Historical Powers & Civilizations

Empires fall, civilizations decline, and borders disappear, but the consequences of power can survive for thousands of years.

Historical Powers & Civilizations explores states and societies whose greatest period of influence lies in the past but whose ruins, technology, descendants, institutions, beliefs, reputations, or historical claims still matter in the SWTOR-era galaxy.

These are selective references rather than a catalogue of every civilization in galactic history. A subject belongs here when what survived can materially shape a character, location, organization, discovery, conflict, or story.

Infinite Empire

More than twenty thousand years before the SWTOR era, the Rakata ruled an empire spanning hundreds of worlds. Their civilization combined extraordinary technological achievement with the Force, producing advanced starships, automated systems, weapons, prison complexes, and the Star Forge while conquering and enslaving other peoples.

SWTOR's surviving historical records describe an empire weakened by widespread slave revolts, a devastating plague, and the Rakata's loss of the Force connection upon which much of their technology depended. The political empire disappeared, but its machinery did not.

On Belsavis, ancient Rakatan vaults, containment systems, droids, and infrastructure survived long enough for the Republic to build its own prison around them. Belsavis Traces of Rakatan occupation also remain on Dantooine, where later investigators can still encounter evidence of a civilization gone for millennia. Dantooine

For roleplay, the Infinite Empire is most useful through what it left behind: inaccessible installations, imperfectly understood machinery, ancient containment systems, archaeological disputes, historical evidence, and dangerous discoveries whose original purposes may no longer be obvious.

Ancient Sith Empire

The ancient Sith Empire developed after exiled Dark Jedi reached Korriban and established themselves among the native Sith. Over generations, conquest, intermarriage, political development, and dark-side traditions produced an imperial civilization whose history became inseparable from the evolving meaning of the name Sith.

Its principal worlds included Korriban, where the tombs and monuments of ancient Sith Lords remained enormously important to later generations. 

Under Naga Sadow, the empire invaded the Republic during the Great Hyperspace War. The invasion failed, and the old Sith centers were devastated. Survivors eventually followed the ruler later known as the Sith Emperor into deep space, where the exiles rediscovered Dromund Kaas and rebuilt their society in isolation.

That surviving civilization eventually became the restored Sith Empire encountered during SWTOR.

The ancient empire therefore matters through more than tombs and relics. Ancestry, political memory, Sith scholarship, inherited traditions, historical claims, and competing interpretations of the past all connect later Imperial society to a civilization that no longer exists in its original form.

Brotherhood of the Sith

Thousands of years after the ancient Sith Empire's defeat, Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma became the leaders of a new Sith movement. Exar Kun took the title of Dark Lord of the Sith, Qel-Droma became his apprentice, and their combined Krath and Massassi forces formed the Brotherhood of the Sith during the conflict later remembered as the Great Sith War.

Its power was brief, but its consequences endured.

Exar Kun's history remains particularly connected to Yavin 4, where Massassi sites, Sith ruins, artifacts, and the memory of his final defeat survived long after his forces disappeared.

For roleplay, the Brotherhood is useful when exploring ancient Sith artifacts, archaeological sites, Jedi historical records, dangerous surviving knowledge, or the distinction between Sith traditions and any one Sith government.

Revan & Malak's Sith Empire

After the Mandalorian Wars, Revan and Malak encountered the hidden Sith Empire on Dromund Kaas and fell under the influence of its Emperor. They were sent back toward Republic space and directed to recover the Rakatan Star Forge, but their ambitions developed into a Sith empire of their own.

The Star Forge supplied the military power behind the Jedi Civil War. Malak later betrayed Revan and assumed command before a redeemed Revan returned, defeated Malak, and destroyed the Star Forge.

This regime should remain distinct from both the ancient Sith Empire and the restored Sith Empire encountered during SWTOR. Its short existence nevertheless left consequences that survived for centuries.

Taris remains one of the clearest examples: Malak's bombardment devastated the planet, and later generations continued living among the ecological, political, archaeological, and cultural consequences. Taris

The period can also support military history, surviving records, family stories, Jedi and Sith scholarship, Revanite interpretations, ruined sites, and disagreement over how later generations understand Revan and Malak.

Ancient Gree Civilization

The Gree remain a living people, but their civilization reached its greatest technological height thousands of years before the Galactic Republic. By the SWTOR era, much of their ancient history had been forgotten and some of their greatest achievements could no longer be fully understood even by the Gree themselves.

That distinction matters: the survival of the species does not mean ancient Gree capabilities survived unchanged.

The Gray Secant provides one of SWTOR's clearest examples. The fully automated vessel had been launched in the distant past to explore and analyze the galaxy over many millennia. Its technology remained beyond contemporary Republic and Imperial science, and its reappearance over Ilum carried exceptional significance even for the Gree.

Ancient Gree history can support research expeditions, diplomacy, technological competition, scientific mysteries, ancient infrastructure, and encounters with systems whose functions modern observers only partly understand.

Ancient Hutt Empire

Modern Hutt political and commercial power has roots extending far beyond the contemporary Hutt Cartel. SWTOR's galactic histories describe an earlier Hutt Empire that controlled numerous systems before internal conflicts known as the Hutt Cataclysms devastated Hutt territory, including their original homeworld of Varl.

The Hutts survived the collapse of that older imperial order and eventually established themselves on Evocar, the world later known as Nal Hutta or Hutta.

The ancient Hutt Empire should not be treated as though it were simply the modern Cartel under another name. Political structures, territorial conditions, and galactic circumstances changed enormously across the intervening millennia.

Its surviving significance lies instead in the deep history of Hutt power, migration, territorial memory, old records, inherited prestige, and the historical circumstances behind the Hutts' presence on Hutta. For their active SWTOR-era political, commercial, and underworld power, see the Hutt Cartel.

Iokath Creators

Iokath was constructed by an extraordinarily advanced organic civilization that had already destroyed itself long before the Republic, Sith Empire, and their allies began exploring the artificial world.

The Creators left behind an immense technological ecosystem: self-perpetuating droids, artificial intelligences, military systems, automated infrastructure, and weapons capable of continuing their functions without the people who originally designed them.

Among their surviving creations were the machine entities later remembered as gods by ancient Zakuulans. Beings such as Tyth, Scyva, and Izax began as engineered machines rather than supernatural deities, yet their encounters with an earlier Zakuulan society helped create traditions that endured long after their makers vanished.

Not every fallen empire belongs to remote antiquity.

The Eternal Empire conquered the Republic and Sith Empire within the lifetime of people who remain active during later SWTOR history. Former soldiers, Knights, subjects, prisoners, collaborators, refugees, officials, resistance members, and occupation survivors may therefore remember its rule personally rather than through archaeology or inherited history.

Use the Galactic Timeline when the main question is when these powers rose, changed, or fell. Galactic Timeline Use Galaxy for the worlds, ruins, facilities, tombs, battlefields, and other physical places where their consequences can still be encountered. Galaxy Return to History & Context for the wars, movements, historical figures, and broader developments connected to them.