not a Sith) with that same lightsaber before getting badly injured, showing tremendous fucking balls (and implying that Kylo Ren is about on par with a pissed off Stormtrooper with a lightning sick). Revealed to be Force-sensitive in Rise Of Skywalker, and finds an entire division of Stormtroopers on Endor who quit the First Order as a group the same way he did as an individual; the leader of them replaces Rose as his love interest, despite the same movie implying heavily he has an unrequited love for Rey (later in an interview JJ said he was trying to say he was Force-sensitive, while some fans think his knowledge she is Palpatine's grandaughter was what he was supposed to say which meant a "why didn't you tell me" plot would follow). Ends the franchise as the general of the ground forces of the Resistance, a famous galactic hero, and probably going to be trained as a Jedi. So yeah, Finn is canon Kyle Katarn from start to finish.

• Poe Dameron: An X-Wing pilot and one of the best pilots in the Resistance who gave Finn his nickname. Poe is the son of an ace pilot and an elite Rebel soldier, who was seemingly conceived in an Ewok hut during the Yubyub song and grew up with a holy Force tree in his yard that was a gift from Luke. Gets captured by the First Order but gets rescued by a defecting Finn and they both escape using a TIE Fighter. Assumed dead by Finn after crashing the TIE Fighter, though ends up coming back shooting down an entire squadron of TIE Fighters. Its never really stated why did he leave Finn behind in the crash site, how did he leave the planet or why did he pretty much abandon his mission of trying to find BB-8. As such he's barely in The Force Awakens. This is because the original script George Lucas proposed for Force Awakens used Poe as a means of Finn escaping, whereupon Finn takes it on himself to complete Poe’s last mission and eventually replace Poe in the Resistance. After Poe’s actor lamented that he dies in every movie, Poe was made to survive the crash and Finn gained a fearful coward who becomes a hero subplot, which unfortunately left both characters with nowhere to go for character arcs. Poe is far more important in The Last Jedi, but not in good ways. He disobeys orders and leads an attack on a First Order capital ship which not only results in the destruction of most of the surviving Resistance small fighters, but delays their escape long enough for the First Order flagship (so large it is essentially a giant capital city for the First Order) to catch up with them and massacre the Resistance. Poe then mutinies when the now-comatose Leia’s subordinate Holdo is put in charge of the Resistance (Ackbar was killed before that because his Voice Actor died, leaving Holdo as highest ranking officer) to enact his own plan using Finn...which fails, resulting in the deaths of most of the rest of the Resistance and the loss of their last capital ship. Poe’s counterattack also fails, and by the end its only thanks to Rey and Luke that anyone survives. By the end, there’s barely enough Resistance left to fill up the Millennium Falcon, although the First Order got it just as bad thanks to Holdo’s last act. In short: Poe is Magnus the Red tier of fuckups (for the same reason too, not being trusted with the truth but with even less justification). OR ALTERNATELY : Poe actually scores a massive victory for the Resistance as he destroys a massive dreadnought that would have wiped out a base on the ground and then some with a squadron of a dozen bombers and one fighter to protect them at the price of said bombers that were so stupidly designed they would basically kamikaze as their payloads are dropped gradually meaning the first explosion would start a chain going all the way up to the bomber itself. So basically, Poe destroyed a massive enemy asset at the price of some worthless ships but he still gets demoted because he had the common sense to not follow the order to retreat as the bombers were already hovering over their target and were completely defenseless in the first place and would have been even worse off during a retreat. This order makes so little sense, it's safe to assume it was only put in here so Poe could disobey it and the audience would understand he's a hotshot who doesn't respect the hierarchy while he was in the right in terms of tactics and strategy and it's already a miracle he got the raid to succeed. Essentially, claiming Poe fucked up is like saying blowing up a pillbox full of enemy soldiers and loads of ammo stockpiled in it with a single grenade is "fucking up" because you maybe probably possibly could have saved the grenade for later and made even more damage. If Poe hadn't had the dreadnought destroyed, it would have with ease one-shotted their ships and their base if they would have even got there (especially as the First Order could track the resistance and therefore the Dreadnought would've simply followed them and blown them up immediately). Not to mention that the bombers where the worst designed starships to date. No big loss there. In other words, he is the only reason they survived. Revealed to be a former Spice smuggler who had a criminal crew in Rise Of Skywalker, which is the bulk of his character development for most of the movie since he otherwise just banters with Finn and Rey. He gets friendzoned by his ex twice (his abandonment of their crew really screwed them over and she decides to forgive him for it, so its not like its out of nowhere to not want to shag) and leads initially the small Resistance fleet before the combined forces of the militias and pirate crews and Rebel veterans suddenly show up, meaning he lead the biggest navy in the entire setting and does it well which mostly makes up for the stupidity of the Last Jedi "character arc".

• Luke Skywalker has become a grumpy old man who just wants the Jedi Order to die with him since he's been disillusioned in people not being shitty now that his shitty-feeling self is considered the least shitty person in the universe. He also tried to kill his nephew because he had a bad dream. (something many fans, and even Mark Hamill himself considered out of character for Luke). It takes a direct Force-powered intervention from Leia as well as Yoda's Force ghost telling him "don't worry, we both fucked up and the kids still love our toys legends" to get him to nut the fuck up and help stop the First Order by embarrassing Kylo Ren in front of everyone. It got to the point where he tried to burn a sacred tree with contained the last books about the Jedi code. Yoda appeared as a Force ghost and told Luke the Force weren't limited to buildings or writings, destroying the tree which supposedly contained the last books about the Jedi code and history which turns out to be because Rey had already stolen said books and the destruction of the tree prevented Luke from discovering that fact, ensuring the Jedi will continue regardless of Luke's faith crisis. Of course the old codger gets to become a Force Ghost that resides mostly on Ach-To, so lets see if we won't see our boi Mark again in some future movie or series.

• Han Solo has, unfortunately, suffer from how Harrison Ford always went back and forth on wanting to continue the franchise, mostly because he thoroughly hated Solo and wanted him to die pretty much from day one, only to be thwarted in Empire and again in Jedi by the character's popularity. Ford agreed to return for Episode 7 when Disney finally gave him his wish, having Solo fail to redeem his son Ben and getting a metaphorical and literal lightsaber through the heart for it. Post-Disney Han's origin is covered in a solo movie named Solo. It's generally considered skub.

• Leia manages to somehow survive getting shot into space using her force abilities in TLJ, probably the most ridiculous part of the film (which is no mean feat considering the rest of the film). Due to the death of her actress Carrie Fisher (given the amount of cocaine and partying she'd done over the years it was amazing Carrie lived as long as she did) Leia only appears in Episode 9 using altered unused footage from Episodes 7 and 8 along with some dubbed lines, where she's shown training Rey then just dies by fading away.

Side Characters

• C-3P0 and R2-D2: Two robots trapped in a sexless gay marriage who are the only minor characters to have been in all the movies so far, and even in stories like The Old Republic outside of their millennia of existence will usually have an equivalent. C-3P0 is the shiny golden humanoid robot who constantly fusses about keeping the furniture clean and worries that his pies are getting overdone in the oven while R2-D2 is the brash, brave husband figure who swings into action regardless. He looks like a salt shaker next to the Dalek's pepper shakers, although is he more a plucky rabbit to their rabid wild cats. He's also an angry motherfucker; in Revenge he iced two battledroids by setting them on fire, and his killcount throughout Clone Wars raises the question why the Republic isn't using R2's instead. The robots mostly have comedy roles in the movies, since they might threaten to upstage the human actors if they became too useful, though R2 has an electric cattle prod and serves as the party's computer skillmonkey, while C-3P0 saves the day with his mad linguistic skillz at least once per film in the original trilogy. They starred in their own cartoon series that was surprisingly good. In the pre-Disney EU the two are rarely joined as they are in the films. R2 frequently joins Luke on adventures, giving him someone to talk to during otherwise solo adventures, providing a Doctor Watson like figure even if the droid doesn't add much to the conversation. C-3P0 on the other hand stuck with Leia and assisted her in her duties as mother and head of state. In post Disney continuity the writers don't seem to know what to do with them and they're mostly just there; at least until Rise of Skywalker, where C-3PO's l337 tranzlation skillz are again important to the plot. Both are occasionally funny.

• Chewbacca: The original furry in space, the dog you can have a beer with in the space Winnebago. Nothing sexy about him; he is just hairy, huge, knows how to pilot a space ship, fix stuff, fire a gun, and generally get shit done which strangely makes him the coolest furry ever. Best friends with Han, has a family that we can all agree did not appear in the terrible Christmas special that does not exist (he got a much more badass family in the Galactic Battlegrounds games, so go with that). Hates Trandoshans like all Wookiees, since Trandoshans are almost always assholes and are particularly assholish to Wookiees. The prequel trilogy revealed he's REALLY FUCKING OLD thanks to Wookiee lifespan. In post-Disney lore, he is one of the few characters who has lived through the entire saga, including the Clone Wars, the rebellion against the Empire and the resistance against the First Order.
  • In the pre-Disney continuity he was a slave that the then-Imperial Han saved, he helped Han save the galaxy. He was also tough as nails having survived numerous injuries and abuse that would've killed most Wookiees, and Wookiees are already tougher than humans. His actual death was getting mooned to death by extragalactic space cenobites - as in they used a gravity manipulation device to smash a moon into the planet Vector Prime while he was accidentally trapped on it. He was hailed as a hero across the galaxy (with the boast among Wookiees that Chewbacca was so tough, it took something that can wreck a planet to kill him) and the fanbase cried or raged at his death; even the authors who killed him off went on record to say they were sad about his death and only did so for the sake of plot. In the post-Disney continuity he continues to be awesome and generally ignored in endings and the plot overall (ironic that he was the first major character who died in the pre-Disney lore and he's one of the few still alive in post-Disney lore).

• Lando Calrissian: Suave, charismatic, and an expert con artist, this guy is the original pirate king in space. He betrays Han and co. when Vader invades his city, later regrets it, and then atones by saving the cast from the Empire as well as the populace of his city at the same time, then helps save Han from the mafia, and finally leading the fleet that blows up the Death Star 2.0. Consistently one of the only two film characters to maintain his original actor in the EU, with Billy Dee Williams showing up for video games, audio dramas, promotional shorts, and the occasional malt liquor ad.

• Yoda: Ancient wise grand master of the Jedi Order who a tiny green alien is. Never named, his species was. Because of his size and age, most assumed just a harmless old teacher he was, your nice old granddad like. His pulling out a lightsaber and engaging a Sith Lord in combat at the end of Attack of the Clones, one of the most surprising and popular fights of the series is. Became a big franchise mascot he did, despite a surprise for the audience he was meant to be in his first appearance, ruining it for future generations. A unique way of speaking, he has. A very popular target for parody, it has become (though the original trilogy indicated it was just one of many things he was doing to annoy Luke as a test, since he doesn't talk that way to Obi-Wan).

• Wedge Antilles: The anti-redshirt. Has almost no lines in the original movies but somehow survives all of them, even blowing up the second Death Star with Lando. In the EU he is one of, if not the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy, and co-founder of the über elite Rogue Squadron along with Luke. It also establishes he was the son of humble (mobile) gas station owners who got killed by pirates. After tracking down and killing the pirates, he tried to live to a normal life, but failed when Imperials killed his alliance sympathizing girlfriend. Eventually rises to General after realizing his refusing promotions was screwing the career of everyone under him. Has a weakness of being more of a tactician than a strategist, which extends to his personal character which often fails to see the big picture. The other character to maintain his original actor in most EU works.

• Admiral Ackbar: Giant tactical fish who has the need to point out obvious traps in memetic fashion. Leads the rebel fleet in the sixth film. Dies in the eighth. He has a huge fanbase despite only appearing in a few scenes across the entire film saga and is one of the meme-faces of the fandom alongside Obi-Wan, Anakin and Palpatine. His survival and high rank made him quite prominent in the EU's New Republic works.

• Jar-Jar Binks: Solely exists to fuck up everything (and we do mean EVERYTHING) at the worst possible moment. This guy is so hated by everyone in and out of universe that his actor received severe backlash - including death threats, and he even considered suicide because of it - even though he had nothing to do with the writing while also sympathizing with fans' complaints and Lucas shitcanned his role down into a very brief cameo at the end of Episode 3. He's actually something of a tragic figure representing someone good who tries to act to save the galaxy but ended up ruining it instead. All of this only gets more palm-to-head-worthy since Jar Jar was created as a fun kids characters, rather than anything truly important... But of course, neckbeards gotta rage. Got a depressing meta style sendoff in the Aftermath book after Disney got the rights, which is a shame since it was hinted at in the Clone Wars series that he would marry a powerful alien queen who thinks he's a sex magnet. No really.

• Mace Windu: The original only black dude in space (because everyone forgot about Lando), he was the hardest-as-nails Jedi master of the council during the prequel trilogy and the best swordfighter in the Order, hence his unique purple lightsaber. That, and Sam Jackson wanted his own color to stand out. If Anakin hadn't interfered, he would have killed Darth Sidious and none of the original trilogy would have taken place. His subsequent anti-climatic death in the movie is regarded with annoyance by his fans. His mastery of the Force allows him to channel his anger and enjoyment of battle into his combat style without being corrupted by the Dark Side. He can also detect what he calls "shatterpoints", which lets him detect weaknesses to either mess people up in combat or exploit the "for want of a nail" proverb to turn situations to his side. Has a novel, Shatterpoint, which is pretty much Heart of Darkness IN STAR WARS.

• CT-7567/Captain Rex: If the Clone Troopers are the equivalent of Guardsmen, then this guy is the equivalent of the likes of Gaunt and Straken. The defacto second-in-command of the 501st Legion under Anakin Skywalker, he fought in nearly every major engagement during the Clone Wars, leading his men through hellish battles like on Geonosis at the beginning of the war and on Mandalore at the end. He has a strong sense of morality and cares for the lives of both the men under him and the officers above him, which meant that he often came into conflict with asshat commanders like Krell (who treated their troops as little more than disposable cannon fodder). He even managed to face off against dark-side Force users and live- something very few non-Force users are able to accomplish (To get a better picture of what this is like, imagine a sergeant in the guard facing off against a Chaos Space Marine, and living). After the war and his beloved Republic's transformation into the eventually-despised Empire, he and two other clone commanders went into retirement on a backwater world, fishing for worms the size of skyscrapers on an old walker they converted into a mobile home. He was brought out of retirement by a combination of the rebels of Phoenix Squadron, his old friend and commander Ahsoka, and the Empire being their usual backstabbing, overreactive selves, and so resolved to bring down the corrupt regime and restore the nation he had served out of pride (although most clones were programmed to follow the Republic, and specifically the Chancellor, many ended up choosing instead to follow the ideals of the Republic rather than the people in charge, and some even managed to overcome Palpatine's programming via removing the chip he had planted in their heads during the cloning process). To that end, he participated in many Rebel missions. Making him the old man you see with Han Solo's commando group in RoTJ was toyed with, but ultimately rejected due to the character already having an identity in the EU and him having the wrong ethnicity.

• Corran Horn: A Correllian detective who becomes a member of Rogue Squadron during the New Republic. Later becomes a Jedi. His unique bloodline makes him inept at telekinesis, but gives him the unique power of energy absorption. Often accused of being a Mary Sue by people who miss his huge ego and over confidence problem even though right from the start Wedge has to berate him on his putting himself before the squadron. Constantly makes bullheaded mistakes like ignoring his low fuel, causing him to run out of fuel, trying to use his girlfriend's dad infamy to his advantage on someone, before learning that's her dad, thinking having a lightsaber and some very basic training made him invincible, which would have killed him if bacta didn't exist, and smugly mocked Exar Kun in his temple under the mistaken impression he's physically powerless, only to get mauled in return and need rescue. Also the only Rogue to ever get downed by SAMs.

• Booster Terrik: A jolly but hot-tempered smuggler boss with a prosthetic eye. Helped Wedge find and kill the pirates who killed his family. Currently working/had to work to reestablish himself after a stint in Kessel, courtesy of Corran Horn's father Hal Horn. Father of Mirax Terrik. That his daughter is dating the son of the guy who put him away drives him crazy, but he eventually gets over it by coming to think of Corran as a Rogue instead of CorSec. Has a serious rivalry with Talon Karrde's organization. A crazy bluff eventually (and inadvertently) leads to him being the sole private owner of an Imperial Star Destroyer, which he operates as a mobile black market known as the Errant Venture.

• Aayla Secura: The space waifu of many a generation of star wars fanboys. A hot jedi chick who dressed skimpy and kicked butt. She was such a popular side character that Lucas took notice of her and added into the second and third prequel movies. Much like Ahsoka, she wasn't entirely defined by being a hot chick, but had other redeeming characteristics that made her likable, like being mechanically inclined, kind, wise, and somewhat mischievous. Much like Captain Rex, she had a great relationship with clones under her command, and it was rumored she and her Clone Commander had a romantic attachment to each other. Suffers from two tragedies: her death in Revenge of the Sith was brutal, and Disney hasn't done anything with her character since they acquired the franchise.

Disney Side Characters

• BB-8: The R2-D2 replacement and mascot of the new trilogy. Poe's buddy robot, started out as the plot device that the First Order was after in The Force Awakens, saves Finn and Rose's asses twice by taking down prison guards and piloting an AT-ST to attack Stormtroopers in The Last Jedi as well as Poe's in the comic. Saves Rey in Rise and reactivates a small antique droid companion that can speak Common AKA English, giving him his own C-3PO.

• Maz Kanata: An orange alien who knows a lot about the Force. In her backstory she was a Force-sensitive that’s somewhere in Yoda-tier age, but was never trained as a Jedi and instead used her talents to survive among the “third faction” (Hutts, smugglers, mafias, Mandos) while remaining as friendly to the “light side” factions as Hutts are to the “Dark Side” factions. Apparently also a supreme badass, judging from her brief appearance in TLJ. Definitely fucked Chewbacca and somehow survived. She procured Anakin’s/Luke’s blue lightsaber from the depths of the Bespin gas giant simply because she wanted it, and gave it to Rey in Force Awakens as well as some grandmotherly advice to her and Rey. She appears briefly to give the heroes contact information for a codebreaker in The Last Jedi. Joins the Resistance proper for the final movie, but not actually doing much onscreen other than spending some time with Leia.

• Saw Gerrara: Originally a member of the Space Viet Cong, this guy doesn't fuck around. Torture civilians? Check. Massacre entire patrols of Imperials? Check. In fact, his methods were considered so extreme that even the Rebel Alliance wanted nothing to do with him. Strictly speaking, he's a pre-Disney character as his first appearance on-screen was as part of the Clone Wars TV series; his first episode airing the same month that Disney acquired the franchise, making him one of the few characters to make the transition from the small screen to the big screen. Though he gets deaded within the first 30 minutes of Rogue One and does absolutely nothing of any value other than hinder the protagonists long enough to pad the run time, he has a lot more of his back-story filled out in the Rebels TV series. He was played by actor Forest Whitaker, so at least there's that.

• Sabine Wren: One of the main protagonists from the Star Wars Rebels show. A Mandalorian woman with a flair for art, explosions, and kicking Imperial ass, she is probably one of the most recognizable characters from the animated side of Disney canon. At first, she was a patriotic Imperial, designing weapons for the Emperor and his vassal ruler for Mandalore, Gar Saxon, until Gar decided to test one of her weapons on a group of Mandalorians, leading her to be labeled an oath-breaker by her people and cast out from her home-planet of Krownest by her mom. She then spends the events of the TV-series with her new surrogate family, the crew of the rebel freighter *Ghost*, and eventually recovers an ancient sword revered by her people, leading her to reconcile with her past, her birth family, and her people. Now, after the Battle of Endor, she is on a quest with Ahsoka Tano to find her 'totally-not-boyfriend', the Jedi Ezra Bridger, and Grand Admiral Thrawn, as they disappeared into the Unknown Regions following the events of the series finale.

• Amilyn Holdo: An overbearing, purple-haired “Rebel hero” and one of the key admirals of the Resistance. If you don't like the direction the Disney canon is going in, this character is your Jar Jar Binks and probably is to you even if you do approve/tolerate it. Her only role was to basically die in style but unfortunately she was pretty forgettable and nobody actually cared when she was atomized, even if it was a really fucking cool death. Tie-in material tried to fix this; the only real requirement for joining the Resistance was "didn’t think Leia was crazy for thinking the First Order was going to perform Star Wars 9/11”, and Holdo was only the captain of a small frigate before her battlefield promotion due to the entire chain of command other than the other frigate commander dying or being incapacitated by a single torpedo blast to the bridge of the Resistance flagship. As a matter of fact, her "super-duper secret plan" ends up getting most of the Resistance killed after Finn and Poe fuck it up, due to the fact that she decided to not tell the freshly demoted highest ranking pilot who had just lost the resistance the last of their bombers her plan, causing him to mutiny, and she only partially redeems herself via FTL ramming their command ship into the First Order command ship, destroying most of the FO fleet, which is briefly visually spectacular but fluff-wise highly.... take a guess. In the original script there was a subplot about there actually being a First Order spy aboard with the audience knowing in advance that there was a plan that spy could have ruined, but in an absolutely stunning display of terrible choices none of it was even filmed and the story was not changed to cut the references to that dropped plot.

• Rose Tico: A maintenance worker who acts as a tagalong for some of the most boring and annoying parts of The Last Jedi. After losing her sister in the beginning of the movie, she catches her idol Finn (who has apparently become something of a celebrity within the Resistance over the course of the week or so since he defected) trying to desert ship in order to warn Rey not to rendezvous as they were being chased by the First Order's fleet since Leia had given her a beacon indicating a rendezvous point (something that is entirely forgotten about for the rest of the movie, since Rey doesn't even use it to meet up with the Resistance at the end). She later went along with Finn to the Gilded Age planet to find the expert capable of helping them deactivate the First Order's tracking system, and despite literally growing up on a planet like that she still thinks its a great idea to just park their fighter on a luxury beach and run straight into a casino full of arms dealers wearing their military uniforms which results in the two being arrested and meeting a random criminal who sells the two out to the First Order because he overhears them literally explain their entire situation, despite the aforementioned "growing up as either a slave or a poor servant, its kind of unclear" backstory which means she should probably know more than the guy who literally only knows life as a Stormtrooper about shit like that. Her lust for Finn's BBC drives her to cockblock his heroic sacrifice on Salt Hoth before confessing his love for him at the worst possible moment in a plot point that will likely go nowhere. Also delivers the worst line in the entirety of the franchise: "That's how we are going to win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love." Which is even worse because Finn was not fighting a hated foe since he has no hatred towards his enemies and was instead just sacrificing himself for the people he loves. This quantum singularity of bullshit led to a substantial fraction of TLJ's backlash being directed at her actress despite the fact that she had nothing to do with writing any of it. Was an interesting character- how some heroes could come from unlikely places- that got handed shit writing in a movie that was way too crowded with a huge ensemble to begin with, and almost zero development. In The Rise Of Skywalker the character was redeemed since instead of giving pithy speeches about love and being oppressed she spends her time doing actual ground crew technician work between battles, when characters are meeting to plan their next move she speaks like a high-ranking memeber of the Resistance (by process of elimination, but still), and the most important thing; she actually gets to participate in a battle and shoots some motherfuckers in an attempt address the "her figures don't sell" problem. The plot point of her being in love with Finn is not addressed, like in any way at all, and she has very little screentime so she's pretty much been simultaneously upgraded/downgraded into being the Wedge to Finn's Luke.

Notable Pre-Disney EU Characters

• Thrawn: (See *below under villains since despite being created as part of the Legends - in fact, the 1991 book he debuted in is what began the Star Wars Expanded Universe - he was brought back into canon by Disney)

• Mara Jade: Fiery redhead Force user, former servant of Emperor Palpatine and Star Wars second strong female character after Leia (Zahn said he created Mara because he wanted a strong female character with an actual character arc, since Leia is and stays heroic). Taken from her parents at a young age and raised as a servant to Emperor Palpatine, Mara trained under him and with his royal guards to become one of several high-level Force-using operatives with the title of "Emperor's Hand", though she used the cover story of being a dancer Palps liked. A life of hard work gave Mara a liking for challenges, and she completed numerous missions for him, living the high life under his patronage. Upon Palpatine's death, he gave Mare one last command - to kill Luke Skywalker, and placed a geas on her to compel her to hunt Luke. Bereft of the Emperor's patronage, without job skills besides spy and assassin and unable to find Luke, Mara was forced to live paycheck to paycheck in numerous jobs until becoming a smuggler under Talon Karrde, even having a fake relationship with Lando. When Mara finally met Luke, she tried to kill him but a survival situation forced them to work together. When she finally learned the the truth of her master and killed an evil clone of Luke called Luuke,she was freed from Palpatine's compulsion. Afterwards, Mara joined the Jedi Order and worked alongside Luke. Over the years Mara's grudging respect for Luke that grew into love - which Luke ironically developed before Mara did despite Luke saying he didn't like fiery women like Mara, and the two eventually married. Then a Yuuzhan Vong agent infected Mara with a terminal virus bioweapon, and she survived through using the Force to keep it at bay. When the Yuuzhan Vong invaded at large she fought the Vong while struggling with the virus, being cured of it around the time her and Luke's son Ben was born. After the Yuuzhan Vong War ended, Mara led the Jedi alongside Luke and fought in wars against various aliens and the re-emergent Sith. In the following poorly-received book series her nephew Jacen turned to the Dark Side and became the Sith Lord Darth Caedus. When he tired to corrupt her son Ben, Mara confronted him to protect Ben. During the fight, Jacen distracted Mara with an image of Ben then killed Mara via cheap shot with a poisoned dart. Before she died, Mara told Jacen off while using the Force to alert Luke and Ben and say goodbye to them (Mara's death was one of the main reasons the book series was hated by fans). She later appeared numerous times as a Force ghost, visiting Luke - at one point to give him tips on how to fight Abeloth, and warning her great-great-grandson Cade Skywalker against the Dark Side. Due to being a sexy redheaded woman with a backstory as a spy-cum-assassin for an evil government before joining the good guys, plus her fiery disposition and penchant for black catsuits, Mara's probably a deliberate ripoff of Black Widow from Marvel Comics (ironically, this didn't stop Disney retconning her from the lore despite Disney now owning both the Marvel brand and Star Wars franchise).

• Ben Skywalker: Son of Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade. Named for Obi-Wan Kenobi's pseudonym, Ben grew up learning the ways of the Jedi from his parents. He was close to his uncle, aunt and cousins too. Ben was nearly lured to the Dark Side when his cousin Jacen became a Sith but resisted, and any bond between them was destroyed when Jacen killed Ben's mother Mara. Years later when the Jedi got word of a lost tribe of Sith emerging and an emerging Force psychosis started spreading among the Jedi, Luke, Ben and the Jedi Order went to resolve the problem, Ben joining his father in re-tracing Jacen's steps to try and gain insight. Things went from bad to worse when the Jedi and Sith encountered the Lovecraftian Force Entity Abeloth, a shapeshifting being described as a dozen times stronger in the Force than Luke and able to use both sides of it. Things were so desperate, Ben accepted when Luke got the Jedi and the Sith to form an alliance against her. During this time, Ben encountered Vestara Khoi, a Sith apprentice and daughter of one of their leaders. While firmly on the side of the Jedi, Ben found himself often working alongside Vestara in their mission to stop Abeloth, and was attracted to her; for her part, Vestara reciprocated Ben's feelings but was hindered by Ben's disapproval of Sith. Eventually they confessed their feelings, and the two became a couple (with Vestara also leaving the Sith and trying to become a Jedi). Said co-operation proved invaluable when Abeloth kidnapped Ben and Vestara for the final part of her master plan. After Abeloth's ultimate defeat Vestara, after a ruthless act while fighting Abeloth, became convinced she had much of a Sith mindset to be a Jedi, reverted back to the Sith, ended the relationship by zapping Ben with Sith Lightning before fleeing. Heartbroken but resolute, Ben resolved to track her down and redeem her if possible (unbeknownst to Ben, Vestara was also heartbroken about leaving him).

• Jacen Solo: While George Lucas always had a story idea for a son of Han and Leia struggling with the Dark Side, Jacen Solo was the first incarnation, and a major influence on Disney's Kylo Ren. Born to Leia alongside his twin sister Jaina, he was a skilled Jedi, and often tried to be a calming influence on his younger brother Anakin Solo. Played a pivotal role in the Yuuzhan Vong War, killing their military commander Tsavong Lah and their true leader. However, his experiences during the war took a toll, and Jacen started struggling with the Dark Side.

• Jaina Solo: Jaina Solo was a Human female Jedi Master of the New Jedi Order and member of the Jedi High Council. Daughter of Han and Leia, twin sister of Jacen Solo and older sister to Anakin Solo, she inherited her father's mechanical aptitude and her mother's Force sensitivity, resulting in her eventual training at the Jedi Praxeum. During her time there as a youth, she had many adventures, including helping to thwart the Second Imperium, where she helped Zekk abandon the dark side of the Force and join the ranks of the Jedi. She became a distinguished pilot during the Yuuzhan Vong War, which also saw the death of her brother Anakin Solo and the birth of her cousin Ben Skywalker.

• Kyle Katarn: A stormtrooper commander who turns mercenary after learning the Imperials were responsible for the death of his father. After being one of the many people who stole the Death Star plans, he destroys an Imperial super soldier project essentially solo. After this he gets wrapped up in the head inquisitor's plot to revive the Empire and gets trained as a Jedi by a force ghost. Straightforward and prone to snark, but also very easy to trick. Partner (if not more) with hot space Asian Jan Ors. Considered one of the more powerful force users in the New Republic, even outside the games where his power level is rather over the top. Where Luke (and most Jedi) keep the dark side away with spiritualism and positivity, Kyle does it through sheer force of will.

• Talon Karrde: A suave rogue smuggler captain who became the new smuggling and black market kingpin after Jabba died. Compared to his predecessor, he's pretty benign given his preference for tariff evasion and illegal goods over straight up extortion and slaving and being a father to his men instead of someone who executes minions on whims. His favored product is selling obscure and/or stolen information. Explicitly what Han might have become if he didn't join the rebellion. Likes punny ship names, with his flagship the Wild Karrde (Wild Card) and secondary ships like Lastri's Ort (Last Resort), Uwana Buyer (You want to buy her?) and Amanda Fallow (A man to follow). He makes a business arrangement with Mara Jade when she's trying to track Luke down to kill him, where he provided her information if she worked for him temporarily. Years later he acts as a friend in the black market to the Solos and Skywalkers.

• Tsavong Lah: An alien Warmaster, Lah was a member of the Yuuzhan Vong species and in charge of the Vong military for much of the war against the Star Wars galaxy. His most notable accomplishments were conquering Coruscant, indirectly causing Anakin Solo's death and trying to capture Jacen and Jaina. A skilled tactician but a poor strategist, Tsavong Lah was a ruthless fanatic who's willing to throw countless lives away to achieve his goals. Also took on the Vong Nom Anor as his advisor, despite hating Anor's self-centeredness and lack of piety. At one point Jacen cut off his foot, so he cloned an extinct super-predator so he could prove he was still a badass by killing it and take one of its feet to use as a prosthetic foot. Also got caught up in a plot by the Shaper Caste to control him through his body modifications. He also loved his dad - a retired military officer he'd often turn to for advice, to the point that his death made Tsavong mentally unstable. Came to view Jacen Solo as his nemesis, and was eventually killed by him.

• Nom Anor: A Yuuzhvan Vong member of the Intendant caste. After the events of ROTJ, Nom arrived with a Vong advance force as a saboteur to undermine the galaxy in preparation for the Vong invasion. During this time, Nom Anor worked in disguise to manipulate various groups and clashed with the Chiss Ascendancy helping soften the galaxy up for the Vong. The capture of some of his agents also clued the Empire in to the coming Vong threat. He was also such a selfish schemer even Thanquol would turn his nose up in disgust and a major Troll; before revealing his true identity, when negotiating with Leia he often dressed up and acted like Darth Vader just to mess with her. Also notable for being an atheist while the Vong as a whole are characterized by being deeply religious. Before the war, Nom Anor infected Luke's wife Mara with a Vong bioweapon which caused a terminal illness, forcing her to use the Force to stop its progression. When Mara confronted Nom, he tried and failed to kill her before being forced to flee. After losing his position of power, Nom lost his rank and tried to rally the outcast class under the guise of a prophet, only to throw them away when they weren't useful to him. Nom found his way onto the Supreme Overlord's (not that one) flagship during the battle to retake Coruscant. When the Supreme Overlord was killed and the ship started falling apart, Nom tried to kill the heroes three times but was always thwarted. When offered the chance to escape with the heroes, Nom realized he'd burned all his bridges, didn't fit in anywhere and was too proud to reconsider his life choices, so Nom chose to stay behind and die on the exploding flagship. Essentially Fabius Bile as a self-centered alien bureaucrat.

• A'Sharad Hett/Darth Kryat: A human Jedi-turned-Sith. Born A'Sharad Hett, he was born to a Jedi and his wife who somehow managed to live among the Tusken Raiders of Tatooine, he eventually joined the Jedi Order, becoming a Padawan of Jedi Masters Ki-Adi-Mundi, and later, An'ya Kuro. When he was only a teen, Hett's father was murdered by the Jedi assassin Aurra Sing, who was later defeated in a duel by a young A'Sharad Hett. During the Clone Wars, he served the Republic as a General. He met and eventually befriended Anakin Skywalker after Skywalker struggled to come to terms with Hett's Tusken heritage. He managed to survive the Clone Wars and Order 66. He was eventually captured by the Yuuzhan Vong, who tortured and experimented on Hett, which drove him to the Dark Side.

• Darth Talon: A female Twi'lek from the EU comic series "Star Wars: Legacy" who became a Sith Lord in Darth Krayt's One Sith in 137 ABY. Best known for being one of Star Wars most fanservice-y characters on account of her attractive, tattoo-covered body and always wearing skimpy skin-tight clothing (though the character's creators have gone on record to say her appearance is meant to be primal not sexualized, and the skimpy outfit is to show off her tattoos). Apart from the fanservice, she's also visually distinctive for being a rare red Twi'lek and the aforementioned black Sith tattoos. Appointed personal assassin of Darth Kryat, Talon was sent to kill Luke's descendant Cade Skywalker, then later chosen to be Cade's Sith teacher when Darth Kryat tried to induct him into the Dark Side. During this time, Cade and Talon drew close and were heavily implied to have slept together, which may have been Kryat's plan (heavily implied; Cade and Talon are shown kissing, and in one scene Cade is shown getting out of bed while a naked Darth Talon is sleeping next to him). Interestingly, Geroge Lucas' original plan for a sequel trilogy involved Talon corrupting Han and Leia's son to the Dark Side of the Force and Talon was nearly in the Disney trilogy and there is early concept art of her (albeit with her outfit re-designed to be less revealing).

• Abeloth: A Lovecraftian female entity strong in both the Light and Dark side of the Force, and one of the most powerful beings in any Star Wars canon. She first lived as the Servant, a mortal woman who served the powerful Ones on an unknown jungle planet over a hundred thousand years before the Battle of Yavin. Over the course of her life, she became the Mother: she kept the peace between the Father's warring Son and Daughter and became a loving part of the family. But she was still mortal—she grew old while her ageless family lived on—and she feared she would lose her precious family. In a desperate attempt to hold onto the life she so loved, she drank from the Font of Power and bathed in the Pool of Knowledge. Her actions corrupted her, transforming the Mother into the twisted, immortal entity known as Abeloth. Has numerous titles such as the Bringer of Chaos and Beloved Queen of the Stars (the latter self-proclaimed). Spent millennia trapped on a planet by the Ones, though she'd escape only to be re-imprisoned once more.

Villains

• Darth Sidious/Sheev "Can't Peeve the Sheev" Palpatine/The Emperor: A creepy old wrinkly dude who sits in his badass evil throne constantly screaming "Just as planned!" And occasionally frying fools with force lightning. Built a giant planet-destroying weapon, then built another, bigger one as a trap when the first one blew up. He is very clever, managing to scheme and outwit everyone in the prequel trilogy, moving them all into place so he could take over the galaxy (although he still needed a big superweapon anyway to hold onto said power) in the original trilogy and even manages to make everything move to his design in the sequel trilogy. Chews so much scenery they had to resort to computer-generated imagery. He is the Senate.

• Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin: Tywin Lannister IN SPHESS. Ruthless, ambitious, and cold, Grand Moff (Governor) Tarkin is the epitome of all that is Imperial in the SW Universe. His idea of ruling pretty much comes down to "They can hate me as long as they fear me", which is symbolized ultimately by the Death Star. However, he uses the stick far too often and hardly uses the carrot, and this policy backfires on him horribly when he destroys Alderaan, a Core World and one of the founders of the Old Republic- for instead of cowing the galaxy into submission, it, along with the Battle of Yavin which saw himself and his battle-station destroyed, galvanized half the galaxy into openly declaring for the Alliance.

• Jango and Boba Fett: Father and son, though the son is actually an unaltered clone of his father. Badass, mostly-silent mercs who get shit done and come from a line of Spartan/Viking/Māori warriors in space called Mandalorians. Sadly, both had very anticlimactic deaths, though Boba survived his in the EU, through the power of being too popular with the audience to kill permanently. (This became canon after Disney made the entire EU non-canon. Rumour has it Boba will be getting his own spin off movie.)

• Jabba the Hutt: Obese slug who is a cross between a Mexican drug cartel kingpin and Mafia crime-boss. He runs his criminal enterprise from an old palace-monastery on Tatooine. A /d/eviant at heart, likes to fap to hot alien chicks dancing for him until they try to escape, then faps even harder when he feeds said chicks to Rancor. Gets strangled to death by a bikini-wearing Leia with her own chains, because symbolism.

• Thrawn: *Star Wars Creed, if Creed was also a philosophical blue-skinned, red-eyed alien who loved art. Originally introduced in the pre-Disney EU/Legends, Thrawn was so popular Disney soon brought him back into the Disney canon (with a few tweaks to his story). Thrawn was renowned for being one of the few high-ranking aliens in the Galactic Empire and one of the Emperor's best subjects. He originally served as a member of the Chiss Ascendancy, but after being backstabbed he signed up with the Galactic Empire and worked with Darth Vader - having met him back when the latter was still a Jedi - and even the Emperor himself. In his tactics, Thrawn notably employed his philosophy based around understanding the philosophy and art of his enemies, and was a very capable tactician. Thrawn quickly became very well-liked with fans, to the point many considered him the best thing to come from Star Wars since the original trilogy. He also set up a vassal Empire called "the Empire of the Hand" to combat an alien menace encroaching on Chiss territory that was considered a threat to the Empire; pre-Disney this was the Yuuzhan Vong (AKA the Far Outsiders, AKA the space cenobites who killed Chewbacca by dropping a moon on him), post-Disney it's Vong-knockoffs called the Grysk. Pre-Disney he was killed by the betrayal of one of his closest aides but is alive and well post-Disney, and was last seen when Ezra used the Force and space whales to yeet Thrawn's ship into the unknown regions with all of them on board. His actual name is the near-unpronounceable Mitth'raw'nuruodo. With his philosophical nature and fetish for art collecting, he's probably a deliberate ripoff of M'Quve from Mobile Suit Gundam, but good luck getting Zahn to admit it.

• Count Dooku: An elegant, charismatic, gentlemanly Sith lord and master fencer who had dreams of liberating the galaxy from Republic control, but didn't expect his partner in crime to be a backstabbing douchebag. Hates Anakin/Vader for not being a gentleman. In the novels he's also an alien-hating human supemacist who believes the Empire's purpose is to establish humanity as dominant in GFFA. He'd do well as a citizen of the Imperium if he just changed which Emperor he revered.

• Darth Maul: Horned Sith only concerned with bloodshed and fighting. He'd do well as a Khornate Champion. Had his legs cut off then was brought back more badass than ever, until he was utterly stomped by the Emperor then gets killed in a duel with an elderly Obi-wan almost 18 years later. Wields a sick-looking double-bladed lightsaber, doesn't actually gets a single line in the first film dubbed in by a different actor, and played by famous martial arts master Ray Park. He was a silent badass in the movie but for some reason he was made very talkative in the animated series. The EU gave him a backstory as the scion of a species of Sith-aligned Force witches that The Clone Wars later made canon. The director of Solo picked him out of a hat to be the leader of the nefarious criminal gang Han gets stuck working with.

• General Grievous: An alien cyborg even more fucked up than what Darth Vader would become (being a robot body that was a canister for his eyes, brain, and vital organs), Grievous was the Supreme Commander of the Droid Army during the Prequels and the Clone Wars TV series (both versions), and a sadistic Jedi hunter. His competence is usually portrayed two totally different ways; in the 2D animated TV series (created by the same guy who made Samurai Jack), he is portrayed as an unstoppable killing machine who roflstomps experienced Jedi Masters, and is only bested by Mace "The Ace" Windu. In the CGI series and the third film, he is an incompetent, frothing loony with a record of failure that even Abbadon would laugh at hysterically. Actually has a somewhat-tragic past: he was a great and virtuous hero on his primitive planet, but Dooku arranged for the Separatists to shoot down Grievous' shuttle down and harvested his shredded body to repurpose him into their general/assassin. Dooku also lobotomized Grievous in way that reduced him to a raging killer. When Grievous recovered, Dooku then pinned blame for the shuttle crash on the Jedi and Republic. Hated being mistaken for a droid, being compared to a droid and all Jedi - especially Obi-Wan Kenobi.

• Stormtroopers: The soldiers of the Galactic Empire. Originally, these soldiers were vat clones of Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett cloned in large numbers, trained from birth in combat and clad in environmentally sealed suits of their famous gleaming white full body armor. The original clonetroopers served the Republic against the Seperatists, and were turned into the stormtroopers after Palpatine's total take-over. After the rebels blew up the gene-banks, the Empire switched to an enlistment system. Since the First Order doesn't have a good dental plan to bring in recruits, they instead resort to kidnapping or buying children and raising them as soldiers to fill their mook quota. They are unwaveringly loyal and obedient to the Empire, ruthless and brutally efficient foes in combat, and incredibly precise shots with their state-of-the-art weapons. Naturally, these qualities all go out the window when they encounter the protagonists, but that's life when you're wearing a helmet.
  • These boys comes in literally all the flavors. Variants based on environments (Snow, Desert, Shore and many more) and roles (Pilots, Heavy, Commando and the elite Death Troopers), ensuring that the Star Wars brand always has a new bunch of cool soldier dudes to make toys off of. When things has to get really dangerous for the heroes, the elite variants are brought in, like the Clone Commandoes, Death Troopers and Sith Troopers.

• Inquisitorius: Dark Siders trained by the Empire. While the Rule of Two prevents additional Sith Lords, it says nothing about other force users under their command, especially if they're not given full access to Sith lore and thus can't properly challenge Sith Lords on equal footing. It is not known if Darth Bane expected the Imperial Inquisition or if he would have approved of the Emperor bending the Rule of Two such. Their job is primarily to ferret out the remaining Jedi and other force users, but they are also used for all manner of wet work and internal affairs. Since their first mention way back in The Star Wars Sourcebook, they have served as enemy force users that while still dire threats could still conceivably be defeated by the player characters. The source of many prominent antagonists in the expanded universe, including Jerac.

Disney Villains

• Kylo Ren: A Dark Jedi (not Sith, they technically went extinct with Vader, Sheev, Dooku, and Maul) who is actually the son of Han and Leia, Ben Solo, which the Internet absolutely refused to shut up about after it was leaked. He's mostly based on Jacen Solo from the EU (a son of Han and Leia who became a Jedi then fell to the Dark Side and became a Sith) with his new name likely taken from EU character Kybo Ren and having the same real name as Luke's son from the EU with Mara, Ben Skywalker. He idolizes his grandfather, Darth Vader and wears a black suit and a mask to show this. He wields a unique crossguard lightsaber. People thought he would be a badass after seeing the trailers but after seeing the movie, he turned out to be a half-naked pussy looking like a gay Turkish oil wrestler who very often gets temper tantrums and gets his ass kicked by a teenage girl (though to be fair, if he had been a complete badass, everyone would’ve just complained that he was a rehash of Vader. So, you know, rock and a hard place. Also he only had his ass beat since he was already shot by a bowcaster and stabbed with a lightsaber, so fighting even in spite of that is pretty badass). Kylo's character became significantly more fleshed out in TLJ, ironically making him one of the only characters to have actual development in the whole movie. Between that and Kylo's actor Adam Driver being really bro-tier about the whole situation (he even appeared in a skit as Kylo which also included poking fun at Kylo's emo traits), Kylo has managed to win over many fans, with some citing him as probably the most interesting character in the Sequels. Serves Palpatine before turning on him with Rey and gives his life to heal her, scoring a kiss with her before he dies redeemed as Ben, ala Vader dying as Anakin. This relationship between Rey and Kylo sharply divided the fanbase and created some extreme reactions. The worst cases were some extremely rabid Kylo/Rey shippers who insisted Adam and Daisy Ridley - Rey's actor - become a real-life couple (despite both being in separate relationships), to the point that they harassed Daisy Ridley's boyfriend on social media, harassed Adam Driver along with his family (including stalking them and sending messages hoping for the deaths of Adam's wife and/or newborn son) and made death threats against JJ Abrams (far surpassing practically any other Star Wars backlash, even the death threats thrown at Ahmed Best - Jar Jar's VA - and the purported backlash against Kelly Marie Tran - Rose Tico's actress); it cannot even be “justified” (and justified is used very loosely here) as the ravings of butthurt ultra-fanboys, this crossed the line into full-on bullshit.

• Snoke: Supreme Leader of the First Order who speaks to his underlings through a massive hologram. Very little is known about him at the moment. Though many fan theories say that he is Darth Plagueis, the old master of Palpatine who was assumed dead (everyone assumes every new Darksider is him, though, so grain of salt) the powers that be have repeatedly denied the theory (though it's admittedly a better guess than suggesting that Snoke is Mace Windu, Boba Fett, or a clone of Darth Vader, which we would like to stress are actual fan theories)...unfortunately, we will have to wait for an inevitable comic book or novel to explain it, since he gets killed like a chump by his own servant, Kylo "Emofag" Ren. It is possible he may return given that the ring on his finger has inscriptions that translate to various rephrasing of “survive death” that is carved from the stone of Darth Vader's lava castle (yes, you read that right), but that may actually be a nod to Palpatine’s EU resurrections. Turns out to be a genetically engineered pawn of Palpatine's, like he was literally born looking as shriveled and injured as he did and had some kind of fabricated backstory like an organic Blade Runner Replicant.

• General Hux: The First Order's Tarkin equivalent and a moustacheless ginger Hitler in space. Delivers a pretty cool speech, but can't fight to save his life.. The backstory for Hux is his father was an Imperial hero, and Hux wants to be the First Order version of his old man and lead the FO to a final victory. Hux openly dislikes Kylo Ren and has frustration with the Force-users borders on meta at times. Spends most of TLJ as a foil to the edgier and more toyetic bad guys, but he seems to be the only one to have noticed how impractical the Empire/FO's fuckhuge weaponry can be when you're fighting something smaller than a planet and have lost the element of surprise. Becomes Kylo Ren's comic relief ginger prison bitch at the end of TLJ, although he has an interesting scene where he was about to finish off the unconscious Kylo until he woke up. Sent some very simple info to the Resistance in Rise Of Skywalker that set off the movie plot (mostly by making them take the info they already had seriously) and later helped the main characters escape, and was immediately shot for his efforts. He is never mentioned again.

• Captain Phasma: A First Order operative in charge of instructing the new Stormtrooper legions, Phasma serves as the Boba Fett of TFA - which is to say that she does nothing of note other than stand around and look cool until she figuratively and literally gets thrown into the trash in Force Awakens. Lucasfilm have apologized for overadvertising the character in the lead-up to the film since she was just supposed to look cool and do nothing like Boba Fett originally did but the huge presence of her in the marketing implied she was going to be a major character (remember, Jar Jar and generic Battle Droids had far more merch than Maul during the release of Episode 1) and have promised to give Phasma an actual role and backstory for TLJ that will play into Finn's story. (This turned out to be bullshit due to the fucked-up nature of TLJ's production, but the reshoots managed to give her a good showing anyway.) Her backstory was released in a novel where she was a tribal on a planet the Empire stripped into the stone age, who backstabbed her tribe for a stronger tribe, backstabbed her second tribe and brother to rescue a stranded Imperial officer and join the Empire, backstabbed her mentor to become the supreme commander of the Stormtrooper Corps in the First Order, then in the comic series she was shown to have survived the trash compactor when a Resistance bomb blew it up and she entirely disregarded everything (including saving Starkiller Base or Kylo Ren) to backstab and frame one of her subordinates for lowering the shields then promptly hunted him down to “bring him to justice”. So she’s a spear-wielding backstabber extraordinaire. At the present she's got a nasty scar on one eye where her hyper durable helmet was busted in, and fell into a fire on a shattered starship (to be fair the ship wasn't exploding or breached where she was, and aside from that one hole her armor is fine so she's almost certainly showing up again even if not in a movie). Did not appear in the last movie of the trilogy, with JJ saying "One of the things that surprised him the most about TLJ is Phasma just getting killed off" so she's dead until further notice.

One-Appearance Characters

• FN-2199/"TR-8R": a First Order Stormtrooper who wields a badass riot baton in combat. Appears only in The Force Awakens and notable only for two reasons; he shouts "Traitor!" at Finn, and then he kicks his punk ass despite the latter wielding a fucking lightsaber. Such is the stuff that memes are made of. Gets a bit of backstory that he and Finn trained and grew up together, hence his outrage at seeing Finn fighting for the opposite side. Even if he goes out like a punk to Han Solo, by all accounts, FN-2199 TR-8R is what Phasma should have been. He would make a great commissar.

• Jyn Erso: Appears in Rogue One. A former member of the Space Taliban (Rebels who refused to group up with the rest of the Rebels due to their extreme willingness to do evil shit to kill evil assholes) who is captured by the Rebels so they can talk to Space Bin Laden (Saw Gerrara, a character who guest-starred in a few episodes of the cartoon Rebels and pretty much shows up to die in Jyn's movie) about rumors of a planet killer being fueled by Space Iraqi oil crystals (that makes lightsabers work), one that was partially designed by her father. Jyn is angry all of the time because her life sucks, she watches every parental figure in her life die in front of her, most of them over the period of a single day, and the movie hopes this will hide the fact that she really doesn't do much other then flip authority figures the bird. Her name mirrors that of Jan Ors, partner-in-crime of legendary badass Kyle Katarn which is REALLY not as well-received by the fans of the series her movie retconned as Disney thought it would be (to be fair, the old EU had around ten different versions of the Death Star plans being stolen which many fans just figured were combined into the one Leia had, so that doesn't mean Kyle and Jan can't ever be made canon again). Gets killed when Tarkin used the Death Star to destroy the facility in an attempt to stop the Rebels transmitting classified information, but Jyn and Cassian got the Death Star plans beamed into space before that.

• Cassian Andor: Appears in Rogue One. A Rebel spy and assassin, Cassian angsts about the fact that he lives in a political thriller about the space mafia VS the space Nazis set mere days before the simple good and evil morality of the original trilogy kicks in. His only friend is a droid, but that's not exactly as unusual in the setting as the movie implies it is. Shares an award with Luke for not getting the girl in the end...kind of; they do share a final hug and possible kiss in the elevator before he died with her getting atomized by a partial-strength shot from the Death Star. The Disney Canon variant of Kyle Katarn, who was an Imperial officer turned Rebel turned Jedi Master, who is so badass he shaves with a lightsaber. A massive waste of character. UPDATE: We're now getting a TV series based on him, so there's at least that?

• K-2S0: Appears in Rogue One. What C-3P0 would be if he grew a pair and got a stronger droid body. A reprogrammed Imperial tactical droid and Cassian's only friend. Does that thing where he spits out survival odds in stressful moments. Caught a grenade in mid-air then tossed it back at it's original thrower without even looking, shot Stormtroopers (even took out two by picking up a third stromtrooper and whacking them with him), and delivered some great deadpan lines which endeared him the audience - even those growing more jaded to these new movies liked him. So of course he dies first in order to establish that shit gets real during the last twenty minutes of the movie, although he died holding the line so Stormtroopers wouldn't reach Cassian and Jyn and his last act was smashing the control panel with his bare hands so at least he went out as cool as he came in.

• Chirrut Îmwe: Discount Jedi The real star of Rogue One. A blind martial artist who may or may not have force powers, can beat a squad of Stormtroopers with a staff, shoot TIE Fighters out of the air, and could take your girl if he wanted to. Haha, jk, he's totally homo for his bara partner-in-crime with the badass autocannon. Dies in a bombing run, but he doesn't fear death. Even his actor (from the badass "Ip Man" series) admitted that he was shoehorned into the movie in a desperate attempt to make China give a shit about Star Wars (which failed, because China really just doesn't give a shit about the franchise). Chirrut is memorable mostly because he belongs to the "Order Of The Whills", notable because "Whills" were a thing George Lucas kept wanting to use in the original trilogy (immortal beings who were supposed to be telling the story, hence "a long time ago", later the spirits that make up the Force itself, and finally an order of warriors that Leia was supposed to found after Luke's death in a sixth movie before he decided to take a break then do prequels instead).

• Baze Malbus: Chirrut's best mate and self-appointed bodyguard. Has three lines, but comes off as memorable because of his hellgun-looking backpack mounted autocannon with a scanvisor that lets him hold down the trigger and headshot stormtroopers until they are all dead. In early scripts Chirrut was his father figure, in the finished product they're ambiguously gay even though the director intended there to be a "finding peace with the pastor who heard his confession after a very grim life" vibe. Dies shortly after Chirrut, and actually makes a connection with the Force in his final moments. Quite a bit of work went into designing his visual style and his backstory, not a single bit of which ended up in the movie.

• Orson Krennic: Director of the Imperial Military Research Division and Rogue One's villain. Forces Jyn's father into building the Death Star for him, causes the death of Jyn's mother, then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie getting roasted by the more competent Imperial characters because he's a fucking moron with a grudge. He's typical of the average Imperial who doesn't wear Stormtrooper armor in the Expanded Universe as well as Disney canon, notable mainly for giving off "Resident Evil villain" vibes.

• TZ-1719: Appears in Rise of Skywalker. The leader of a unit of First Order Stormtroopers who, upon being ordered to shoot civilians, all laid down their guns at once despite there being no communication between them to do so. Implied to be Force sensitive, with the accidental subtext being that she simply subconsciously Force-tricked her troops into not being evil anymore. They stole their dropships and escaped to Endor, living a non-tech lifestyle by taming some kind of goat aliens as mounts. She personally took on the name "Jannah". Her primary purpose of the movie is to replace Rose as Finn's love interest since they couldn't decide on hooking Finn up with Rey or not (for problems such as "would it offend racists into not buying merch, would it be seen as sexist to end her journey with a Disney Princess ending of getting a relationship, etc"). Further unfortunate subtext is how TZ is quite literally just Rule 63 Finn, although it fixes the "Finn Problem" that has been pointed out where suddenly Stormtroopers dying can be seen as a tragic loss of a potential hero by adding the idea that "Kanye was right, slavery is a choice good characters who end up as Stormtroopers can just choose not to shoot the non-combatants so anyone that doesn't deserves to die like the nameless loot pinatas mooks they are. The end of the movie adds spinoff bait the implication she is Lando's grandaughter, or at the least he has an idea of who she was taken from as a baby.

• Qi'ra: Han Solo's old girlfriend and partner introduced in Solo: A Star Wars Story, filling in for a number of older EU characters (don't worry, the Disney Star Wars comics had already given Han an ex other than her anyway). Grew up with Han on Corellia before getting forced into the Crimson Dawn, which is like the Mafia in space except run by Darth Maul instead of the Hutts. Helps Han survive an unobtainium deal gone bad, then backstabs her boss to become her gang's alpha dog and Maul's personal agent. Too bad this will probably never be followed up on outside of tie-in novels thanks to how bad the movie did. Also kinda awkward they made her Maul's Personal Assistant right after Rebels killed him off, meaning that Star Wars fans felt absolutely no curiosity about how the entire thing was going to go.

• L3-37: While K-2S0 brought droid characters to an awesome new high, L3-37 brought them to a new low. While not being as bad as Holdo and Rose, and being far more memorable than the chick, the spy dude, the TIE Fighter pilot dude, and the two Asian dudes from Rogue One (admit it, you don't fucking remember more than two of their names at best), she suffered the most from the reshoots the movie underwent. The /v/-tier name is only the warning label on this crock of shit. A droid that constructed a body for herself from spare parts and wound up as Lando's version of Chewbacca, L3-37 is a woke robot feminist in space by direct admission of the writers, with everything that implies while also being a revolutionary leader who gives no fucks about any disgusting meatbags and at the same time is physically romantically involved with Lando while giving romantic advice to other characters and at the same time is all about profit and shooting up the place while using other droids as just pawns in her rampages (did we mention this character REALLY suffered from the reshoots?) Her body is destroyed in an escape attempt but ends up as one of the droid brains running the Millennium Falcon (yes, the same computer C-3P0 complained about in the original trilogy; draw your own conclusions.) Long story short, the feminist/sexbot/droid-supremacist/human loving/spree killer provides constant tonal whiplash. Did we mention that since she began without having a body there was no reason to stick her in the Falcon which is a fate worse than death based on about 1/4 of her characterization, it adds a LOT of disturbing subtext to Lando's fondness for the Falcon and the fact that Han basically just kept it after winning the game despite knowing Lando's lover was trapped forever inside, the implications for the conversations she had with Threepio during Empire Strikes Back, and the fact it was kept abandoned by a criminal on a desert planet for at least a decade means she's probably gone even more insane? Fan reaction is mixed, but only between "worst character ever, would prefer to watch Jar Jar and Holdo star in a sitcom than watch the movie again" and "had potential, was disappointed, still don't like the name".

Nations and Organizations

• The Galactic Empire: Ever seen an evil, fascist space empire imposing itself on the galaxy with huge, evil spaceships and cool mooks? Then it was probably inspired by the Empire. Itself inspired by the brutalist designs of Nazi Germany, the First Galactic Empire is overall the classic authoritarian dictatorship, propped up by legions of obedient but easily disposable troops, cool propaganda that paints them as the saviours of the galaxy and ambitious officers ready to be choked for their failures. The Empire was created from the infrastructure of the Republic when Emperor Sheev Palpatine took singular power of the senate, ostensibly to keep the galaxy safe after the Clone Wars, but totally because he was a powerful Sith Lord who wanted to get his evil fascist dick hard. Once the galaxy got wise to this, the Empire used fear to keep them in line, which is one of the reasons why they took a liking to huge Star Destroyers and Death Stars, since they look fucking terrifying. While evil overall (as our Lord and Savior George of the Lucas proclaims it), individual people go from normal people who knows no better since they've lived with propaganda up their exhaust ports all their lives to genuine psychopaths like Palpatine and Grand Moff Tarken. The Empire eventually broke apart after the Battle of Endor where the Emperor was killed (allegedly; it's more complicated than that...), his apprentice turned to the Light Side of the Force and the second Death Star blown up. The remains of the Empire's military became the Imperial Remnants who fought the New Republic and each other for control of resources.
  • Imperial Remnant (Legends): in the original continuity, the Empire splintered into different warlord factions after the death of the Emperor and took several decades for the New Republic to defeat. At various points these remnants continued to threaten the New Republic for a long time, including the splinter lead by tactical genius Admiral Thrawn. They did team up temporarily to fight off the extragalactic invaders, the Yuuzhan Vong. Eventually the largest remnant, which had greatly mellowed out its policies since Palpatine's death, made peace with the New Republic. Would continue to exist into Cade Skywalker's era 130+ years after the Battle of the Yavin, where it would split into two major factions; one that was more overtly associated with the Sith and reminiscent of the pre-Rule-of-Two Sith Empire, and the other lead by a royal family of Force Sensitives more akin to Grey Jedi. After a war, the One Sith (faction name of the last Sith group) aligned faction is defeated, tries to go back into the shadows but is destroyed by a renegade One Sith, Darth Wredd, who wants to return to the Rule of Two but dies before taking an apprentice leaving the Sith extinct. The Fel Empire joins the New Republic successor government and the Jedi for to form the new galactic government.
  • Imperial Remnant (Disney): In the Disney canon, most of the Empire surrendered or retreated into the Unknown Regions not long after the Battle of Endor, but various warlords still existed in the Outer Rim for at least five years since the fall of the Empire. The New Republic decides to just ignore them because fuck it Jar Jar Abrams wanted Rebels vs. Empire again, couldn't be assed to explain it and had no plans for the rest of the trilogy anyways. Considering how a large part of the Galaxy's history can be characterized as "Core Vs Outer Rim," its likely that the New Republic didn't want to fuck around with such a large clusterfuck of a region when they were still trying to consolidate the core, which unfortunately allowed for opportunists like Grand Moff Gideon and his droid armies to grow in the shadows.

• The Republic: Before the Empire, the galaxy was governed by a huge representative democracy, seen in the prequel movies. Its corrupt as fuck, and not really capable of much other than ignore the fact most of the galaxy is already at war with itself, entire species are being wiped out in ethnic purges faster than they can be counted in a census, and slavery is pretty much everywhere. Acts like one nation, functions as an economic forum for oligarchs while planets police themselves to varying degrees. Besides failing to act on the many atrocities happening in the galaxy (and those they do intervene in ended up sowing resentment into the future Separatists), a major issue was that Republic policies gave special treatment to the prosperous Core worlds and large corporations over the remote and impoverished Rim worlds. Don’t fuck with Hutts, leaving them to do whatever they want in most of the galaxy, and until Sheev took over and made it the prelude to his Empire the only thing they ever did to get shit done is ask the Jedi to deal with it, whatever it is. The scary thing is that in the final years of the Republic, the Senate voluntarily laid the groundwork for the Empire long before Order 66 and nobody even noticed it happened until decades later, when Palpatine received his emergency powers at the start of the Separatist Crisis and the opening of the Clone Wars.

• The Old Republic: The early Republic. Far less corrupt, and had a standing army made up of what can charitably be called a mix of rent-a-cop security and elite paramilitary volunteers. It was also far smaller, as the Republic only gradually expanded in stages across the galaxy, with humans leading most colonization efforts. Still rely heavily on Jedi, but mostly just for dealing with Sith. Hutt territory is more formal rather than them operating everywhere.
  • Ruusan Reformation: 1000 years before the Battle of Yavin, after the apparent destruction of the Sith, the Republic underwent a massive reorganization that made it into the Republic, but started with a dark age due to the damage caused by the war. Used to reconcile a problem in the films where the Republic is said to have existed for both 1000 years and "a thousand generations". This also solves how many details about pre-Prequel works had substantially different depictions of the Republic and Jedi from what the prequels wound up doing, and how there were wars when a character says there hasn't been a full scale war since the formation of the Republic.

• The New Republic: The post-Empire government that the Rebellion forms.
  • Legends: Leia rules for a time, trying to manage the various monsters of the week and Imperial remnant groups, gradually stepping down to more minor titles to avoid being another Emperor. Then they have to deal with things like the extragalactic cenobite invaders that cause a galaxy-wide holocaust while her Jedi kids died or flirted with being evil. Eventually it forms the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, a confederation that includes a less-evil Imperial remnants (which it had been at peace with for a while) and some other powers, remaining a stable force combating Sith and their empires ever. During this time, Leia's granddaughter was prophesied to bring the Light Side of the Force into ascendance while a female Force-Cthulhu tried to co-opt the prophecy for herself. After Luke defeats her, a few decades are skipped and the Federation is defeated by a Sith backed Imperial Remnant faction, the Fel Empire. The Sith then backstab the Imperials and kick off the Sith Imperial war. The Federation and the Jedi help the loyalists defeat the One Sith, and the Sith themselves are rendered extinct after Darth Wredd (who wanted to bring back the Rule of Two) kills them all and dies before taking an apprentice, leaving the Federation, the Fel Empire and the Jedi (who had suffered another purge before the Sith backstabbed Emperor Roan Fel, who died at the hands of his Gray Jedi/Imperial Knight Bodyguard in the final battle after falling to the Dark Side and succeeded by his daughter Marasiah) to form the last known government, the Galactic Federation Triumvirate.
  • Disney: Focused on defeating the Empire, then dismantled the Rebellion militarily. Focused mostly on being an intermediary with independent planets, paying for each one in the alliance to have their own militia with treaties to support each other if attacked, while the Republic itself had a small fleet to bolster anyone in need. Despite sounding like the setup for World War 1, it actually is like the US/Soviet Cold War with the Imperial remnant then its successor the First Order, until the FO performed a Star Wars 9/11 and used a planetkiller weapon to destroy all the planets in the sector of the New Republic capital then invaded the independent planets. Being essentially destroyed with their capital system despite being the galactic government which should have contingencies for such events since existence of planetkillers is common knowledge, the planets focused on their own survival until Lando performed a short planet-hopping tour to rile up the militias and all the scum, villainy, and pirates who wanted to see the true death of the Empire/First Order. During its reign it had far less control over the galaxy than the Republic or Empire, but clever administration and assigned leadership of the militias made traditionally dangerous and lawless planets like Tatooine finally civilized. Its ultimate fate is now unknown.

• Confederacy of Independent Systems: aka the Separatists. Due to the rampant corruption in the Republic, a lot of systems were very unhappy with the state of the galaxy and wanted out. However, many of these separatists included extremely powerful corporate goons, such as the Trade Federation, who simply wanted more power for themselves, and were willing to lease out their droid armies to that end. While outwardly they were simply disgruntled and neglected planets who wanted independence, in reality the CIS existence was deliberately engineered by the Sith in order to further their goals in the creation and maintenance of the Empire. Under the leadership of Count Dooku, they formed a formidable alliance that would threaten the core worlds of the Republic, eventually leading to the Clone Wars that would throw the galaxy into one of the bloodiest conflicts in centuries. And despite Dooku's purported political idealism at the start of the war, the more idealistic and politically motivated worlds who wanted to escape the Republic's corruption found themselves sidelined by the big Corporate worlds who controlled the war effort and stationed their droid armies everywhere. As the war progressed, bloodthirsty war criminals like General Greivous made the Republic fear and loathe any hint of disloyalty, which was a major PR problem for the early Rebellion. One of the big ironies is that, because the CIS turned out to be just as corrupt as the Republic, many Separatist worlds begrudgingly sided with the Empire as the "lesser of two evils" in their minds. The fact that the CIS was made up of powerful, alien corporations from the Outer Rim also served to justify the Empire's xenophobia, nationalization of virtually all heavy industry, and subjugation of worlds far away from the Core. Because the Separatists were simply an expendable puppet of the Sith, Palpatine had no qualms about sending Vader to destroy the remaining leaders once he secured his Empire and they'd outlived their usefulness.

• The Rebel Alliance: After Emperor Palpatine's political takeover succeeded and the Jedi murdered in a galaxy-wide act of backstabbery, Senators Bail Organa, Padmé Amidala, Mon Mothma and a small group of sympathizers come together to form a resistance group, knowing fully well that the new Galactic Empire won't be going quietly with their new "doctrines", especially since the Empire's militarization only increased following the end of the Clone Wars. The rebellion's supporters were an odd mixture of former Separatists, Republic loyalists who found themselves betrayed such as Kashyyk and Mon Calamari, and the occasional Imperial defector who found Imperial service either too immoral or too dangerous. For the next twenty years, the Rebellion will infiltrate, sabotage and generally frustrate the Empire as best they can, but unfortunately doesn't manage to really make a big difference; that is, before a certain Luke Skywalker gets swept up by them and leads them to their first, grand victory against the Empire's first Death Star. From here on out, the Rebellion does their best keeping themselves hidden from the Empire while maintaining strong relations with their allies, who, while few, did let them create a small fleet of outdated vehicles. Eventually, the Rebellion's hard work bears fruit after the second Death Star blows up and the Emperor goes missing. From here, the Rebellion and their members become the New Republic.
  • The Resistance: From a first look, the Resistance looks extremely similar to the Rebellion visually (they are called "The Resistance" for Pete's sake!), but there's a little more going on under the hood. Feeling her hairbuns tingle with fear, Leia Organa realizes the First Order will become a galaxy-wide headache soon and moves to get the New Republic to give a shit - except they don't, because her father was Vader, and thinks she's a military maverick that just wants to feel important. Leia then begins to fund a secret militia of her own, looking for supporters among fellow senators and calling in old friends. The result is... Less than ideal. Functionally just a strikeforce of some twenty fighters and one or two capital ships (who by now are über-mega outdated), the Resistance can do jack shit against the First Order, who literally commands entire space empires by force. By the Force Awakens, they're pretty much fucked - but luckily gets themselves two new heroes to add to the fold (one who is among the most naturally talented forces users ever seen), re-connect with Han and Chewie AND find a fucking map to Luke Skywalker's personal pillowfort he left for some 5-10 years ago. Eventually fucked up after destroying the Starkiller Base and grinded to metal spacedust by a prolonged space chase, they eventually manage to ignite resistance in the entire galaxy, which gets a fuckhueg navy of ragtag ships to reinforce them at Exegol.

• The Hutt Cartels: Essentially the space mafia, if the mafia had the clout to influence the national government (like in Russia during the 90s with the Russian Mob). If there's an affair that's illegal by legal standards, the Hutts probably have a hand in it. Keeps to themselves and doesn't care much for what the Sith and Republic is up to, though Jabba the Hutt, owner of Tatooine, takes part in the original trilogy because of Han Solo's longstanding debt to him. Gets helped and funded by the Empire to do their dirty work and gets killed for his efforts, so there's a good reason why they keep out of all that. Hutt space has significant overlap with the cartels, but the two are technically separate.

• The First Order: If the Empire was the textbook fascist dictatorship, Disney's First Order is the Nazi Party itself as a military organization/cult. After the Imperial Remnants began fighting amongst themselves, an Imperial admiral fled to the Unknown Regions to rebuild her version of the Empire. Here the First Order grew slowly as former Imperials joined them and they subjugated small local fiefdoms and kingdoms. Eventually the previously unknown Sith Lord Snoke took control as their Supreme Leader and Ben Solo joined him as his apprentice, becoming Kylo Ren. The New Republic eventually learned of the First Order, but thought they were just a paper tiger with no real power. In actuality, their military tech and capabilities were quite high for how relatively small they were... Oh yeah, and they had created a superweapon built into a trench in the planet Ilum that could destroy a whole star-system. Eventually they fired the thing and waged a war of subjugation on the anarchic remains of the New Republic.
  • SPOILERS: Behind the scenes, the Emperor had manipulated the creation of the First Order to retake the galaxy, using an artificial body double (Snoke) to take direct control while hiding on the Sith homeworld. The plan was to eventually add his own fleet of Star Destroyers with planet-destroying capabilities to the First Order and form the Final Order, the one and final armada to take the entire galaxy through force and fear.

• Galactic Federation Triumvirate: The last known galactic government at the ends of the Legends continuity, formed from the Fel Empire, the Federation and the Jedi after the One Sith are defeated by a joint coalition of Fel Empire loyalists, Federation Troops and Jedi in 137 ABY. In 138 ABY, renegade One Sith Darth Wredd, wishing to restore the Rule of Two, manipulates the One Sith to destroy themselves and kills the survivors, before being killed himself without managing to take an apprentice, leaving the Sith extinct and the galaxy at least nominally unified by a well armed government.

Significant Worlds

Theres a fuckton of planets in the Star Wars Galaxy, so we'll limit this list to the more noteworthy ones (mostly the ones that show up in films).

• Tatooine: A run down desert world orbiting a binary star system on the outer rim of the galaxy. It has a few dingy little cities, towns and farms home to a collection of criminals, smugglers, people scraping by and slaves with some basic order imposed by Hutt Crime families. The oral history of the native sand people suggests that it was considerably more lush before its inhabitants pissed off the Rakata, but the source for that notes oral histories are generally inaccurate. Surprisingly it is the most visited world in the franchise, showing up in every film but Empire Strikes Back due to the Skywalker family's connection to this craphole.

• Naboo: Lush planet between the Mid rim and outer rim, shared by both humans and gungans. Interestingly, the planet core is connected to the planet's oceans, though travel through the core is quite dangerous due to the leviathans living there. The planet hadn't been terribly important right up until the Trade Federation came knocking to demand tax payments over its trade routes, which began a series of conflicts culminating in the Clone Wars. Relatively close to Tatooine, which is how the Jedi end up discovering Anakin Skywalker during the conflict when they're forced to evacuate the Queen of Naboo.

• Coruscant: The Capital of the Republic and the Empire, a Ecumenopolis in which basically every square meter of it's surface is covered in a multi-kilometer thick cityscape. Originally found in George Lucas's notes as "Imperial Center", Timothy Zahn named it Coruscant in the Thrawn Trilogy (as Imperial Center was clearly not the original name) and Lucas was convinced to keep the name when it came time to make the prequels. Before the prequels, pronunciation in audio books was all over the place. Descriptions of the city are not unlike your typical Hive City, where the elites live in the upper levels where the sky is still visible, while the lower class live in the dark, crumbling foundations, but with a slightly more Art Deco vibe rather than Gothic. The actual planet surface is mostly landfill now, and the lower levels got increasingly uninhabitable after the Yuuzhan Vong terraformed the planet and later the Force-Cthulhu Abeloth made some new volcanoes. Not much is shown of Coruscant in the Disney canon after the prequel era, and its not even the capital of the New Republic.

• Yavin IV: Jungle moon of the gas giant Yavin. The temples on this moon used to house a warrior race that had been enslaved by the Sith before being driven to extinction; it then became the secret base of the Rebel Alliance, which became the staging area for the Alliance's battle against the first Death Star. After the superweapon's destruction, the Empire launched a conventional attack and the Alliance was forced to relocate to Hoth. After the Thrawn Campaign, it became the site of Luke's new Jedi Academy which, after a brief incident with a Sith wraith haunting the place, flourished until yet another galactic war forced them to relocate.

• Hoth: An obscure snow world devoid of any intelligent life, and seemingly named after a legendary Jedi master of old. It became the new headquarters for the Rebel Alliance after the fall of Yavin Base. It was established way back in the Newspaper comic that it was chosen by the rebels after Luke crash landed on it and encountered a pair of malfunctioning Replica Droid prototypes fleeing from their creators. Further sources have expanded on its reasons for being chosen to include the fact that it's just off of a major trade route, which concealed supply runs (and is why Bespin is within backup drive distance).

• Bespin: Gas giant with a breathable upper atmosphere. Home to Cloud City, an independent city that makes its income through mining Tibanna gas (used in blasters). Bespin's independence was used as political leverage when Vader arrived and extorted Lando Calrissian into betraying the rebels to him. After some double crossing, the Rebels would later liberate Bespin from the Imperials.

• Kamino: Ocean planet that technically exists outside the Galaxy proper, in between it and what is known as the "Rishi Maze," which was why it was a bitch to find. The inhabitants are expert geneticists, and the place is really hard to get to without knowing exactly what you're doing, making it the ideal location for growing the Republic's clone army.

• Geonosis: Desert world inhabited by bug people. Was used by the separatists to build their armies and strategize, eventually becoming the site of the first battle of the Clone Wars.

• Utapau: Temperate planet characterized by its massive sinkhole cities. General Grievous tried to rally the Seperatists here after Dooku's death, but was killed by Obi-Wan in the ensuing battle.

• Kashyyyk: Forest/jungle planet and home to the wookies, who live in gigantic tree houses connected by enormous suspension bridges. The interior of the jungle is full of a wide variety of dangerous lifeforms, so the wookies stay close to the canopy. During the Republic it was an important trade world due to its location, resources, and the expert craftsmanship of the wookies. Despite their loyalty, during the Empire the wookies were severely subjugated and enslaved. The Empire never truly took it over but did manage to pollute it to all hell.

• Mustafar: Lava planet and the last holdout of the Seperatists. Darth Vader makes his base here after he is forced to don his iconic armor, proving that he did have the high ground by plonking a gigantic black tower on the surface.

• Ilum: Small alpine planet covered in ice and snow and by the time of the prequels the galaxy's only known significant source of Kyber crystals, the core ingredient in a little thing we like to call "the lightsaber". Traditionally a place for Jedi to do pilgrimage to find their own Kyber crystal at, as Jedi initiates find that the only crystal visible to them in the caves is the one they're destined to use.
  • In Disney canon, the Empire turned one half of the surface into a gigantic strip-mine several hundred kilometers down into the crust. It was eventually rediscovered by the First Order and turned into an actually moon-sized laser cannon called Starkiller Base (This is poorly explained within the films; its not even identified as Ilum except in side stories. The idea is that like the original Death Star, the superlaser is powered by gigantic kyber crystals, and Ilum happens to be well inside the Unknown Regions yet its location and route were still known).

• Dathomir: Death World-style hellhole and home of Darth Maul. Filled with gigantic brambles, noxious swamps, poisonous critters and savagely insular tribals. The native inhabitants use the planet's natural Dark Side energy to do all sorts of creepy and arcane shit, including necromancy. Nearly all of its magick-using females were wiped out by the end of the Clone Wars, leaving the planet to decay.

• Dagobah: Uncharted swamp planet where Yoda went to live in exile. Noteworthy for the Dark Side cave, a naturally-occurring phenomenon where the dark side would tempt anyone who entered. Briefly the EU made the cave a remnant of a random dark force user Yoda fought there, but this was retconned away when it was implied Yoda had never visited the place before his exile, then the Clone Wars series made it so Yoda did visit Dagobah before his exile. This would just be a random detail if not for a significant character having his backstory linked to this event.

• Endor: A gas giant also known as Tana at the end of the Outer Rim before Wild Space (and it probably was in Wild Space before one of the most significant events in Galactic History took place there). The Empire built the second Death Star in its system.
  • Sanctuary Moon: Better known than the planet itself is its forest covered moon that the Empire build the shields for the under-construction Death Star 2 on. It's home to the short, furry and deadly Ewoks. It was the nominal capital of the interim Alliance of Free Planets and New Republic for two years till the capture of Coruscant.

• Death Star & Death Star II: We're fudging the definition of world here, but its not an exaggeration to say this thing is the size of a small moon and has a very sizeable population. While the Death Star II was incomplete, it was substantially bigger and more deadly. This thing was able to get around with a battery of hyperspace engines, but still took a fair amount to time to get around in order to get within firing range. Curiously enough, the idea for the superweapon came from Tarkin, but was designed by the Geonosians of all people, which then terrified the pants off the Republic that the Seperatists had a superweapon prompting them to start reverse-engineering the design (Just as planned as far as Palpatine was concerned).

Species

One important thing to note about alien species in Star Wars is that almost all of them were originally singular costumes added to the films for background color or to make a character stand out, then had a species name and culture retconned onto them by Expanded Universe writers. As a result, most species' "personalities" are just shallow clones of the character they're derived from. Many of the species seen in the original trilogy were given names and backstories by the original RPG from West End Games that became canon as every other EU novel to come after used Star Wars D6 as a reference.

• Humans: Leias. They originated in the Galactic Core, but have spread to most inhabited planets, first as slaves to a now-extinct species of precursors and then through initial space exploration with pre-hyperdrive generation ships. As a result there are a lot of "near-human" species kicking around that are basically just weird-looking humans and pretty much the only species humans can crossbreed with.
  • Mandalorians: Bobas. A society of space Spartans/Vikings with cool armor. Actually not human majority initially (Unless you are a Disney fan), originally made up of a species called the Taung. The Taung had a habit of adopting orphans of other species to the point that when shit hit the fan and they died out following a war with the Jedi, their culture was preserved by other species who remember them as their Progenitors. As it stands, a Mandarlorian can be of any race (the adopting the orphans-thing was something else the Taung passed down) but are usually human.
• Corellians: Hans. Literally an entire culture of dashing rogues and space cowboys who like to go fast and smuggle shit (and penniless street urchins looking for their big break to become dashing rogues and space cowboys). The Corellian Engineering Corporation made the YT series (of which the Falcon is officially part of, though its modifications are extensive enough to make listing CEC as its manufacturer a Ship of Theseus problem) and many of the Rebel ships seen in the original trilogy. Nearly ruined their planet with starship factories, but now they've gone green and relocated all of their heavy industry to space stations. Their home system reeks of precursor meddling and is detailed enough to be a setting in itself, complete with a Big Dumb Object in the middle (Centerpoint Station) for PCs to fuck with.
• Wookiees: Chewbaccas, and one of the only species to be named in the original films. Huge, swole sloth people that do not live on Endor and can't speak (but absolutely understand) Basic. Most are actually pretty peaceful and intelligent and they have produced a lot of highly skilled engineers. They also have a reputation for being the best Navigators in the galaxy, in part because their highly secretive Navigator's guild has plotted all sorts of shortcuts across the galaxy. They highly value people who save their life, becoming their eternal friend in what is known as a Life-debt; this is how Han met Chewie. They have retractable climbing claws, but a cultural taboo on using them in combat leads to those who do so being exiled as "madclaws". Has the unfortunate distinction of being the first species in Star Wars lore to have their home planet and culture detailed... via the Star Wars Holiday Special. Despite the infamy and single airing, the broad strokes survived the entirety of the Expanded Universe's lifespan and would reappear in Revenge of the Sith.
• Trandoshan: Bossks. Brutish, scaly Lizardfolk capable of regenerating severed limbs and absolutely obsessed with hunting shit. Have had a continuous species war with the Wookiees since before FTL was a thing, which is a long-ass time in Star Wars (well over 150,000 years), owing to the fact that the two species share a home system. Their religion is about scoring "points", with the only known method of gaining them is violent action and the only known method of losing them is being captured alive by enemies. The system was first mentioned a mere three years after Doom so the fact that they essentially see life as a giant, violent video game is likely pure coincidence. Despite this they aren't universally evil, though they often are.
• Gungans: Jar-Jars. These guys suffer from an extremely poor choice of poster-boy (compared to Wookiees who have one of the best possible poster-boys of their species). You may think that just because Jar-Jar is one of the least intelligent characters in the entire Star Wars galaxy, the rest of his species are too, but if you can look beyond Binks you'll see that the Gungans are pretty cool in their own way. Remember that, canonically, Jar-Jar is considered a disgrace in Gungan culture before the Battle of Naboo and after the rise of the Empire (as Senator Binks directly enabled it). Masters of organic technology, they live in bubble-buildings under the sea and have access to bioelectric spears and booma (essentially organic shock grenades fired by the various historical throwing devices) alongside army-wide shield generators (in defiance of everyone else in the galaxy deriding them as primitives). Like the Wookiees these guys have a warrior-culture to be proud of, but unlike them they have at least made the effort to have a go at learning to speak basic (even though they still need to work on it). Due to their cartilaginous skeletons they are especially athletic and dynamic, making them pretty good fighters if they are trained properly, and in a rarity for a sci-fi species they have a racial weapon that's actually entirely practical (sling hurled explosives continue to see use today). Certainly if you want an accurate Gungan poster-boy, look no further than Captain Tarpals, who manages to hold General Grievous up in a duel for several minutes with nothing more than his spear. Oh, and their king is voiced by BRIAN BLESSED. Still don't like them? Well, at least feel comfortable in the knowledge that they're more entertaining than anything in the Sequel Trilogy.
• Twi'leks: Technicolored humanoids from Ryloth (which is about as far as you can get from the core worlds without leaving the major hyperspace lanes) with weird head-tails ("lekku") that they have instead of hair. Enough have been transported off world, generally as slaves, they can be found anywhere, and many have never seen their ancestral home. Given it's a borderline death world whose chief economic exports are drugs and slaves, they aren't missing anything. Their most interesting physical quality (aside from the girls being hot) is that they can communicate silently with their lekku. TORtanic tried to rationalize their fetish for enslaving their own as being the result of a precursor project to design the perfect slave species, but nobody cares about this because TORtanic is shit.
• Duros: Seen once in Hope during the cantina scene. Naturally they're one of the most important species in the EU despite not having a canon character until The Clone Wars introduced us to Cad Bane. Enslaved by precursors alongside humans, they were among the first to develop FTL travel based on salvaged hyperdrive technology and are the only non-human species to have an equivalent of "near-human" in a few "near-Duros" species.
• Bothans: Died to bring you this information. A species of wolf-men/goat-men (depending on which author/illustrator) who are almost universally spies thanks to that one-off line from Mon Mothma. In truth the best and early EU works portray them as something far worse: politicians. The most prominent Bothan is Borsk Fey'lya, a Bothan politician who used his role in the acquisition of the second Death Star plans to maintain a place in the New Republic's senior leadership and uses his position for personal gain like any proper politician should. Now possibly NOT wolfgoatpeople, thanks to some Lucasfilm source being all like “it’s never explicitly stated that they’re aliens, maybe they’re humans, *WINK*”.
• Rodians: Greedos. Their home planet being a death world full of predators means they are often aggressive and put hunters in high regard, which is the EU excuse for all the film Rodians being criminals.
• Chiss: Thrawns. Near humans with blue skin, dark blue/black hair and red eyes. They dwell in the Unknown Regions, with they’re own fancy schmancy empire, crack navy and altogether superior technological advancements that make the rest of the galaxy look fucking backward (see blaster resistant clothes...whereas fucking stormtrooper armour can be defeated by arrows loosed by Care Bears). Known for being superb pilots, traders, negotiators, tacticians and all round scheming bastards with Danish accents.
• Gran are three eyed goat (?) like aliens with rough, tan skin. They are quite nice and peaceful with excellent vision, especially in distinguishing color. Unfortunately for the galaxy at large, Gran exile most of their criminals: They consider being unable to see the rich and beautiful environments of their homeworld a fate worse than death. These exiles often fall into criminal groups.
• Mon Calamari: Ackbars. An aquatic species whose long history of making airtight vehicles for travel in three dimensions has made them excellent ship-builders. During the early days of the Rebellion the Mon Calamari were one of the few species to successfully throw off the Empire during Operation Domino and not be subject to immediate reprisal thanks to their isolated location and strategy of mining hyperspace routes to buttfuck any Imperial ships sent to shut them down (ships coming out of hyperspace don't have shields). Those weird-looking bubble ships from Return of the Jedi are built by Mon Calamari.
  • Quarren: Another background species from Jedi who share their homeworld of Dac with the Mon Calamari. Prideful isolationists who stick to the depths, with their main contact to the surface being trading deep sea mined materials to the Mon Calamari. Look more than a bit like Illithid.
• Gamorreans are space Orcs: Pig-like, brutish, stupid and violent. Constantly at war with each other, their clan identity is so strong they'll try to kill each other if from opposing clans if they meet off-world. Frequently brought into the galaxy as slaves or by clans trading labor/muscles for outside resources. Like Wookiees, can't physically speak Basic. Unlike Wookiees, only their clan matrons and some high ranking men are literate in their native language.
• Zabrak: Mauls. Near-humans with mostly bald, spikey heads and two hearts. Those black markings Maul had are actually ritualistic tatoos that Zabrak men often get. They were pretty divided internally till the Empire decided to oppress them all and force them to join together. Eeth Koth of the Jedi Council was one.
  • Dathomirians are a sub-species of Zabrak native to Dathomir who supposedly interbred with humans to create a new group, which was separated according to gender, though their origins have been neglected in current canon. Even so, the females of this sub-species do not have the spiked heads typical of other Zabraks. Darth Maul is the most prominent Dathomirian in the films and TV series.
• Togruta: Red skinned humanoids with lekku and hollow horns that allow echolocation. Shaak Ti and Ahsoka were Togruta.
• Hutts: Jabbas. (Fun fact: "the Hutt" was just a title in the original trilogy and Jabba was just some random slug dude. The original film didn't even intended for him to be an alien!) Naturally they're all mini-Jabbas who live in a clan/crime-family/zaibatsu type of arrangement known as the kadjic. Kind of like the Mexican drug cartels in that they have their own corner of the galaxy that they rule independently, even after they join the Empire they pay the Moff to look the other way when they do shady shit. (They're always doing shady shit.) Because the Hutts own exactly one third of all organized crime (and a significant number of planets) in the galaxy and it is the third (after Basic and Binary) most widespread full language, Huttese is a good language to take, especially for criminal-types . Be warned! Hutts have four fingered hands and their numbering system uses base eight! Despite being looking and acting like fat neckbeards they're actually insanely strong and their less bulky youth are very agile for their size. They LOL at the Force, so the RPGs tend to give them a huge bonus to resist mental influence.
• Sullustan: Short, tunnelfaring, crafters who can drink a lot without getting drunk. Vaguely simian near-humans with flappy jowls, large ears, and black eyes that originally evolved for tunnels. Their SoroSuub company is one of the largest tech makers in the galaxy, and likely the largest that isn't Human run.
• Toydarians: Wattos. Blue tapir-looking dudes from Hutt Space who can hover on fly-like wings. As their source character is a hilariously offensive Jewish stereotype, the EU largely ignored Toydarians until The Clone Wars reinvented them as a vaguely Cambodian monarchy on a mud world. Mind tricks don't work on them (only money).
• Jawa: Utinni! They roam Tatooine (and a few other planets) scavenging technology and selling it. A handful of sources mention they are rodents under the hoods.
• Ewoks: If skub became a species, Ewoks would be a contender up there with Gungans and Yuuzhan Vong. Small koala-like creatures, similar to Jawas, that live on the forest moon of Endor, Ewoks are super primitive and live in tribes. They end up playing a big part in the Rebel victory in Return by attacking Imperial stormtroopers and destroying some walkers. Their reception didn't seem too bad at first, but in the following decades they've become reviled by many, not so much for their design but more for the idea that small bears with spears and rocks could defeat what were supposed to be the Emperor's finest troops. Some people don't mind them (and they were definitely profitable for merchandise) but others hate them and say they're a prime reason that attitudes toward Return have gotten increasingly negative over the years.
• Neimoidians: Trade Federation flunkies; they will not survive this. Their reproductive cycle is really weird, producing lots of grubs which are raised in warrens fighting over a limited amount of food in which the weak are culled. Unlike how this usually goes, this process makes the Neimodians prone to hoarding resources and wary of danger.
• Noghri: Primitive, short saurian people who happen to be some of the deadliest non-Jedi melee combatants and assassins in the galaxy. Darth Vader bought their loyalty by saving them from the environmental damage a crashed ship caused. They are a major part of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy, which they were invented for.
• Tarasin: Invented whole-cloth for the Living Force campaign for Star Wars D20. Lizardmen with scales that change color based on their emotions and frilled necks. With focus they can control their colors enough to camouflage themselves and even "speak" silently amongst each other. They had a high degree of force sensitivity, though if this a result of their species or their home system being a place where the Force is strong is unknown.
• Shards: Sapient crystals. They are incapable of movement and don't speak the way humans do. They can however control droid bodies they are implanted into. Several are force sensitive which led to a Jedi teaching them the ways of the Force. The Jedi order shunned these "Iron Knights" and excommunicated the master responsible. This wound up benefiting them though, as the master and his students were able to survive the Jedi purge due to the obscurity this granted. When Luke's new order emerged they welcomed the Shards with open arms.
• Rakata: The aforementioned precursors, developed by BioWare for the Knights of the Old Republic game (though there were a few mentions of precursors here and there before that). Formed an "Infinite Empire" long before the Republic using dark side powered hyperdrives only they could use. When they gradually lost their force sensitivity their empire fell apart. Responsible for why there are so many Humans and Human off-shoots everywhere: They were seeded throughout the Infinite Empire as a slave species and abandoned when it fell. There is no evidence they existed past the Old Republic era, where a few fractured and primitive survivors were seen on their home planet and this planet was devoid of life by the time of the Ruusan Reformation.
• Sith: Red skinned near-humans with boney tentacles growing out from near their nose and an affinity for the dark side, especially illusions. Natives of Korriban, the order most people know as Sith were a result of exiled dark Jedi interbreeding with them and adding their knowledge of technology. So diluted with human blood they were extremely rare by the Old Republic era and believed extinct by the time of of the prequels. A few small mostly primitive pockets had been discovered however, but were covered up by Palpatine so he could grab more dark side goodies. More or less invented whole-cloth for the EU.
• Yuuzhan Vong: Humanoids with pallid skin and tapered skulls from another galaxy who only use organic technology. Native to a living planet called Yuuzhan'tar which they worshipped as a god, their first contact experience was an interstellar robot war. They fought back, turned their biotech into weapons, and defeated the invaders - and in the process discovered a taste for war and conquest (plus a hatred of machines) that led them to invent a war god and conquer their galaxy... which they later destroyed through infighting. The destruction of their homeworld cut them off from the Force, unintentionally making them mostly immune to it. The Vong tried to undo this but instead ended up developing species-wide fetishes for pain and body modification. After generations of searching, they found and invaded the Star Wars galaxy, leading to a galactic war that decimated the New Republic, caused multiple genocides and had a death toll around 365 trillion (including Chewbacca). Luke and his family ended the war by killing the various Vong leaders and finding Yuuzhan'tar's offspring Zonama Sekot. The Vong colonized Sekot, were reconnected to the Force and became terraformers as penance for the war. Rendered part of the Legends by Disney. Some fans consider the Yuuzhan Vong a fresh blast of originality that provided a threatening and utterly badass new foe (even Dave Filoni has tried at least twice to pull the Yuuzhan Vong into his projects), while others consider them a nonsensical edgelord race that relied on major retcons to make sense.
• Grysk: A near mythical species from the Unknown regions, where starships usually can't go because the hyperspace along its border is a level of fucked-up that only warp storms can match. Little is known about them except that they live on a spacefleet, have a fierce warrior culture, are humanoids with tapered skulls, their weapons and armor are ritualistically disfigured on the right side and they had a penchant for electrical weapons. Likely Disney's replacement for the Yuuzhan Vong, since Space Cenobites with bio-tech is too weird and grimdark for Disney. tl;dr the Grysk are the Rak'gol to the Yuuzhan Vong's Tyranids.

The Galaxy (and beyond)

The Galaxy Far Far Away is a spiral galaxy about 120,000 light year in diameter. It is home to an unusually high number of populated planets and species. It has a few smaller satellite galaxies, though only one is ever visited in the entity of Star War media and only in an obscure short story (but visitors from the others have come).

• The Deep Core: The innermost part of the galaxy. Due to a high number of black holes, and dense star clusters, only the outer most areas are explored. The sole exception is a top secret Imperial bunker world of Byss, also Empress Teta (a world that once rivaled Coruscan in population, named after the badass who broke Naga Sadow's attempt to destroy the Republic with the Old Sith Empire) is just on the inside of the border between the Deep Core and the Core.
• The "Core" worlds: The most populated and best mapped part of the galaxy. Holds the actual capital of the Republic/Empire/New Republic, and some of the biggest sources of culture. The earliest known home world of Humans and Duros, but the Rakata taking these species as slaves leaves the world of their origin a mystery.
• Colonies: The first areas that was expanded to after hyperspace travel came about.
• Inner Rim: The next set of areas colonized. By the time of the films, they’re pretty developed.
  • Hapes Cluster: An independent system of stars ruled by the matriarchal Hapes Consortium. Even for Star Wars, it's incredibly dense in populated worlds. They took in a large number of Separatist scientists at the end of the Clone Wars and by the New Republic it has unique technology that's more advanced in some areas despite lagging behind in some other areas.
• Mid rim: An even further area of expansion. Where the Mid Rim ends and the Outer Rim begins is a bit vague, with a lot of the outer Mid Rim being barely if at all better off than the Outer Rim.
• Outer Rim: The farthest reach of the galaxy. Civilization is sparsely populated, neglected by the galactic authorities and/or largely dominated by the independent and cruel Hutt Empire.
  • Hutt Space: An autonomous section of the galaxy ruled by the Hutt clans ("Kajidic"). How, exactly, head of state (or any government function) is determined and what titles they hold is unclear, but there seems to be some Hutt that somehow becomes on top of it. A lack of extradition agreements with the Republic renders it a haven for criminals, who in turn kick money back to the Hutts. It joins the Empire during its existance, only to continue its shifty ways after early Imperial attempts to wipe out crime fail and regain independence after Palpatine's death.
• Corporate Sector/Tingel Arm: The "northern" most edge of the galaxy. Over 400 years before The Phantom Menace, the Republic had the brilliant idea to develop an unpopulated section of the galaxy: Get a bunch of large companies to do it in exchange for some autonomy, resource rights and lower taxes. Naturally this went poorly, and the whole place is a Cyberpunk style megacorp controlled dystopia. Originated in the Han Solo books, one of the first expanded universe books ever, and the fluff from there has seen little change.
• Unknown Regions: The vast, largely unexplored due to similar issues to the core, western chunk of the galaxy. It actually has several native hyperspace capable civilizations forging their own empires by the New Republic era, one of which was already active over 4000 years before the Battle of Yavin.
• Wild Space: Wild Space is the area of the galaxy that is charted and open to Hyperspace travel, but unsettled and most of the detail on the maps is lacking. Holds the Rishi system, the only publicly known path to the Rishi maze (a state secret path in the Outer Rim's Rothana goes to Kamino).
• Rishi Maze: The only one of the satellite galaxies to be visited by those from the main galaxy, able to be accessed by traveling a chain of systems stuck between the two. The one short story that actually goes there describes it as a mess of radiation, but this could be the particular system within the maze. The only people known to live here are exploiting the natural resource deposits and hiding from The Empire. More well known is the cloner planet of Kamino, which is between the main galaxy and the maze.
• (unnamed) Yuuzhan Vong galaxy: This was the home galaxy of the EU race the Yuuzhan Vong, their original homeworld of Yuuzhan'tar, the planet Zonama Sekot, the reptoid Chazrach, and possibly the Silentium (who made first contact and war on the Vong) and the Abominor droid civilizations . The galaxy was a spiral galaxy like GFFA and had a vast number of sentient races in it; however, the Yuuzhan Vong wiped the others out, save the Chazrach whom they instead enslaved. The Yuuzhan Vong referred to it as the "ancestral galaxy", and much of it was destroyed when the Yuuzhan Vong started fighting among themselves after dominating the galaxy, with its current state of what's left of it unknown.
• Firefist Galaxy: Another one of the orbiting galaxies. The only contact the main galaxy has had with it has been sending probes. Home to the Faruun, Maccabree, Nagai and Tof, all of which arrived during the early New Republic fleeing the problems of their home or in pursuit. All of this comes from the Marvel comics (with some smoothing in the details in reference books), but despite the general oddness of fitting the Marvel comics into more modern canon and many silly concepts in those comics, the presence of these species and their conflict is largely accepted because, unlike the other extragalactic visitors, it's not very disruptive to overall canon to include them. Given that Disney now owns both Marvel and Star Wars, we may see more of them.

Technology

Star Wars appears to be a fairly standard sci-fi world (because it set that standard), but there's many subtle nuances that are easily missed

• Hyperdrives take ships to Hyperspace where they can travel and arrive at other destinations at FTL speed. Using a hyperdrive takes careful calculation to not only arrive on target, but avoid hitting anything on your way there.
  • Each hyperdrive has a class, which multiplies travel time. At the time of the Rebellion, the standard was 2x, with newer/upgraded ships often packing class 1x and the Millennium Falcon (proclaimed to be the fastest ship in The Galaxy) had a class 0.5 as a result of modifications that made it unreliable. Anything larger than a fighter has a backup hyperdrive of much higher class (typically double digit) to ensure the crew can limp to the nearest populated system in the event of failure of the primary drive.
  • Most travel occurs along the great hyperspace lanes, where the way is known to be clear and calculations are more established.
  • Vehicles have to start up their shields after they complete their jump, which makes them vulnerable if you can predict where they are coming from. This makes launching an attack purely to target any reinforcements possible.
  • Hyperspace itself is weird, and standard procedure is to avoid looking outside long term during travel to prevent people from going nuts. Communications while in hyperspace (except to ships making the same jump) are near impossible. Leaving hyperspace without the ship you came in on is impossible, and ejecting someone during travel ensures their death.
  • There's a handful of instances of of hyperdrive failures sending people to Otherspace, an alternate dimension populated by a ship graveyard and hostile bug aliens with organic technology.
  • One thing that's often overlooked is that modern hyperdrive technology is adapted from the dark side powered hyperdrives of the ancient Rakata after they lost the ability to use The Force and could no longer travel to maintain their empire. The result is that even experts don't have a total understanding of how Hyperspace works.
  • Interdictor ships are capable of generating artificial gravity well to stop travel through their path and prevent ships from getting away. These first appeared in the Mandalorian Wars of the Old Republic, using spammed tractor beams to fake gravity wells, but these couldn't keep pace with hyperdrive improvements and disappeared till a superior successor technology was developed in the Imperial era. During the early days of the New Republic, Admiral Ackbar devised a tactic of using of such ships to prevent ally movement, ordering one to power up if it detected sabotage on a planned target had failed so the incoming attackers would be pulled from hyperspace far enough away to retreat. It would be Thrawn however that would prove the true master of such maneuvers, developing a system that allowed reliable same-system hyperspace jumps during tactical combat, hence it's name, Thrawn Pincer.
• FTL communication comes in four forms, all with their own issues.
  • Holonet: The best known method for FTL communications. Vaguely comparable to the early internet, with news, primitive BBS, email, and some other stuff. Quite rare once you get past the developed core areas, and expensive to use both in setting it up and bandwith costs. Only military command vehicles and those for heads of state are likely to have personal holonet transceivers.
  • Subspace relay: The cheaper alternative to the holonet is subspace relays. Relatively slow and has problems with dropped communications, but still FTL. Most capital ships have subspace transceivers, and some smaller vehicles are known to have them as upgrades. Comparable to snail mail, with shopping being a mail order order system like the Sears Catalog (view catalog, send order and payment, await shipping) rather than online shopping.
  • Hyperspace Courier: Has all the problems of courier communication, and all the problems of hyperspace combined. Despite these faults, it's often the only choice for the most remote systems or if someone is disrupting the above two (like in a war) and always the only way to send physical goods.
  • The Force: Occasionally powerful Force users are seen communicating via The Force across very long distances. This requires both parties be strong in The Force and have a very close connection. Even then being able to do anything more than sense the other is in danger is a crapshoot.
• Blasters use energy to excite special gas that is then expelled to deadly effect. Most blasters have an alternate stun setting which provides less-lethal takedowns. Stun setting is quite reliable and consistent even on physically tough species like Wookiees, though it's not safe to use on pregnant women and outside of specialized stun-only blasters the range is rather low. Despite being energy weapons, they have quite a kick.
  • Normal firearms, known as slugthrowers, are also present. Compared to blasters they're cheaper, cause bleeding, can't be blocked by a lightsaber, can be suppressed, have faster projectiles and lower maintenance requirements, but have less initial stopping power, lower capacity, can't stun, make far more noise without a suppressor, and have heavier ammo.
  • Ion weapons disrupt electric systems, but cause little structural damage and only minor burns on living creatures. This allows them to disable droids or ships without totally destroying them, making them important in capturing them.
  • Sonic Weaponry exists, but it's considered an odd fork (as powerful as a slug thrower with none of its benefits) by everyone outside of water worlds and Jedi hunters.
• Replusorlift keeps vehicles, industrial equipment and some droids floating off the ground a good distance. Most spacecraft have repulsor systems as well, which is how they're able to operate in atmosphere despite their poor aerodynamics.
• Droids aren't a true species, but are playable in all RPGs. They're supposed to be really smart appliances, but Star Wars technology is so fucked up that a few develop sapience if left on too long without formatting. Despite this droids aren't considered people by the galaxy at large because sapient droids are as rare as non-evil drow and most of the time leaving droids running for a long time just makes them slower and buggier until they can't do their jobs anymore, like Windows, or, at best, overly attuned to a specific user. That a good number of sapient droids have learned to bypass that pesky "no killing" clause doesn't exactly encourage experimenting with it and trying to replicate it either.
  • Class 1 droids are designed to preform scientific applications like medicine or lab work. Since they were designed to be used in fixed locations most, but not all, have limited mobility.
  • Class 2 droids are designed to preform technical labor like repair work. Since they are expected to work within artificial locations they are generally on wheels or treads and have short, non-human shapes. One notable subcategory of Class 2 droids are Astromech Droids (like the famed R2 series), which are designed to plug into fighters and bombers where they function as a co-pilot, navicomputer and in-flight repair.
  • Class 3 droids are designed for human interaction, with jobs like translator or chef. Some lower end Class 3 droids were made for positions like waiter. Almost all of them are roughly human shape, with the main exception being those built by and for non-humans that instead resemble their intended masters.
  • Class 4 droids are the most varied but have one thing in common that clearly separates them: They are made for combat and (except for a few armed with only stun weapons) don't have programming against killing. Class 4 droids vary in intelligence from blaster turrets with some targeting AI to clever and ruthless assassins/commandos. Even Human Replica Droids, designed to be indistinguishable from humans, are technically Class 4. Many Class 4 droids have their nature obfuscated by building them into the shell of a Class 1 or Class 3 droid.
  • Class 5 droids are made for manual labor like heavy lifting or a power generator with legs. They are barely intelligent, rarely have names and almost never become sapient. They are however cheap and quite common.
• Cloaking devices come in two types.
  • The first was dependent upon crystals that became rare due to overharvesting. Use of a superweapon for deep excavation allowed an imperial research project to toy with the idea of fitting an entire squadron of fighters equipped with one.
  • The second, the hibridium model, used a different rare material and was developed near the end of the Empire, though didn't see use till after the fall. It was substantially (though still only relatively) cheaper but had two unique drawbacks. The first was that it also blinded the ship to the world outside and rendered it unable to communicate as well. These problems would briefly be overcome with the use of the Force instead. Afterwards the Remnant gave up on it as mostly useless, and agreed to ban it during the peace treaty with the New Republic.
  • Personal "stealth field" generators also seem to exist, unrelated to these. They simply dampen sound and bend light to make the wearer harder to spot and difficult (but not impossible) to see. Presumably these aren't upscaled for vehicle use because of the real world problem with such a concept of being completely useless against any sensor beyond just human level vision (still being blatantly obvious to thermal, as well as radar if they're big enough ect.).
• In many ways, while technology is advanced it's still in the mindset of 1983, if not 1977. As mentioned above, the internet (at least the interplanetary one) is quite primitive and poorly connected. Even though everyone has a tiny radio set (Comlink), there's no such thing as cellphones (you have to broadcast to a channel and hope whoever you want to hear something is listening). Aside from portable computers, which are quite expensive, and datapads, which still have limited functionality, most non-droid technology only does one thing. Unlike the 1913 rail and M-Lok equipped guns of the 90s onward, weapon accessories either need to be made for a single model or hand-fitted by an expert. Video games are either professional simulators or extremely primitive.
• Energy shields come in several variants
  • Ray shields protect from energy weapons but are useless against physical attacks. Most ships are equipped with ray shields.
  • Particle shields protect from physical attacks but are useless against energy attacks. Generally only bigger ships are equipped with particle shields while smaller ships such as fighters only have ray shields.
  • Planetary shields are the reason why ground battles happen and why orbital superiority isn't enough to secure a planet. They can withstand even the most severe bombardment for weeks, with only weapons like the Death Star being capable of penetrating them almost instantaneously. As a result, it is generally more feasible to land troops on the planet.

Setting History

This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it

Bear in mind the highly contradictory nature of canon and many sources from EU to Disney means any attempt to truly form a concrete history would take an in-depth scholarly pursuit of all sources and debate amongst the global community while taking into account upcoming new results that can entirely rewrite the record. You know, like real history (Tolkien did an admirable job, but nothing quite says plausible history like something everyone has an opinion on but nobody that anyone wants to listen to has fully researched). At any rate, what is presented here is an abridged version of the lore history, using the most complete accounts and combining the EU AKA “Legends” with the Disney canon when not contradictory (because despite having supposedly wiped it out of canon, there are frequent callbacks to parts of it). Though in fairness, Legends lore is far more fleshed out and takes priority in practice. Since it is under construction, it will probably be split into different sections.

• The universe begins, life begins to evolve. A lot of small things happen that tie into other stories, but aren’t worth mentioning outside that story. The first galactic civilization (that we know of) are the Rakata, aliens who are cruel and uplift various other species for slaves and food. This explains most aliens that are just paint and simple face prosthetics away from being human, as well as recurring traits like bipedalism. At some point the Rakata encounter the Hutts, and the result is the Rakata being nearly wiped out. Hutts did not possess space travel, nor would they until much later so how the fuck that happened isn’t clear, though it is mentioned that they lost their connection to the Force (universally the Dark Side due to species wide enforcement of being an asshole) after an unknown illness.
• Time progresses and the Rakata are forgotten. Civilizations develop and discover space travel, then hyperspace travel. Initial hyperspace colonization and mapping is risky, requiring oftentimes blind jumps and the hope there isn’t a star or something where you end up. Blind jumps that result in colonists losing contact with the rest of the universe evolve on their own, explaining some groups that are VERY similar but not the same species (for example, Miraluka are lost human colonists who ended up on a planet with poor light and over generations they evolved to not have eyes, but instead all have a Jedi-tier connection to the Force to “see” with).
• The Force-users find their jumps guided to a specific planet, with aliens from many diverse backgrounds guided to a planet (the name changes, we’ll say its Tython here although its been changed to Ahch-To in the Disney canon). Bringing their own religions, traditions, and cultures, the Force-users develop schools of thought on the philosophy. Eventually one group decides the meaning of life for the Force is to destroy evil (like Paladins), and wages war on the others saying “you’re with us or against us”. One group resists which saw honor and personal development as the meaning of life (like Cavaliers). The rest were split between the two. The Paladin-like aggressors were victorious, slaughtering and driving off the Cavalier-types. The Paladin-like Force-users would become the early Jedi. The Cavalier-types would find pain and misery in exile after multiple Great Schism's, sinking deep into worship of power and personal gain until enslaving a species of aliens and stealing both their dark Force/alchemy teachings as well as their name; the Sith and interbreeding with them to build the Old Sith Empire. This becomes a recurring pattern in Star Wars history regarding good and evil Force-users. Good creates its own evil by standing up and declaring themselves good and morally correct, turning any challengers to their orthodoxy towards the Dark Side (look, it comes up whenever Lucas or some other writer wants to go back to the Taoist roots of The Force). Good then defeats the evil it created once evil has almost won, and they reestablish order with some oppression in an attempt to prevent another evil which restarts the cycle.
• Humans and Duro, the first two species to discover hyperspace travel, eventually meet. The planet they meet on has been implied to be the human homeworld, the Duro homeworld, Earth, and various other things, but it doesn’t matter. It becomes Coruscant (the homeworld of the Taung, progenitors of the Mandalorians culture, and also the homweworld of the human predecessor race, the latter won), and they create the first Republic.
• Various expansion wars occur after the Republic is founded, including a religiously motivated 1000 year long pro-human genocidal regime taking over. Other wars also occur such as the the Hutt wars with Xim the Despot and a series of wars on and off for 20000 odd years over whether Coruscant or another planet is to be the capital.
• Eventually the Sith return to destroy the Jedi after two Republic scouts accidentally stumble upon Korriban, the Sith species home planet and now the burial site for the Dark LOrds, and return while being followed. The Republic is almost destroyed, but survives and led by Empress Teta (the Empress of a member world that is) in turn smashes the Old Sith Empire led by Dark Lord Naga Sadow. The Sith slink back into the shadows. The Jedi start their other big tradition, over-correcting from their past mistakes and creating new ones, by beginning a time of non-interference in galactic affairs and a general desire only for peace. During this time, Darth Vitiate (born Tenebrae) exploits the defeat and manipulates 8000 fellow Sith Lords to a secret ritual to become powerful. It goes Just as Planned for Vitiate as he consumes the souls of his fellows to become immortal (but not invincible) and names himself Sith Emperor of the Reformed Sith Empire and secretly builds his forces from the remaining Sith armies and lords. Also during the final battle of the Great Hyperspace War as the defeat of the Old Sith Empire came to be known a Sith ship crashes into a planet and the survivors become the Lost Tribe of Sith.
• Freedon Nadd, Jedi apprentice, is denied knighthood and falls to the Dark Side after finding Sadow's tomb and his spirit. He causes the Beast Wars on Onderon and its moon Dxun and rules for a hundred years before dying, his cultists becoming weirdo beast rider types who plague Onderon. Two Jedi Knights, Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma fall to the Dark side after finding Dark Lord Marka Ragnos and Nadd's spirits respectively and become Master and Apprentice in that order. After Ulic kills his brother and former fellow Jedi, he returns to the light and kills Exar Kun during their war to destroy the Jedi. Ulic wanders around for a while and then dies in his former lover Grand Master Nomi Sunrider's arms, who had become Grand Master after Exar Kun and Ulic's war ended with the formers death.
• Mandalorians, the space Mongols/Aztecs, start attacking the universe because all they understand is war. They almost wipe out several species but the Jedi do nothing. Eventually one of their number and his/her (canon he) apprentices are dispatched to investigate, and decide to forsake the Jedi wuss way and break the back of the Mandalorians, then fall to the Dark Side and create a fascist government centered on Dromund Kaas (actually the hidden capital of the Reformed Sith Empire who brainwashed the leader, Revan and was actually the guy who manipulated the Mandalorians into attacking in the first place) (the planet of British accents, forever a place of evil hereafter) which almost destroys the Republic, again (a third recurring theme). A Jedi named Bastila Shan is sent to assassinate their leader Darth Revan, but believing in redemption instead she wiped his mind. The two went on an adventure while Revan was trained as a Jedi again, and he defeated his apprentice and dismantled his own army (also did a bunch of racing, theme #4). Afterwards, the remaining fallen Jedi institue the First Jedi Purge under the Sith Lords, Nihilus (who vored planets), Sion (who was so edgy he had to be convinced to let go as he was too angry to die) and Traya (alias Kreia, actually Jedi Master Arren Kae, who wanted to destroy the force itself). The only loyalist Jedi survivor of Revan's initial force, Meetra Surik, having been exiled from the Order after being the only veteran to return, comes back and destroys the Sith Triumvirate (redeeming the only apprentice they had, Visas Marr, in the process) along with her companions (including Visas) who she trained as Jedi plus Revan's droids and old war buddy/current Mand'alor (the King of the Mandolrians basically) Canderous Ordo and an asshole droid. Revan's companions and Meetra's companions then presumably rebuild the Jedi Order and the badly damaged Republic over 300 years, while Revan and Surik go to Dromund Kaas to finish off the Emperor (Revan not telling anyone like a moron, while Surik just went to help her friend) but are betrayed by their ally Darth Scourge who foresees the Emperor is not going to die for three more centuries and Surik ignonomously dies while Revan is tortured for 300 years but manages to keep the Emperor from attacking the Republic when it is vulnerable).
• A clusterfuck of things happen. The Sith create a nearly galaxy-wide coalition to start a civil war with the Republic. The Sith have overwhelming advantage, but are so backstabby and hedonistically asinine they fail to accomplish anything major after the initial strikes. Things cool of for 12 years in a Cold War, then heat back up again and are disrupted when the Sith Emepror (the guy who manipulated the Mandalorians and brainwashed Revan) is apparently killed by the Hero of Tython (who is then promoted to Jedi Battlemaster). Revan splits in two from the 300 year torture and after the torturers (the edgiest Sith ever, the Dread Masters, who were personally trained by the Emperor) get killed (presumably by the Jedi Knight as a male Human Jedi Knight makes the most sense for the SWTOR side and expansion pack plots outside of Sith Controlled planets side missions etc.) and tries to bring the Emperor back to a physical body and the protagonist along with a lot of people barely stop him. It turns out he manipulated the Revan's last efforts and used the bloodshed there to transfer all of his spirit to where he was actually focusing on, the Eternal Empire he made over the past few centuries, after finding a super robot fleet in the planet of Iokath. His body is destroyed (by the SWTOR protagonist of you choice, though the Jedi Knight is the safe bet for eventual canon due to both prior history and, well, this is Star Wars) and his son (who killed his twin in rage after initial attacks) invades. He is defeated (and probably redeemed due to Light Side Jedi Knight being canon). His sister tries to take over and is killed. The Emperor's soul is destroyed after trying to take over the SWTOR protagonist. Afterwards, the Republic and Sith Empire return to war over superweapons on Iokath and the protagonist (again, the Jedi Knight is the safe bet) rejoins the Jedi and the Republic. Empress Acina (who took over after Darth Marr, regent after the Emperor faked his death, was killed after being captured along with the protagonist prior to the 5 year timeskip) is killed and Darth Malgus returns. The protagonist continues heroics and defeats some Dark Council Sith Lords and the war eventually ends in Republic victory.
• Around 2000 years before the Battle of Yavin some dickwad Jedi falls to the Dark Side as Darth Ruin and reignites the war as the New Sith Wars. The Sith eventually reform into the Brotherhood of Darkness and bans the title of Darth, with all Sith Lords being equal (though of course, some are more equal than others, like fallen Jedi Master Skere Kaan). After a thousand straight years of war, a Galactic Dark Age settles in and ruins major tech infrastructure and companies, fixing the dissonance between movie era tech being worse than literally thousands of years ago.
• ~1000 years before the Battle of Yavin, Sergeant Dessel, transferring from the Sith Army to the Sith Academy, thinks that's a bunch of bullshit and the Dark Side can only have two Sith, one Master to embody power and an Apprentice to crave it after finding Revan's edgy fanfiction he wrote after the Mandolarian Wars and before the Jedi Civil War in a Sith Holocron. He names himself Darth Bane manipulates Lord Kaan into building the Thought Bomb. The Brotherhood of Darkness are defeated at the (Seventh) Battle of Ruusan by the thought bomb, which takes the Army of Light, a militant Jedi Sect formed by Lord Hoth to restore the galaxy with it as they sacrifice themselves to force Kaan to detonate it early. The Rule Of Two is instituted by Bane who takes Zhannah as his apprentice, preventing the Dark Side clusterfuck that happens when too many assholes exist as “equals” in one faction. The Jedi almost destroy the Sith as Zhannah is caught spying in the Jedi Temple and is forced to retreat, chased by three masters and two knights. Bane and Zhannah defeat them and Zhannah's cousin is made insane by her Sith Sorcery and attacks the Jedi task force sent after them, who are forced to kill him. Thinking that was the Sith they were looking for the Jedi pat themselves on the back and go back to Coruscant to report the Sith being destroyed. Zhannah deafeats Bane and takes Cognus as her apprentice. Cognus takes Millenial (yes, Darth Millenial) as her apprentice, who disagrees with the Rule of Two and goes to Dromund Kaas to start the Prophets of the Dark Side, who worship the Dark Side. Cognus takes another apprentice and things continue as they hide, plan, research, and backstab in secret for 1000 years.
• After this apparent victory, the Republic undergoes the Ruusan Reformation. The Jedi are greatly weakened in political authority and demilitarized. They also begin strictly enforcing the age maximum for training people as Jedi. The Republic disbands its military except for a small anti-piracy force. The Jedi, who lost its best and brightest save for Grand Master Faye (namely, Lord Hoth and Master Farfhalla, who was killed by Darth Zhannah on Tython and was among the aforementioned three masters and two knights) in the Army of Light's sacrifice, degenerate into Lawful Stupid morons.
• 65 years before the Battle of Yavin, a man from Naboo's House Palpatine (dubbed Sheev in Disney canon) became the apprentice to a Sith Master named Darth Plagueis (who himself was apprentice to Darth Teneborous, who had also taken a secret apprentice named Venamis after thinking Plagueis was too weak, Venamis was experimented on by Plagueis so you can infer how that worked out for Teneborous). He learned secrets of Sith Alchemy and pretty much any other plot-related evil shit that writers want, then killed his master and began a (very convoluted) plan to wipe out the Jedi, rule the galaxy and wage war on things outside the galaxy, and live forever. Just assume anything that happens from here until his death is because of him. He takes on an apprentice, an older Jedi who left the Order due to its hands-off approach to galactic governance. The now ex-Jedi Dooku Serenno reclaimed the fortune and title of Duke he had relinquished to join the Jedi while also becoming Darth Tyranus in secret.
• A Jedi named Syfo-Dyas has a prophesy that the galaxy will soon be at war, and concocts an elaborate plan to get an army for the currently armyless Republic using money from criminal organizations and the genetic material of a Mandalorian descended from the old warriors. He’s killed and Sheev, now called Darth Sidious, took over the project via Dooku and had each clone implanted with a secret control chip that would override their training and loyalties when Sheev gave “Order 66”.
• As the Republic weakened due to corruption and the rising power of some of its components and the Jedi weakened due to Sheev’s tampering with the Force via bullshit Alchemy handwaves, planets and organizations within the Republic began to act aggressively. Sheev was behind many of their moves as his public identity rose as the Senator of his home planet of Naboo. Many organizations gained enough power to have Senatorial representatives, making corporations as powerful as entire planets and causing the clusterfuck of alliances and conflicting interests to render the Republic almost powerless.
• The Trade Federation, a simple shipping company that had its own Senator and via shared interests controlled many, MANY more, had begun using its private army to blockade planets in order to secure exclusive contracts with the goal of controlling all trade, everywhere eventually and even hold power over the Republic due to its lack of military. Sheev as Sidious revealed himself to be heavily invested in their projects, and they gladly accepted his patronage. He advised them to upscale their ambitions and blockade the planet Naboo, which was far more powerful politically and economically than their previous targets, 32 years before the Battle of Yavin.
• Two Jedi, an apprentice and a master (Obi-wan and Dooku’s old apprentice Qui-Gon) were sent to negotiate an end to the blockade. Fearing that the Federation had gone into dangerous territory the leaders contacted Sheev, who ordered them to kill the Jedi and continue the blockade as if nothing had happened. The Jedi escaped to the surface of the planet and escaped with the planet’s leader Queen Amidala. They were delayed due to engine problems from the escape, and stopped at Tatooine where they picked up a slave boy named Anakin who was Force-sensitive (implied to be an experiment from Sheev’s Alchemy to create life, abandoned after the success). Meanwhile Sheev’s other apprentice Darth Maul had been sent to ensure his plans were carried out.
• Sheev convinced the Queen to start a movement against the administration of the Republic, which was joined by the majority of the Senate; even the corrupt were sick of everyone else’s corruption. This destabilized the Republic leadership, shuffling Sheev into power as the supreme Chancellor and putting his lackeys in charge. Meanwhile, the queen and Jedi returned to Naboo and lead a revolt, defeating the Trade Federation and leaving their leadership as prisoners of the Republic. Sheev worked behind the scenes to keep them from being prosecuted for their actions while making plans for his creation Anakin Skywalker, who had been found and chosen for training by the Jedi, into a future asset.
• Sheev progressed his plan for a war to further destabilize the galaxy by pitting the various corporate powers he controller as Darth Sidious against the united planets he controlled as Chancellor Sheev. This lead to a Separatist movement with both sides financially powerful, both sides possessing armies, and both sides feeling they were the ones who were wronged. The “Clone Wars” began after a series of events orchestrated by Dooku where the Jedi discovered and deployed the clone armies against Separatists who had been planning to execute the Jedi and former queen of Naboo as revenge on behalf of the Trade Federation.
• Sheev manipulated both sides of the conflict to deplete the strength of all participants. The Separatists were lead by the cyborg General Grievous while the Republic forces were lead by the Jedi Masters Mace Windu and Yoda. Public opinion began to turn against the war, and groups of Senators who had previously been allies of Sheev began meeting in secret and planning for militarizing their planets so there would no longer be a need for an army of the Republic.
• When the time was right he orchestrated a finale of battles which resulted in the deaths of Dooku and Grievous, then enacted Order 66 to slaughter almost all of the Jedi and turned Anakin to his side as Darth Vader. He declared himself Emperor and the Republic as his Empire, eliminating much of the old government over time and allowing cronies to make it into the ranks of a galactic military dictatorship which used powerless puppet governments on the local level. Small rebel cells popped up everywhere, which would eventually unite under the surviving members of the old Senate following Palpatine using Vader's "secret" apprentice to lure them out and failing to kill them as said apprentice turns to light and sacrifices himself.

Star Wars
About:	The Franchise, The Setting, The Movies, The Video Games
Television Shows:	The Clone Wars, Rebels, Resistance, The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch, Disney + Originals
Star Wars Games
Miniature:	X-Wing, Armada, Legion
Tabletop:	Rebellion
Roleplaying:	FFG, WotC (d20), WEG (d6)