An Abridged History of the Great Galactic War

by Kaiser Chris

After centuries in exile, the Sith Empire returned to the galaxy. Upon their entrance a great and terrible war was raged for 28 years, ending in the Sith's victory and changing the course of galactic history. This is the story of the Great Galactic War, of the victors, of the losers, and how the war transformed the galaxy forever. GGW Expanded narrative, mostly canon compliant.

2. War's Eve: Galactic Republic

Galactic Republic

Government

Chancellory

The Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic was the title of the Head of State of the Galactic Republic. Due to the Republic's long history, the Chancellorship of the Republic has gone through many phases with different eras of Galactic History seeing the office switch between its holder being the most powerful being in the galaxy, while others saw it as being a rubber stamp/puppet for the Senate with little duties than to be the ceremonial leader of the Republic. These two extremes are most present in the 13th and 14th millennium respectively where the post of Supreme Chancellor became a De Facto monarchy under the Contispexan monarchy and Pius Dea cult, with the next millennia after their downfall seeing the Senate force the office to become a ceremonial post with near total powers held by the Senate. Since the 14th millennium the powers of the Chancellery have shifted at least a few times every millennia, with Blotus the Hutt being seen as the high point of power for the office.

By the start of the Great Galactic War, the Chancellery was a nominal equal to the Senate thanks to a series of complex checks and balances. The true power of the Chancellor would be decided by their mandate within the Senate, galactic popularity, and personal charisma and base of power before they became Supreme Chancellor. With the war increasing its intensity with each passing years, the Supreme Chancellor was granted greater powers where they would be at its greatest height since Blotus.

Senate

The Galactic Senate was the chief lawmaking body of the Republic and for most of the Republic's history was its center of power. With a few notable exceptions such as the Pius Dea era when the Senate was a puppet body with its membership only being filled with members of the Pius Dea cult, the Senate was the highest of the three branches with both the chancellorship and on occasion the courts deferring to it. The Chief duties of the Senate are the creation of laws, regulation of state bureaucracies, the creation and operation of a galactic budget, oversight of galactic taxation, treaty making with foreign powers, and nominations for the Galactic Supreme Court. The Supreme Chancellor is elected by a majority of the Senate and must completely referr to them in all matters legislatively with the Chancellor only supposed to guide the direction of legislation and maintain order during its sessions as a figure of unity.

During the Intersith era the powers of the Senate would greatly decrease where by the start of the war the body was mostly relegated into being an arena for member states to decide disputes between each other and to oversee taxation of the Republic and upkeep of the military and bureaucratic bodies. This is mainly due to the popularity of the "Eternal Peace" concept that had become widespread at the end of the Sith Wars, that with the Sith becoming extinct and the only remaining polity to come close to the Republic's power being the Hutts, that the galaxy would experience an age of Eternal Peace where no major galactic wars would come again until the end of civilization. While the Galactic War could have seen a rise in the Senate's power, the swift conquest of so many members left the body heavily absent of several important players with factions rendered powerless and chaos reigning as old alliances ended and new cliques were formed. With the Senate struggling to handle the war, power would enter into the hands of the Chancellorship and military, a state of affairs not even seen during the Sith Wars.

Out of the three branches of the Republic, the Senate was notorious for its corruption and was looked down upon by most citizens of the Republic as an elitist hive of sycophants and powermongers. Despite the Republic's image as the bastion of democracy, the Senate was anything but democratic with a few thousand beings deciding the fates of trillions while over half of the Senate were never elected democratically. In addition to Corporate Senate seats, most seats were appointed by the ruling government of said seat's jurisdiction where the say of unique species and planets would be overruled by the majority, often times humans. Some Senate seats were passed down through hereditary means while other appointed ones were held exclusively by the ruling noble class of a sector. Even Alderaan, the supposed core of Republican egalitarianism had nearly all of its Senators being of noble birth. There was also a heavy issue of proportional representation where individual planets or systems in the Core would be granted a seat while Rimward seats would be composed of tens of thousands of systems inside of a single sector. Arguments could be made of the Republic as a whole being a force for liberty and freedom, but it was never a democratic state.

Even moving beyond the imbalance of representation, once a Senator was chosen, they would often be the target of lobbying from millions of different interest groups with many using illicit methods to curry blocks of Senators in their favor. By the Great Galactic War the Senate was in a paradox of corruption. It was at its most corrupt in ages, yet in terms of galactic history was at its least corrupt in terms of naked brutality, abuse of powers, and authoritarianism. This is mainly due to the Senate's then role as a body of arbitration, with Senate corruption dedicated at settling decisions in the favor of one group versus the outward domination of enemy groups. Corruption was also designed to favor less galactic authority and more federalist policies so that member-states and mega corporations could be free to do as they please with as little central authority as possible. This produced a state of affairs where while a majority of beings inside of the Republic despised the Senate (with constant approval ratings below 50%), the Senate was never so tyrannical that it forced the creation of any major social and political movement.

Courts

The Republic Judicial Branch operated on a federal court system that was divided into three separate spheres. The first case was civil law which was separated into local, planetary, system, sector, and then galactic with the final appeal being the Supreme Court, though this was only in the most unique and extreme of circumstances. The second sphere was criminal court which once again followed the same system. The third sphere was intergalactic arbitration where a series of courts would settle disputes between two political bodies whose legal systems were starkly different and offered differing punishments or different rulings on legal customs. The arbitration sphere is often cited as the most important branch as while criminal and civil affairs can mostly be contained on the local level, without the arbiter courts the Galactic Republic could not function without transforming into a totalitarian state due to the conflicting legal codes of its members.

The final stage of the Courts was the Galactic Supreme Court, the highest body of power where 729 Chief Justices would rule on galactic appeals, interpret the laws of the Senate, decide the constitutionality of system laws in accordance with the Constitution, settle the highest intersystem disputes, and hold trials of crimes against civilization, treason, and impeachment. Due to the high diversity of the Supreme Court, no sole ideology could dominate the branch with a necessary emphasis on high cooperation between the Justices in order to operate fairly. Due to a Chief Justice requiring a 66% approval from the Senate, a high amount of cooperation from various factions was also necessary to put forward a candidate, with many Chief Justices being nonpolitical or centrists as a result. Depending upon the era a Supreme Court could vary between textualist and judicial activist styles of operations though for most of Republic system it has operated under the textualist approach.

Politics

Due to the namesake galactic nature of the Republic, the politics of the system and the greater Republic were heavily complicated and far removed from the base political systems that can be found at the local, planetary, or system level. With no overarching ideology to unite the public, and each species or nation's values of conservatism and liberalism varying dramatically, galactic politics were mostly focused on security, wealth distribution, culture conflicts, and the Jedi. No matter who was the chancellor or which political coalition dominated the Senate, these four issues would be of high focus every year, with ever-changing policies based on the reigning political block or how galactic developments would change the average opinion of each issue.

Security

At the beginning of the 21st millennium, the Republic was on its way to becoming a De Facto Army with a State due to the stresses of the Sith and Mandalorian Wars devastating the Rim and Core, killing trillions of lives while many member states of the Republic either seceded for independence or to join the Mandalorians and Sith. During this time of high conflict laws were passed to limit the liberties of the Republic for fear of insurrection or the rise of Sith support while greater extralegal powers were given to the Army and Navy to conduct the wars as it saw fit. This age of hypermilitarism would continue for the 211th century despite the seeming extinction of the Sith. With the ascension of Supreme Chancellor Brea Organa in 21,200 AGC , the Republic began to enter into a state of demilitarization with greater funding and support for the sector and system fleets while the overarching Republic Navy and Army were cut down and given greater oversight by the Senate to prevent the rise of the much feared military state that would act as the second coming of a Pius Dea like era.

Wealth Distribution

The Inter-Sith era is a period of history largely regarded as a time of great prosperity and growth by common citizens and many historians of the Republic. After near half a century of war the Republic was once again at a time of peace where save for the occasional regional crisis there was no great enemy to threaten the Republic's sovereignty. With the resumption of peace came with the rise of the economy, and for the first half of the 212th century the Republic began to undergo greater Socialistic control of the economy in order to heal the Rim and uplift the tens of Trillions who had entered into poverty and desolation from the Sith Wars. This Socialist Age would come to an end with Vaner Shan, with his successor Damar Rand of Kuat enacting a period of hyperliberalization of the economy where Coruscant would have little to no say on fiscal affairs besides the oversight of galactic taxation (which decreased heavily with Rand's trickle-down economics), the enforcement of free trade inside Republic borders, and the enforcement of basic sentient rights in the workplace, which were becoming increasingly unenforced in much of the Rim. For two centuries unto the Great Galactic War the Republic would then become a Capitalist state with most chancellors practicing laissez-faire economics. While many in the Core celebrated this era as one of a truly free market, the Rim on the other hand saw it as the rise of Core domination, which lead to the third major issue of the Republic, the Culture Wars.

The Culture Wars

The Culture Wars refer to the rising Cultural Conflict at the start of the 21st millennium between the Core of the galaxy and its outlying regions such as the Colonies and the Inner Rim, and the Rimward regions of the Galaxy such as the Mid Rim and the Inner Rim, with the Expansion region acting as a middle ground between the two groups. Throughout all of galactic history it can be said that there has always been a Core-Rim conflict since the beginning of the Republic. However, the natural conflict between the two halves of the galaxy was for most of history low in intensity with no greater flares than simple verbal spars between a being from a Core and a being from the Rim. The steady stream of expansion has always seen a heavy amount of development expanding outward. Once upon a time the Colonies were looked down upon by the Core but by modern day they are essentially part of the Greater Core. This level of development and greater unity should have applied to the Rim, however, several factors prevented this from occurring.

Firstly was the development of most great hyperspace routes from the 20th millennia onwards. Before the 20th millennia Republic expansion was slow and steady with the few risky routes to the Rim only establishing nominal trading while the powers of the Rim developed on their own, thus preventing only nominal contact and trade while the steady expansion of the Republic was centered on the Inner Rim and Expansion Region. The explosion of safe transgalactic hyperspace travel in the aftermath of the Post Hyperspace War saw the Mid Rim and large portions of the Outer Rim connected to the Core. Whereas before it could take several months or even more than a year to get from Coruscant to the Outer Rim, now it took place in only 2-3 months for the most outlying systems with the inner edges of the Outer Rim being a month. With greater speed of travel came greater direct investment from the Core, but because it was still too far away for direct colonization, settlement and exploration of the Core was done through more private ventures such as the Mega Corps, leading the Rim to be treated more as a resource pool than any true equal of the Core. While the Sith practiced Imperialism through conquest, the Republic practiced Imperialism through Mercantilism.

Even despite this relations still could have been salvaged were it not for the Sith and Mandalorian Wars. With a few exceptions such as Exar Kun's march on Coruscant and the Core Trifecta of the Revanite Sith, the Sith and Mandalorian Wars were focused exclusively in the Mid and Outer Rim with the two regions baring the brunt of the loss of life, economic destruction, and environmental devastation. While the Core would be able to recover from the war's damage in a couple of decades due to its economic strength and lack of intense scars, the Mid and Outer Rim were left to rot on their own, unable to return to pre-war life. While genuine attempts were made by the Republic to reconstruct the Rim, these were mainly concentrated in centers of economic or trade power such as Randon and Bothawui, or particularly infamous victims of Sith destruction such as Telos and Taris. These were only a fraction of the devastated Rim and with the end of Reconstruction by Rand, the Rim was left to fend for itself, falling prey to the march of Mega Corps in the call to grant greater resources to the Core for its viscous appetite.

With high economic exploitation, unequal trade, and little representation in the Senate to defend for their rights, secession began to grow for Republic members on the Rim, while some systems sought to band together to create a new power that could not only defend itself, but maybe stand with the Republic as an equal. Unfortunately the scars of the Sith Wars prevented the Republic from treating these rising polities with respect and cordial diplomatic relations as they would have done before the Exar Kun war. Thus GSOC and the System Armies went to work, and while many of their targets were genuine pirates, criminals, or despots; there were also many victims whose only crime was to potentially be another Mandalorian or Sith Empire. With all of this bad blood between the Rim and Core, it is no wonder the Sith were able to blitz their way through the Rim in the Great Galactic War, and find themselves with a new base of support that would last centuries.

The last major political that was somewhat tied to the Culture Wars was that of the Jedi. For 21,000 years the Jedi were trusted as champions of justice and a sign of all that was good in the galaxy. For most of galactic history the word Jedi was synonymous with good. Children of all species looked to Jedi as trusted heroes, role models who they must aspire to be, even if they weren't force sensitive. The only exception to this was their widespread persecution in the Pius Dea era, yet even then to most of the galaxy the Jedi were looked to as beacons of hope. Even their creation and participation in the Sith Holocaust was not enough to dissuade the civilized galaxy's image of the Jedi as saviors, for if they had to do it against the Sith then they must have been evil enough to deserve it? Despite the fact that this contributed to the rise of the Sith Empire and thus the Great Galactic War with all of its ramifications in the last thousand years, many people in Republic space either shrug off the Holocaust or regard it as okay. Unfortunately for the Jedi, the Sith Wars would destroy their impressive streak of good will across the galaxy.

While the Second Great Schism, or the Hundred Year Darkness, was the first InterJedi conflict to affect the greater civilized galaxy, it was one that was for the most part contained by the efforts of the Jedi and the Republic with the Republic propaganda machine painting the Dark Jedi as more monsters of evil that spontaneously rose against the Jedi rather than the fallen knights that they were. This stroke of good propaganda could not be maintained in the Exar Kun War where so many prominent Jedi would fall to the Dark Side with Exar Kun's descent caused by another fallen Jedi, with the war leading to the deaths of hundreds of billions and devastation of hundreds of systems. The Jedi Reforms at the end of the war would unknowingly backfire in public relations as these changes made many across the galaxy believe that the Jedi were solely responsible for Exar Kun's fault and his path of destruction. Still, things could have been salvageable were it not for Revan. During the Mandalorian Wars, Revan was looked to by Tens of Trillions of beings as a hero, a messiah of the Outer Rim who saved them from the Mandalorians. Revan was celebrated as one of the greatest Jedi in the order's history, a true model of what every Knight should become. Revan's sudden return to the galaxy as a Dark Lord of the Sith with no explanation for his turn and none given for centuries, lead to many in the galaxy viewing him not as a Sith, but a Jedi who had become insane. The term "Jedi Civil War" was already a damning sign of how the galaxy was now perceiving the Jedi. Without an understanding or knowledge of the Sith or its history, Revan was merely another Jedi who in a quest for power created a war that killed Trillions and ruined countless systems. This damnation of the Jedi as beings who played with the galaxy's people as pawns was cemented by Traya's Triumverate, with Traya not only being a former Jedi, but the master of Revan.

It did not matter that Revan had been redeemed and had personally slain Malak and destroy the Star Forge, he was still responsible for the catastrophe by resurrecting the Sith. The last straw for the Jedi would be its isolation on Coruscant and new role as the keepers of the peace. Without the Jedi making their presence active across the galaxy, righting the wrongs of every system and fighting for those who had no hope; they could no longer be seen as paragons of virtue. While it would be extreme for one to say the Jedi of this era were evil as they were still at heart an order for good, their lack of activism and devotion to dogma placed them in a fallen state that was below their predecessors. With the Jedi only acting in high interest disputes and conflicts, they were seen as above the people. With the Jedi relegating themselves as servants of the Republic who often sided with Core interests, they were seen as lapdogs of the Core. With the Jedi acting insular and having little to no interaction or active public relations with the greater galaxy, they were elitists who meddled in the affairs of others and then retreated back to their Temple. At best detractors of the Jedi saw them as a nuisance, at worst they saw them as tyrants.

With all the pessimism of the previous paragraphs, it must be stressed that this was not the universal opinion of the Jedi, merely a highly vocal one that was present and somewhat popular in many walks of galactic life. At the start of the Great Galactic War there were Trillions of beings who still looked to the Jedi as righteous of heroes, many political bodies and systems who were their allies. This support would only increase overtime with the Sith onslaught. However, the fact that the opinion of the Jedi had fallen so low for so much of the galaxy was a sign of their decline from the Sith Wars. It was not enough to kill the order, but it was enough for them to make them weak, allowing the Sith to claim victory and build support in the civilized galaxy that has lasted in many areas of space to this day.

Jedi

By the start of the Great Galactic War the Jedi had risen from their lowest point during the Sith Triumvirate to number about 150,000 individuals. The Jedi order was divided into 46,000 Masters, 67,000 Jedi Knights, 20,000 Padawans, and 27,000 Initiates. While the Jedi would be heavily outnumbered by the Sith in the beginning of the war, several factors led to their preservation at the end of the war, leading into the Tython Rebirth.

Unlike the Sith whose infighting would kill millions of potential Lords before they ever made it to the front lines, the Jedi took great care in the training of each individual, bringing out their full potential over the course of several years, granting them a greater quality than the average Sith. On the whole the Jedi's main strength could be placed within their practice of the virtues of teamwork, trust, and loyalty. While one would think such a strength would only be true in children's holos, the unity of the Jedi and their dedication to protecting the Republic and each other ensured that the Jedi would have a higher survivability than the average Sith, giving them the necessary experience to become veterans and stand against the march of the Empire. Whereas failure for the Sith would be extreme corporal punishment or even death, failure for the Jedi was noncorporal with an emphasis on learning from experience to correct one's flaws and mistakes in the future. This ensured that countless pillars of the order and cases of raw power and talent could be nurtured into champions of the force, giving them the ability to fight on even grounds with the Sith until the end despite their superior numbers and powers.

At the beginning of the war the Jedi, while on the road to recovery and a far cry from their lowest in the Revan era, were still far from their golden years in the pre-Exar Kun era. The Jedi were also split between ideologically over two very controversial practices that were relatively recent in the order's history. The first was the practice of chastity and the forbidden mandate on attachments. Such a rule was put in place to prevent the rise of another Sith like Exar Kun, however, the redemption of Revan and his defeat of Darth Malak through his love of Bastila Shan had heavily put this into question with many a Jedi since then resigning from the order due to a high development of attachments or romantic interests. The enforcement of chastity also served against the Jedi with many force sensitives unwilling to join over the mandate of cutting ties with their life and regulating personal relationships. Not only would the rule against relationships stiffle Jedi growth due to the lack of Jedi families that were so common throughout most of their history, but they served a role in isolating the Jedi from portions of the greater galaxy where they were seen as elitist monks who were above the common being. This lead into the second ideological divide of the Jedi, the question of action.

Before the Exar Kun War the Jedi were proactive champions of justice across the galaxy, defending the tenets of the Galactic Republic across its border and venturing into the greater frontier to right wrongs and defend the masses whenever possible. The fall of so many Jedi to the Dark Side changed this method of operation with the Jedi moving to Coruscant and vowing to only be keepers of the peace, seeing peace as a higher ideal to strive for then to cause unnecessary conflict in the pursuit of justice that could lead to the dark side. This ideology would be tested early in its practice with the rise of Revan and his followers who became renegades of the Order so that they could join the Republic in their defense against the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders. Had Revan stayed within the Light then he could have served as an icon on how the Jedi were best as proactive knights. Unfortunately his fall to the Dark Side only served to prove the council correct with proactive justice being deemed as a path to the Dark Side, despite Revan's redemption. By the time of the Great Galactic War the Jedi in favor of proactive justice were in a firm minority due to the relative era of galactic peace since the Sith Wars despite the Outer Rim's fall into chaos and disorder.

The threat of the Sith and the survival of the Republic forced the Jedi to push aside these questions of ideology in the name of survival and the need to protect the galaxy, transforming the Jedi into its most united form in centuries and causing its numbers and power to swell once more. This golden age of intrajedi relations would come to an end with the Treaty of Coruscant where the order would turn inwards and mediate on the countless paths that lied in its future.

Military

Since the end of the Sith Wars the Republic Armed Forces had been on a period of relative decline and was a shadow of its former glory, though in all fairness on the eve of the Great Galactic War it was the most premier force in the galaxy with only the combined forces of the Hutt clans being its near equal, and such a state was a near impossibility due to the constant division and power plays of Hutt space. While contemporary historians have bashed the Inter-Sith Republic's decision to scale down its military as idiotic and a sign of its decadence and corruption, such a move is only natural in the face of the much believed extinction of the Sith and collapse of the Mandalorians after the reign of Mandalore the Disciple. To have kept the Army in Navy in such a state of size and overwhelming firepower would have been a drain on the galactic economy and a recipe for the rise of a military dictatorship.

With the much feared rise of another Sith Empire seemingly never happening, the military would shift its composition and strategies during the Rand Chancellorship, mainly following the Zyckas Doctrine. The Zyckas Doctrine which was designed by Admiral Troia Zyckas of Brentaal, would see a reduced Army and Navy separated into two distinct duties. The majority of each branch would be dedicated to the defense of the Republic. The minority of each would act as strike groups which would target and eliminate any rising regional powers, terrorist groups, dark side cults, and pirate organizations with lethal prejudice. Most actions in this style of preemptive warfare would be undertaken by SIS and GSOC to eliminate potential threats before a brush war would be required, thus keeping the pretense of the Eternal Peace ongoing and with no high body counts or military spending, the citizens of the Republic would be safe and content.

Had the Sith Empire never returned then the Zyckas Doctrine would be kept in play for centuries, if not millennia as the model of a one galaxy government's military force. While the Zyckas doctrine may have played a large role in the Sith's victory due to the Republic's inability to mobilize effectively for half the war with the Army and Navy of both sides being on near equal parity depsite overwhelming demographic differences, at the very least the Zyckas Doctrine kept the quality of the Republic Trooper and Sailor high, ensuring that the Great Galactic War would be a defeat for the Republic instead of its death.

Army

At the outbreak of the Great Galactic War the Republic Army was made up of 3 billion beings who were dedicated with the task of defending the Republic. As dictated by the Zyckas Doctrine the Republic Army was divided into two. 2.8 billion beings would be part of the Planetary Garrisons, a force dedicated to supplementing local security forces and armies in the defense of Republic member worlds and colonies. The size of Planetary Garrisons ranged from a single battalion to an Army Group depending on the importance of a terrestrial body. The remaining 200 million beings would be part of the System Armies, rapid strike forces dedicated to either the invasion of hostile bodies or liberation of member worlds. If SIS and GSOC failed in their mission to eliminate targets before they rose to power, then a System Army would be called in to wipe out the opposition. In addition to these two groups, 100 million beings were kept in reserves, though the quality of Army reserves were heavily poor due to the lack of their need with no great crisis since the Triumvirate while joining the Reserves was seen as an easy way to earn a pension and learn a skill while seeing the galaxy.

Unlike the Sith Army, the Republic Army did not see combat droids take up a majority of their ground forces as the Republic could call upon Trillions of beings in service and did not practice slavery to hinder them demographically. However, at the end of the 214th century, the Army was in the process of an expanasion of combat droid forces in order to increase force projection while at the same time cutting back on organic membership, mainly due to budget issues as a droid could be worked for decades and didn't have to be paid a salary or pensions. While the Republic's combat droids would never be of the same quality as the Sith or be anywhere near the same numbers, they would be enough of a force to keep up the fight until the end.

Navy

The only fault that lied within the Republic Navy is that for most of the war it was never able to match the Imperial Navy in numbers. Had the Republic Navy at the start been of equal numbers with the Empire, or even greater, then the war would have seen less of a Sith victory or even a repeat of the Great Hyperspace War. At the start of the Great Galactic War the Republic Navy numbered 7,420 Dreadnoughts, 5,965 Carriers, 8,821 Destroyers, 10,190 Frigates, 12,088 corvettes, and 6,421 Transports. At the start of the war the Navy was divided into 77 Fleets. 7 Fleets were System Fleets who would act in tandem with the System Armies, while the remainder were Defense Fleets sworn to protect certain regions of the Republic. The Division of the Fleets were 3 for the Deep Core, 18 for the Core, 13 for the Colonies, 11 for the Inner Rim, 10 for the Expansion Region and 8 for the Mid Rim, and 7 for the Outer Rim. The lack of presence in the Outer Rim would be a major factor in the Sith's near unstoppable success in the first half of the war, though an uptick in production at planets such as Kuat and Fondor would make sure that the Fleets would only increase in number as the war went on.

At the start of the war the Navy was divided over two hypothetical doctrines, the Starfighter and Big Gun camps. The Starfighter camp advocated for the Navy to be carrier based as a swift response force whose strength would lie in an overwhelming swarm of high quality starfighters with the enemy. The Big Gun camp advocated for strength through capital ships, that the greater the number of dreadnaughts and cruisers the less dissent and foreign threats would arise through fear of the Republic's power, while any battles would be handled by small task groups and won by superior firepower of the dreadnought. In the Inter-Sith era the Starfighter camp was dominant due to the lack of any enemies with equal strength, the War would see power and influence switch to the Big Gun camp who not only sought to equal the Empire's usage of Star Destroyers, but to create new superweapons that could wipe out entire fleets with one shot.

Intelligence

While the Army and Navy at least existed in some form of strength in the late 214th century, the same could not be said for the Republic's espionage with Republic Intelligence having been disbanded completely by Brea Organa in the name of respecting the liberties of the Republic and to establish cordial relations with the nations of the Rim who had suffered from a series of coups and infiltration by Republic Intelligence in the name of preventing the rise of an empire. In the aftermath of RI's fall, the Republic's espionage capabilities were limited to Interpol, short for the Intergalactic police who coordinated transgalactic justice against high profile felons or galactic syndicates, and SIS who handled information warfare against domestic and foreign threats. With no true foreign intelligence agency, the role was undertaken by GSOC, or Galactic Special Operations Command. GSOC would deploy special forces to eliminate any and all threats to the Republic outside of its borders, acting on behalf of information given by the SIS. The Brush Wars of GSOC would be upheld by the Senate as legal under the auspices of operating against rogue actors despite many of their targets being sovereign states who were recognized as legitimate by the Senate.

For two centuries this method of espionage would work well for the Republic until the beginnings of the war where they were met by the titanic and seemingly all-powerful Imperial Intelligence, an organization with dozens of times resources as SIS, Interpol, and GSOC combined, while having a mandate from the Sphere of Imperial Intelligence that went above nearly all levels of power in the Empire, alongside the lack of morals or legal restrictions that the Republic placed on SIS and GSOC. In the aftermath of the Jedi Civil War the Emperor would have Imperial Intelligence infiltrate all forms of power across the Republic to prepare for the Sith's return. While these infiltrators did not completely control any one form of the Republic save for a number of distant outposts in the Northern Rim, their work placed the Republic in a form of weakness and left them with large holes to be exploited for the war effort. With the need to counter such a titan, the Senate would grant a near blank check and several extralegal powers to the SIS to combat the Empire, with varying levels of success such as the capture of the Dread Masters and the destruction of the Mandalorian Blockade, there were also many great failures such as the Sacking of Coruscant and the Hapes Debacle.

Economy

Due to the size of the Galactic Republic, there was no true central economic philosophy for the Republic. Fiscal ideologies varied widely from system to system as neighboring systems could be Socialistic and Capitalistic with entire regions of space dedicated to either the left or right side of the fiscal spectrum in practice. The fiscal diversity of the Republic can best be seen in its three core states with Alderaan practicing Social Democracy, Corellia practicing mixed market Capitalism, and Coruscant practicing Anarcho-Capitalism where most of the planet that didn't fall into government sectors were an economic free-for-all due to Coruscant's high population and overdevelopment making any kind of planetary welfare system impossible.

Since the beginning of the Inter-Sith era the Republic has increasingly turned to the right on a wider galactic scale thanks to the deep popularity and influence of Randnomics as well as the influence of Mega Corps in the Senate. This rightward shift would end in the Great Galactic War with the conflict driving the galactic economy on a leftward march as the demands of the war effort triumphed over the free market and needs of entrepreneurs.

Astropography

At the outbreak of the Great Galactic War the Republic numbered about 80 million star systems and encompassed approximately half of the known and civilized galaxy. The other half was composed of Hutt space, the remainder of the non-Hutt Outer Rim, and northern of the Mid Rim with many star systems being abandoned due to their extensive damage from the Sith and Mandalorian Wars. For the first fifty years of the Inter-Sith era a steady process of reclamation and expansion into the Mid-Rim and Outer Rim respectively occured to strengthen the power of the Republic and create a state strong enough to defend against any external threat or insurrection. With the high costs of Reconstruction mounting, this policy of wanton expansion was stopped by Damar Rand with a switched focus to internal improvement. Expansion of the Republic from this point onwards would occur either through the the increase in instellar properties of Republic affiliated Mega Corps, the voluntary admission of newly discovered species, or the admission of colonial systems funded either by Republic member-states or private interests. The Inter-Sith era would also see the Great Game which took place between the Republic Hutts over influence and control of the Mid and Outer Rim.

Despite the Republic massively outnumbering Sith control at the start of the war, these numbers were not able to help them on their path to defeat. This is due to a deception in the numbers as out of the 80 million star systems, only less than 10% were populated with over 1 billion people, with the rest being underdeveloped as frontier settlements or colonies. Over a third of Republic systems would be inhabited by less than a million sentient beings with these systems often being used purely for resources, as stops for hyperspace travel, or simply earned as a means of prestige. With the Republic lacking the autocratic dedication towards total war, many of these systems would remain underutilized for the war, and that was if they still remained in Republic hands by the Treaty of Coruscant.

Demographics

At the taking of the 21,370 AGC Census, the Galactic Republic was populated by 278 Trillion sentient beings with over a million member species. The most dominant species of the Republic, which it has been since its inception, was humans with a population of 110 Trillion, while near-human species numbered around 85 million and the remainder being non-human. Despite the overwhelming demographic supremacy, along with the lack of slavery to subjugate valuable pools of sentient resources such as in the case of the Sith Empire, the Republic did not utilize its numbers to its advantage due to its dedication to the liberties and freedoms of the Constitution, as well as the high struggle to get the Republic to invest itself in the conflict during the first decade of the war. With the Republic not dedicating itself to a war economy until the midway point, these Trillions of beings would go underutilized with many being placed under Sith rule before they could contribute to the war effort, while Trillions of humans along with some near-humans on occasion became collaborators or willing servants of the Sith.

Culture

Due to the titular nature of the Galactic Republic, its culture was an incredibly diverse and complex system with entire libraries of materials being necessary to describe every single facet of Republican culture. While one could argue that there is no singular Republic culture due to the membership of hundreds of thousands of different species with even humans being divided into tens of thousands of different cultures, the Republic could be described as having three broad and overarching cultural systems. These were Coruscanti Democracy, Alderaani Liberalism, and Corellian Freedom. With the three planets being the most important of the Republic founders, their cultures would be broadly instilled unto most member states and be carried out through Republican policy through millennia.

Throughout the Inter-Sith era, new Cultural Wars came to divide the once united Republic through the aforementioned Core-Rim Wars and Jediphobia. While few regions or species could be described as completely unanimous in their positions on these concepts, the overarching attitudes for the majority could be described as the Pro-Jedi High Core and the Jediphobic Low Rim. Had there been centuries more of peace then these divisions could have been healed, but they would unfortunately come to the fore and exploited during the Great Galactic War.

Another prominent cultural issue that had infected the Republic since its founding was Humanocentrism, AKA Human High Culture. Like a cancer, HHC has been persistent and has infected the Republic throughout its many ages with the Republic being officially ruled by it in the Pius Dea era. In the four millenia since then human-nonhuman relations have grown immensely with many philosophers and cultural scholars predicting that the human race would soon rid itself of High Culture. This wishful thinking would come to an end during the Sith Wars. While the Brotherhood of the Sith, Revan's Sith Empire, and the Sith Triumvirate were open to all species with no widespread discrimination anywhere close to the True Sith Empire; all three were dominated by their human Dark Lords of the Sith with each of their respective empires being made up of majority humans and a variety of crimes being laid upon worlds that were nonhuman majority. This along with the Core-Rim divide with the Core being majority human and Rim being majority nonhuman, intensified relations between the two groups with many species becoming humanphobic while the Core in return saw a rebirth Human High Culture as they looked down upon the uncivilized and "alien" Outer Rim. Fortunately, the highest levels of the Republic government were against High Culture with even the most core-centric chancellors denouncing the lifestyle publicly as vile bigotry. The return of the Sith would unfortunately cause relations to break down immensely with the Republic society becoming increasingly divided on the subject as the Sith in turn "Liberalized" their treatment of nearhumans.

A/N: In this chapter I wanted to get a layout of how the Republic was faring at the start of the war and some of the traits of its government and society that influenced its course for the greater war. In particular I wanted to show it's fall from grace from the KOTOR era, yet how at the same time the Republic was far more powerful and healthier than its Clone Wars counterpart. You can also see some signs for the Republic that would point to its decay thousands of years later, particularly the Core-Rim conflict.

Next chapter I shall focus on the state of the Sith Empire at the start of the war, and afterwords we shall focus on the first battles.