Editing Star Wars Setting (section)

== 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. And the irony about him is that he hails from one of the setting's biggest pacifistic paradises, Naboo, yet still turned out completely evil. About on par with [[Nagash]] and [[Erebus]] in terms of plain assholery (not to mention being crazy powerful). 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 (not particularly hard, given that every good guy in the prequels was written to be a complete dunce), 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 [[Just as Planned|everything move to his design]] in the sequel trilogy. Chews so much scenery they had to resort to computer-generated imagery. [[Meme|He is the Senate]]. His survival in the third Disney film was so baffling and unexplained that even the characters had to admit that it made no sense; then again, he was only brought back because Disney had no other choice, having killed off Snoke too soon and Kylo Ren not being a credible enough villain on his own.

* Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin: [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Tywin Lannister]] [[Indrick Boreale|IN SPHESS]] (although, given that Star Wars came first it might be more accurate to say Tywin is Tarkin in Grimdark Fantasy). Ruthless, ambitious, and cold, Grand Moff (Governor) Tarkin is the epitome of all that is Imperial in the SW Universe, and represents all the non-Sith elements that makes the Empire so evil. Started out as a career officer in the republican navy, became promoted by Palpatine after he put down early resistance movements against the Empire with ruthless efficiency (including literally crushing protestors with a Star Destroyer). The Clone Wars also showed that he briefly served under Anakins command, where their philosophies showed be to quite compatible (Tarkins cold pragmatism combined with Anakins fierce determination to get the job done at any cost) and became the basis of a deep mutual respect for one another. Also happens to be one of the few characters outside of the force users to figure out that Vader was Anakin on his own. His idea of ruling pretty much comes down to [[Konrad Curze|"They can hate me as long as they fear me"]], which is symbolized ultimately by the Death Star.  [[Derp|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, [[Fail|galvanized half the galaxy into openly declaring for the Alliance]]. Before the Prequels rewrote the origins of the Imperial superweapon programs entirely, he pioneered the idea of weapons like the Death Star and worked hard to lobby political support from Palpatine and the military for their construction, and was the man in charge for a great number of military R&D developments until his death.  

* 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. Mandos are real hardasses who can go toe-to-toe with Jedi, and the Fetts were no exception. 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, later having his survival added to Disney Canon. With both of his former employers dead (Jabba and the Empire), and having just survived a fate worse than death and separation from his father's armor, Boba seems to have had time to reconsider his past decisions. He becomes an honorary Tusken after helping out a Tusken tribe that kept him alive, and after getting his armor back from Din Djaren, decides to take Jabba's old position as crimelord of Tatooine. Despite being Jabba's number one enforcer for years, he finds the job a lot harder than it looks, fending off Hutts and local gangs while trying to live up to his Mandalorian heritage and sense of honor. Both of them, ''especially'' Boba, are long-time fan-favorites, but there is also a very vocal and obstinate faction of haters who ''never'' shut up about Boba Fett's falling into the Sarlaac and his limited role in the movies proper. [[Rage|No matter how many times Boba's survival and numerous showings of badassery outside of the movies are pointed out, you can count on the Fett haters to stick to their guns as stubbornly as an Imperial Guardsman down to his last lasgun rounds.]] Sadly, the underperformance of Book of Boba Fett has ensured that the Fett-bashing is likely to continue, with Boba's softer characterization being one of the main points of contention. 

* 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. His power is such that the Republic, and later the Empire, had to negotiate with him to be able to have some influence in the Outer Rim, because even Sheev Palpatine knows that you don't do shit in the Outer Rim without dealing with the Hutts first. Gets strangled to death by a bikini-wearing Leia with her own chains, because symbolism. In short, he's one of Slaanesh's despite looking like one of Nurgle's. 

* 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 (Disney canon retconned this into a ploy; he's still loyal to the Chiss, but pretended to be an exile so he can use the Empire as a buffer state) 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 analysis based around understanding the philosophy and art of his enemies, and was a very capable commander. Always one step ahead of his opponents, Thrawn would frequently outplay both rebels and political rivals by anticipating their actions well in advance, sometimes even using their own plans against them. Literally the only things that can stop Thrawn are things he can't anticipate or control like The Force (and he even found an effective countermeasure for the Force in the form of some Force-resistant Sloths) or spontaneous insubordination. 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 Thrawn was killed by the betrayal of his Noghri bodyguard but he 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. 
** Out of all the Empire's elite command, Thrawn stands out not just for being a tactical genius, but also for being a stone-cold pragmatist without falling into Tarkin's genocidal dickery, Vader's open disdain for his own men, or Palpatine's determination to always be the biggest bastard in the Galaxy. He prefers to handle situations with subtlety and long-term success rather than with violence or cruelty for short-term gains (though he'll use the latter if he thinks it's required). Had he not been saddled with working for such an openly tyrannical dictatorship, he could easily have been a more heroic (if ruthless) military leader when faced with an actual threat to the galaxy at large.

* Gilad Pellaeon: The Watson to Thrawn's Sherlock, Pellaeon was a veteran Imperial Navy Officer in the Legends canon with a career stretching from the Clone Wars to the Vong War. Well liked in-universe and out for being a reasonable, fair-minded person with a sense of honor. Basically the complete opposite of guys like Tarkin. As such, he often gets the role of "Token Good Imperial", with the implication that Thrawn was setting Pellaeon up as his successor.

* 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 (seeing how he was a full-blown Sith Lord by the time of Attack of the Clones, he really should have seen that coming).  Was born as a planetary noble, but gave it all up when he became a Jedi, only to get it all back when he gave up being a Jedi to lead the secessionist movement against the Senate's corruption.  In spite of all his unethical activities, including assassination plots against virtuous Separatists while actively promoting war criminals in the CIS military, Dooku genuinely believed that the New Order was going to wipe away corruption in the galaxy, and that even the Jedi would have a place once enough of them saw things his way. Turns out, Palpatine had been playing him just like everyone else during the Clone Wars. Hates Anakin/Vader for not being a gentleman.  
** In the novels he's also an alien-hating human supremacist 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. While actually a very cool villain in the EU, because he was so underdeveloped and underused in the movies proper, most younger or more casual fans (IE: anyone who hates or doesn't care about the EU), tend to dismiss him as boring, making Dooku the "unfavorite" of Palpatine's three apprentices despite being played by Saruman himself, Sir Christopher Lee (RIP). 

* Darth Maul: Horned Sith primarily 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, making him obsessed with getting revenge on Obi-Wan, as well as Sideous for casting him aside. He creates a massive criminal syndicate and even conquering the Mandalorians to create a small army that posed a serious threat to Sidious' plans; that is, until he was utterly stomped by Sidious himself, 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, which is not unreasonable given his previously established connections. Despite being a rage-filled maniac, the TV shows gave him a lot of depth, as he recognizes that there are bigger forces at play in the universe, and by the time of his death, puts his hope in the Skywalkers finally defeating Sidious. 
** In the Legends canon, he was resurrected by some Dark Side cultists very shortly before A New Hope and sicced on Darth Vader so the writer could have an excuse to give the fans the fight they'd been clamoring for since 1999. Vader sent Maul back to the grave, but not easily. Then his brain was salvaged by some mad scientist and kept alive (somehow), with Maul interacting with the world in a limited way through holographic projections. Luke Skywalker pulled the plug on it though, letting Maul finally die for good.

* 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|Samurai Jack]]), and other EU material created prior to the second Clone Wars cartoon, he is portrayed as an awesome, unstoppable killing machine who roflstomps Jedi left and right, can even outduel experienced Jedi Masters, and is only bested by Mace "The Ace" Windu.  In the third film and especially the CG Clone Wars show, he is an [[Stupid Evil|incompetent, froth-mouthed imbecile]] with a record of failure that even [[Abaddon]] would laugh at hysterically and a win/loss record in combat that would make an Avatar of Khaine shake its head in disgust. Sadly, the latter was what Lucas originally intended him to be - even if the former is way more awesome. By the end of the Clone Wars, Grievous and his atrocities against civilians became the public face of the Separatist cause (while Dooku kept Grievous actions a secret from his allies); The death mask of Grievous became a potent symbol in Imperial propaganda in order to associate resistance to the Empire with the horrors of the Clone Wars - just as Palpatine intended. Ironically, in Legends the Empire gave copies of GG's mask to some of their secret weapons (Terror Troopers and Terror Biodroids namely).
** Actually has a somewhat-tragic past in Legends: he was a great and virtuous hero on his primitive planet, but Dooku arranged for the Separatists to shoot 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, turning him into the OG raging murder-machine we all know and love. In all, a considerably more grimdark past than his other versions. 
** In the second Clone Wars cartoon, his backstory is kept vague, but Grievous claims he deliberately chose to become a cyborg in order to become better at killing Jedi (and actually becoming extremely good at it, at least in the first CW, where he cuts down four Jedi with ease).  Hated being mistaken for a droid, being compared to a droid and all Jedi - especially Obi-Wan Kenobi. His competence ping-pongs around even more violently than before: Grievous [[Fail|loses to a barely-trained Padawan]], [[What|can't definitively outduel Adi Gallia despite killing her easily in the original canon]], and [[EPIC FAIL|getting taken down by the fucking Gungan army under Jar Jar and Captain Tarpals]] in a couple episodes while [[grimdark|committing on-screen genocide against the Nightsisters]] and going toe-to-toe with the likes of Kit Fisto and Obi-Wan in other episodes. He was voiced by one of the folks at Lucasarts, who submitted his audition under an alias to make sure he'd get a fair shake. Along with Anthony Daniels, he reprises his role more often than most other Star Wars movie actors.

* Clone Troopers: The predecessors of the Storm Troopers. 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. Despite being genetically engineered to be perfectly obedient automatons, the Jedi they served under encouraged their individuality, and they began giving themselves names and unique tattoos and haircuts. But when Palpatine activated their inhibitor chips via Order 66, the clones' autonomy was completely overridden (the effect appears to only last a couple weeks, but it is extremely intense) and they executed the Jedi without hesitation. The original clonetroopers served the Republic against the Separatists, and were turned into the stormtroopers after Palpatine's total take-over. A very small minority of clones had their chips successfully removed and fought against the Empire, especially those who formed close bonds with their Jedi generals or local freedom fighters, but the vast majority of the Clones were more loyal to Palpatine than to the Republic itself, and didn't need much convincing to stick with the Empire, with or without inhibitor chips. 
** Various sources (even within legends) disagree on the exact reasons why Palpatine replaced the clone troopers: the rebels blew up the gene-banks, the Kaminoans rebelled and created their own clone army, the clones were too susceptible to targeted genome-based biological weapons, or that the clones served their purpose and were too expensive to maintain, especially with their accelerated aging. Remaining Clones either were retired, served as instructors and in the case of the Commandos and the 501st Legion (having proven their loyalty and competence over and over, including at the Kamino uprising), kept serving in pure Fett-template units as Vader's personal enforces. Even they were retired after Hoth due to being too old. 
** In Disney Canon, the clones were expendable once they served their purpose of killing the Jedi; removing them from the equation freed up resources for the Death Star and reduced the Empire's dependency on Kamino's cloning facilities. However, enough clones started to mutiny or desert that the Imperial military accelerated their replacement with recruited Stormtroopers. Some speculate that activating the Inhibitor Chip also made Clones worse soldiers due to their behavioral modification, though this is unconfirmed.
** The old EU canon had a different take on why the Troopers had little trouble with executing Order 66; where the order was merely one of many (151 in total) contingency plans that would be enacted by either the chancellor or the senate if the existence of the Republic or the functioning of its governing institutions were vitally threatened (the irony was certainly not lost on Palpatine) and were just part of the normal training program of the soldiers. Order 66 was buried under plans for events like the Senate being blown up, the Chancellor becoming incapacitated, Coruscant being destroyed etc. What made Order 66 so insidious was that the Jedi thought it was a protection against renegade force users (not unheard of with Dooku and Ventress running around) and that Palpatine masterminded his scheme in such a way that the legal prerequisites of Order 66 - Jedi staging a coup against the Chancellor or the Senate, which technically was what happened when Windu attacked Palpatine (even more explicitly so in the Novelization, where Windu planned to install the Jedi council as an interim government until the Senate would elect a new chancellor) - was fulfilled with no one there to question it. Combined with the Troopers inherent psychological conditioning and more than one Commander holding serious grudges against many Jedi ensured that the Order would not be questioned even by those Clones who were fond of their generals. 
* Stormtroopers: The soldiers of the Galactic Empire. Unlike the Clone Troopers, the vast majority of the stormtroopers are enlisted, typically from the underclasses of war-torn and impoverished worlds. Contrary to popular belief, Stormtroopers are ''not'' the rank and file in the Imperial army, they're closer to a mix of marines and Waffen-SS in terms of function. There's ''technically'' an Imperial Army apart from the Stormtroopers, though you'd be forgiven for having never heard of them, because most writers of the franchise tend to forget they exist too. Either way, Stormtroopers are a step down in quality from Clone Troopers (including their armor, with a surviving clone trooper making a point of how awful it is compared to his old wargear), but by this point the Empire didn't really need that many high-quality soldiers when it was more concerned with keeping civilian populations under its thumb. Since the First Order doesn't have a good dental plan to bring in recruits, they instead resort to [[Schola Progenium|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. And like the Clones, their primary loyalty was to Palpatine, ''not'' the Empire, and were discouraged from using their names or fraternizing with members of their unit. Naturally, these qualities all go out the window when they encounter the protagonists, but that's life when you're wearing a [[helmet]].
**There are some explanations as to the inconsistency in Stormtrooper quality; one is that the Imperial army is so vast that quality differences are inevitable. Stormtroopers that are an actual threat will defend the core worlds or accompany the more "serious" units, such as the 501st legion. Lesser recruits get sent to rim world backwaters or meat grinder conflicts, making them easier prey for the odd band of rebels or pirates. The rebels learned the hard way, though, that trying to fight a conventional way against the former was just asking for trouble (the Battle of Hoth being the biggest defeat in their history). That being said, by the Original Trilogy, the Empire hadn't fought a war even close to the scale of the Clone Wars before the Rebellion, so there were a lot of inexperienced troopers as well.
** Amusingly enough, Legends indicates that many of the Clone Troopers that actually stayed with the Galactic Empire ''hated'' the Stormtroopers, considering them a pack of incompetent idiots with no sense of their surroundings and terrible aim (which can be taken as a canonization of their memetically awful competence). One source even had Commander Cody (yes, that guy from Revenge of the Sith and the Clone Wars CGI cartoon) stating that he'd sacrifice an entire platoon of Stormtroopers for one real Clone Trooper and noting that Fett would probably kill the lot of them himself.
** Lastly, these boys comes in literally ''all'' the flavors. Variants based on environments (Snow, Desert, Shore and many more) and roles (Heavy, Incinerator, 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 Storm Commandoes, Death Troopers and (in Episode IX), Sith Troopers (no relation to the troops of the same name used by the Sith Empires pre-dating Palpatine). For a (mostly) complete list, [[Stormtrooper|see here.]] 

* Inquisitorius: Darksiders 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; while an Inquisitor would definitely be a threat to an undertrained Padawan or broken Jedi, the fact that they can only draw from the Dark Side in a more limited way makes them an easier foe to deal with than Vader. And even the Inquisitors know first-hand that there's no winning in a fight against Vader. The source of many prominent antagonists in the expanded universe, including Jerec.