Historical Powers & Civilizations

A state can disappear while its people, institutions, and inventions continue to shape the galaxy. Ancient machinery may remain operational, descendants may preserve an inherited tradition, and communities may still live with the consequences of conquest.

This directory within History & Context introduces selected powers and civilizations through their historical significance and surviving legacies. It includes ancient societies, defeated regimes, and earlier phases of peoples who remain part of the Old Republic galaxy.

For broader political and institutional references, visit Factions & Powers. For dates and historical sequence, consult the Galactic Timeline.

Infinite Empire

The Rakata ruled the Infinite Empire long before the Republic, enforcing their domination through slavery and Force-powered technology. Their creations included the Star Forge, an immense manufacturing station later used by Revan and Malak. Rebellions, plague, and the Rakata’s declining connection to the Force contributed to the empire’s collapse; the plague’s role in that loss remains uncertain.

On Belsavis, ancient Rakatan containment systems became the foundations of a Republic prison. Dantooine also preserves Rakatan remains. Such sites connect a vanished imperial system with later questions about containment, investigation, and responsibility for machinery whose original operators are gone.

Ancient Sith Empire

Exiled Dark Jedi reached Korriban, imposed their authority over its native Sith, and helped establish the ancient Sith Empire. The resulting civilization combined the exiles’ dark-side teachings with an existing society and eventually confronted the Republic in the Great Hyperspace War.

Defeat did not end its historical influence. Survivors led by the Sith Emperor eventually established themselves on Dromund Kaas, laying the foundations of the restored Sith Empire. Tombs, inherited teachings, ancestry, and institutions connect these periods, although later Imperial society cannot be understood as an unchanged continuation of its ancient predecessor.

Brotherhood of the Sith

Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma formed the Brotherhood of the Sith, bringing together followers who challenged the Republic and Jedi during the Great Sith War. Its strength included the Krath, Massassi warriors, fallen Jedi, and Mandalorian forces.

The Brotherhood’s defeat left consequences beyond its scattered followers. Yavin 4 preserves Kun’s strongholds and the history of his exploitation of the Massassi. Ossus bears the legacy of wartime devastation and the dispersal of Jedi knowledge. These places offer different routes into the same history: through the ambitions of its leaders, the communities they harmed, and the teachings and objects that survived.

Revan & Malak’s Sith Empire

After the Mandalorian Wars, Revan and Malak encountered the concealed Sith Empire and returned to Republic space as Sith conquerors. Using the Rakatan Star Forge, they built a wartime power distinct from the Emperor’s state on Dromund Kaas. Malak seized command after betraying Revan; his eventual defeat and the Star Forge’s destruction ended the regime’s principal campaign against the Republic.

Its consequences survived in devastated Taris and in later interpretations of Revan, including those associated with the Order of Revan.

Within StarForgeRP history, House tradition places Vanessa Vashara among Revan’s wartime forces. Her remembered service connects this period with a surviving family legacy without establishing personal dealings with Revan himself.

Ancient Gree Civilization

The Gree are a living people whose ancestral engineering survives beyond much of the knowledge needed to reproduce or fully understand it. Their ancient civilization’s legacy includes hypergates and the Gray Secant, an automated research vessel encountered on Ilum.

Modern Gree regard the Gray Secant with profound reverence. Its survival therefore represents more than a technical puzzle: it connects contemporary custodians with an ancestral purpose they can only partly recover. Encounters with Gree technology may involve translation, cooperation, and competing expectations about what an investigation should accomplish.

Ancient Hutt Empire

The ancient Hutt Empire extended its influence across numerous systems before internal warfare engulfed its territories. SWTOR’s galactic histories describe the Hutt Cataclysms as devastating Varl and Hutt colonies, prompting migration to Evocar, later known as Nal Hutta.

That settlement also belongs to Evocii history. Hutt acquisition of their world brought dispossession, exploitation, and environmental transformation. Accounts centered on Hutt prosperity do not encompass the experience of the people displaced by it.

Distinguished from the later Hutt Cartel, the ancient empire remains relevant through migration, family traditions, territorial claims, and the unequal consequences of expansion.

The Builders of Iokath

Iokath’s extinct creators left an artificial world and machines capable of influencing civilizations long after their makers’ disappearance. Their research included interventions in other societies, combining technological experimentation with a disregard for the lives affected.

Among their creations were the machines remembered as the Six Gods of Zakuulan religion. The Eternal Fleet also originated on Iokath, connecting its ancient engineering with a much later empire.

These connections distinguish the builders’ intentions from the meanings later cultures gave their creations. Technical records, surviving machines, and religious traditions can reveal different parts of that history without providing a complete account of the civilization.

Eternal Empire

Zakuul’s Eternal Empire used the Eternal Fleet to defeat the Republic and Sith Empire, leaving both governments subordinate and paying tribute. The Alliance’s victory ended the ruling dynasty’s command of the Eternal Throne, while Zakuul and its people survived.

Begin with something a character can encounter: a maintained ruin, an inherited account, a displaced community, or a machine still performing an old task. Establish who understands it, who depends on it, and whose interests an investigation might affect.

Descendants and custodians need not possess complete knowledge of their inheritance. Equally, an outside researcher’s technical expertise does not settle an object’s cultural meaning or ownership.

• Investigate whether an installation still serves its original purpose or was altered by later occupants.

• Compare a ruling family’s account of expansion with memories preserved by a displaced community.

• Explore competing claims to an artifact without deciding ownership before the characters investigate.

• Bring a technician and a cultural custodian together over a system whose continued operation matters to both.

• Let someone who remembers the Eternal Empire compare personal experience with an official account written afterward.