Current Setting

A galaxy at war, living with the consequences of old conflicts while new uncertainties spread beyond the front lines.

Beyond Khar Shian, the Galactic Republic and Sith Empire remain engaged in open war. The fall of the Eternal Empire did not produce lasting peace, and the renewed conflict has unfolded against a background of resource shortages, increased piracy and crime, damaged institutions, contested worlds, and communities still recovering from earlier galactic crises. Official SWTOR material explicitly describes the post-Onslaught galaxy as one in which warfare has reignited while crucial resources decline and criminal activity increases.

The current setting should therefore not be imagined as one enormous battlefield. The war is one of the most important pressures shaping the galaxy, but it does not define every person's daily life.

The Galactic Republic and Sith Empire are once again engaged in open warfare. The conflict reignited before Onslaught and has continued through the events surrounding Legacy of the Sith. Major campaigns on worlds such as Corellia demonstrated the strategic importance of fleets, shipyards, reinforcements, and industrial capacity, while the Imperial invasion of Manaan demonstrated how scarce resources such as kolto can become military objectives in their own right.

Neither government should be treated as controlling the galaxy uncontested. Political allegiance, military presence, occupation, neutrality, and practical authority vary from one world and region to another. Some populations live close to active fronts. Others contribute ships, personnel, money, intelligence, food, medicine, fuel, or industrial production without seeing a battle themselves. Independent worlds and communities may attempt to remain neutral, negotiate with both sides, or profit from the conflict.

The Galactic Republic

The Republic remains one of the galaxy's dominant political and military powers. Its institutions have survived the Great Galactic War, the Treaty of Coruscant, renewed conflict with the Empire, Zakuul's conquest, political upheaval, and the return to open war.

The Republic is also rebuilding. Official SWTOR material establishes Task Force Nova as an initiative formed with Jedi Master Gnost-Dural and General Daeruun to help restore the Jedi Order after years of severe losses.

For Republic roleplay, this creates room for both confidence and strain. Soldiers may regard themselves as defending Republic worlds from Imperial aggression. Civilians may support the war, resent its costs, or have little direct relationship with it. Politicians and officials must balance military needs against reconstruction and local interests. Jedi belong to an ancient and influential Order, but should not be treated as though it possesses unlimited personnel, resources, or reach.

The Sith Empire

The Sith Empire remains the Republic's principal military rival. Its fleets, armies, Sith leadership, bureaucratic institutions, intelligence networks, industries, and civilian population continue to pursue Imperial interests while the wider war creates opportunities for both advancement and internal competition.

Post-Onslaught SWTOR material also reestablished the Hand as an elite Imperial organization used for strategically important operations, reinforcing the Empire's reliance upon specialized institutions alongside conventional military power.

For Imperial characters, service may provide status, resources, professional identity, ideology, family tradition, or opportunity. It may also expose them to dangerous assignments, rivalry between Sith, institutional politics, conflicting chains of authority, and expectations of loyalty.

Imperial characters should not be treated as sharing one personality or motive simply because they live under the same government.

Roleplay Consequences of the War

A character does not need to fight on a front line for the war to affect them.

Military recruitment, government contracts, medical demand, shortages, security restrictions, intelligence operations, damaged infrastructure, disrupted shipping, refugees, smuggling, piracy, reconstruction, propaganda, political pressure, war profiteering, and organized crime can all connect otherwise civilian stories to the larger conflict.

The battle on Khar Shian is the most recent major turning point incorporated into StarForgeRP's present-day SWTOR continuity.

Heta Kol and the Hidden Chain reconstructed Darth Nul's machine within a forgotten fortress associated with the ancient Sith Lord Naga Sadow. Darth Jadus, Darth Malgus, Shae Vizla, and their respective allies converged upon the same site, bringing the major Legacy of the Sith storylines together for their final confrontation.

The immediate conflict ends, but the consequences do not. The Battle of Khar Shian results in the deaths of both Heta Kol and Shae Vizla, while Malgus succeeds in using Nul's machine in a way that reaches Force-sensitive beings throughout the galaxy. SWTOR's announced 8.0 storyline explicitly identifies the resulting unrest as a major consequence that the next story era will explore.

For StarForgeRP, Khar Shian should therefore be treated as a turning point rather than a complete political reset.

Mandalorians After the Hidden Chain

The deaths of Shae Vizla and Heta Kol leave the Mandalorians in an unusually uncertain position.

Heta's Hidden Chain challenged Shae's leadership and drew Mandalorian clans and warriors into a wider internal conflict. Khar Shian ends the struggle between its two central leaders, but the released SWTOR story does not immediately establish a new Mandalore or explain the future allegiance of every clan and former Hidden Chain supporter.

StarForgeRP should therefore avoid assuming that all Mandalorians suddenly reunify, that every former Hidden Chain member receives the same treatment, or that any particular established character has automatically succeeded Shae Vizla.

Different clans may mourn, celebrate, blame one another, seek reconciliation, pursue revenge, withdraw from wider politics, reconsider old alliances, or argue over what Mandalorian leadership should become.

Roleplay Note

Mandalorian uncertainty is most useful when it produces character-level consequences rather than requiring player characters to decide the future of the entire culture.

A warrior may need to decide whether old enemies can be trusted. A clan may contain former supporters of opposing leaders. Contracts and alliances made during Shae's rule may be reconsidered. Someone associated with the Hidden Chain may conceal that history, defend it, regret it, or discover that others refuse to forget it.

Darth Nul's work has become one of the most important unresolved elements of the present setting.

At Khar Shian, Darth Malgus gains access to Nul's reconstructed machine and uses it to reach Force-sensitive beings across the galaxy. SWTOR's official announcement for the next era now confirms that this act has created widespread unrest and will form part of the coming Galaxy in Chaos storyline.

What StarForgeRP should not do is invent the unreleased consequences in advance.

The current baseline establishes that something significant happened. It does not yet establish how every individual Force-sensitive experienced it, whether they understood its source, what they believe Malgus intended, how institutions respond everywhere, or what political and social consequences ultimately follow.

Roleplay Note

A Force-sensitive character may reasonably have been affected by the event, but the experience should not be used as permission to invent knowledge or abilities that SWTOR has not established.

Characters might respond with confusion, fear, curiosity, anger, spiritual concern, skepticism, or a desire to investigate depending upon their background and circumstances. A Jedi, Sith, independent Force practitioner, untrained sensitive, or member of another Force tradition may interpret the same event through very different beliefs.

Most people in the galaxy are not Jedi, Sith, generals, Mandalorian leaders, or participants in secret confrontations over ancient Force technology.

They still live in the same galaxy.

Warfare and repeated galactic crises can influence shipping, employment, prices, medicine, migration, security, government priorities, crime, and access to resources even far from a battlefield. SWTOR's own description of Mek-Sha presents a crossroads where traders, smugglers, pirates, mercenaries, and refugees gather amid both opportunity and danger.

This leaves substantial room for stories about medicine, transportation, business, salvage, reconstruction, investigation, archaeology, scholarship, exploration, diplomacy, journalism, law enforcement, organized crime, family obligations, local government, religious communities, relationships, professional rivalries, or simple survival.

A StarForgeRP story does not need to determine the fate of the Republic or Sith Empire to leave lasting consequences.

Shared continuity establishes what happened. It does not mean every character knows what happened.

The Republic–Imperial war is obvious on a galactic scale. The details of classified military operations, intelligence activities, Darth Nul's research, private conversations, Mandalorian politics, or events deep within a forgotten Sith fortress may be known only to particular participants or organizations.

When deciding what a character knows, consider where they were, who they work for, which information sources they possess, whether an event was public, whether their organization had reason to brief them, and how much time has passed for reports or rumors to spread.

Player knowledge and character knowledge should remain separate where appropriate.

Roleplay Note

Incomplete information can make the setting more useful.

Characters may receive contradictory reports, hear propaganda, repeat rumors, misunderstand another faction's motives, know only one part of an event, or later discover that something they believed was wrong.

The Current Date

StarForgeRP uses 3621 BBY / 32 ATC as the present-day anchor for its shared archive.

This is a StarForgeRP chronology decision, not an exact canonical date explicitly assigned by SWTOR to Legacy Reborn. The later SWTOR storyline has a confirmed sequence, but official sources do not provide a firm BBY year for every update. The Galactic Timeline therefore preserves uncertainty where chronology must be reconstructed rather than presenting every later story update as precisely dated canon.

The Current Story Baseline

The current StarForgeRP setting incorporates established SWTOR narrative events through Game Update 7.9: Legacy Reborn.

Game Update 7.9.1: Light and Shadow was released afterward, but its published content centers on Galactic Season 11, Cartel Market additions, seasonal content, and fixes rather than a new main-story chapter. Legacy Reborn therefore remains StarForgeRP's current released narrative anchor.

Player Choices and Branching Outcomes

SWTOR allows players to make choices that can produce different personal outcomes.

Where the game permits mutually exclusive results, StarForgeRP should not automatically treat one player's version as universal history. A particular outcome should become shared StarForgeRP continuity only when the community deliberately establishes it for purposes of later stories.

Character-specific game mechanics should likewise not be generalized into setting-wide lore unless the story clearly supports doing so.

StarForgeRP-Created Consequences

StarForgeRP stories may create lasting local or regional consequences of their own.

Characters may alter organizations, relationships, businesses, settlements, military units, criminal networks, reputations, facilities, or other parts of the shared setting. When those changes continue to matter, they can be recorded in character dossiers, Galaxy entries, Lore pages, Roleplay archives, and the Timeline.

Community continuity should expand the lived history of the SWTOR setting rather than overwrite its major established events.

For the full continuity policy, see Continuity & Canon.

What Comes Next

Game Update 8.0 has now been announced as Masters of the Force, the beginning of SWTOR's next story era. Its opening Galaxy in Chaos storyline will address the consequences of Malgus's actions and growing unrest within both the Republic and Sith Empire. SWTOR has also confirmed Ryloth as a major new world for the update, alongside conflict involving Hutt interests.

These are confirmed future developments, not events that have already occurred in StarForgeRP.

Until the relevant story content is released and reviewed, StarForgeRP should not assume the outcome of the unrest, the political response to Malgus's actions, conditions on Ryloth, the role of individual factions, or any other unreleased consequence.