In the future, should subsequent editions of the Chronology follow, this is the section that will undoubtedly grow considerably. The 19-year span between the end of Revenge fo the Sith and the start of A New Hope is fertile ground for future storytelling. Already novels and comics series are primed to explore this territory, and the future of Star Wars on television may explore the dark times when the Empire experiences amazing growth in power.
But today, The Dark Times consists of speculation, story fragments and some new information joined together into intriguing signs of what lies ahead. The Chronology begins by accounting for a number of Jedi that survived the purge. Jerec is from the Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight (1997, LucasArts), but the status of K'Kruhk, Jeisel and A'Sharad Hett, all characters from Dark Horse's Star Wars: Republic comics series, is newly revealed.
Vader's immediate mission to root out Order 66 survivors and oversee the enslavement of the Wookiees of Kashyyyk takes place in the forthcoming novel, Star Wars: Dark Lord -- The Rise of Darth Vader (2005, Del Rey Books). Vader's recruitment of the Noghri people comes from the novel series that first introduced the small yet deadly species -- The Thrawn Trilogy. Dark Force Rising (1992, Bantam Books), the second book, deals specifically with the origins of the Noghri's servitude to Darth Vader. The recruitment of Thrawn into the Imperial ranks comes from the short story "Mist Encounter," which was first published in Star Wars Adventure Journal #7 (1995, West End Games). It has since been reprinted online for Hyperspace members here. Obi-Wan's encounter with Ferus Olin is taken from The Desperate Mission (2005, Scholastic, Inc.), the first novel of the new young reader series, The Last of the Jedi.
The body of lore surrounding such compelling institutions as the Dark Side Adepts, Inquisitors, and other dark siders that helped cement Palpatine's rule is taken from a variety of source material. Before the '90s, the notion that anyone other than Vader and the Emperor in the upper echelons could touch the Force was rare. But with the publication of the six-part Dark Empire (1991-1992, Dark Horse Comics) comics series, readers were introduced to a version of the New Order that was steeped in the dark side. The Dark Empire Sourcebook (1993, West End Games) needed to introduce a history to these dark mages and Force-users that surrounded the Emperor, so their origins dated back to the original Empire of the Galactic Civil War-era. The Dark Adept history is culled from both these sources.
The Inquisitors stem from Obi-Wan's vaguely worded statement in Episode IV that Vader helped the Emperor hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. The Expanded Universe has hinted at a number of agents who helped Vader carry out the purge of the Jedi. The Inquisitors as dark-side wielding enforcers were established at a time before the strictures of Sith rules were known to authors. As a result, though they use the dark side and have been known to brandish a red lightsaber, these dark warriors are not Sith. They are denied some crucial knowledge, doctrine or training that differentiates them.
The first Inquisitor to be fully profiled was High Inquisitor Tremayne, a recurring roleplaying game character introduced in Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim (1993, West End Games). It should be noted, though, that he was not the first Inquisitor mentioned -- Grand Inquisitor Torbin was name-dropped in The Star Wars Sourcebook (1987, West End Games), though there was no suggestion at the time as to what a Grand Inquisitor really was.
The Inquisitors were more fully explained in both the Rebellion Era Sourcebook and the Dark Side Sourcebook (both 2001, Wizards of the Coast). They have since turned up in Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided (2003, LucasArts) and most recently, the webstrip series Evasive Action: Recruitment (2005, Lucas Online).
The specific reference to the awakening of Arden Lyn is from "The Emperor's Pawns," an article that ran in Star Wars Gamer #5 (2001, Wizards of the Coast). The Emperor's Hands and the Secret Order are both from the early 1990s. Mara Jade was the first Emperor's Hand to be revealed, in the novel Heir to the Empire (1991, Bantam Books). She believed she was the only one, but that was shown to be a falsehood with the introduction of a second Hand, Roganda Ismaren, in the novel Children of the Jedi (1995, Bantam Books). Since then, many other Hands have been introduced and/or retroactively identified. The article "The Emperor's Pawns" from Star Wars Gamer #5 (2001, Wizards of the Coast) is an extensive look at these agents.
That same article describes The Secret Order, which was first introduced in the space combat simulator video game TIE Fighter (1995, LucasArts). The Prophets of the Dark Side come from a series of children's books published in the early 1990s, starting with The Lost City of the Jedi (1992, Bantam Skylark). They were more fully explored in The Dark Side Sourcebook (2001, Wizards of the Coast). Finally, the Eye of Palpatine battlemoon is presented as a threat from the past in Children of the Jedi, (1995, Bantam Books), the same novel that introduced Callista and Geith.
The structure of the Empire, as described in Birth of the Empire, was first laid out in Imperial Sourcebook (1989, West End Games). Moff Vorru was introduced to readers in the second book of the X-wing novels, Wedge's Gamble (1996, Bantam Books). The absorption of the various commerce entities is derived from a line of cut dialogue from A New Hope, where Biggs Darklighter described the nationalization of commerce in the Empire. The Mining Guild is first mentioned in The Empire Strikes Back.
The 1989 release of Imperial Sourcebook by West End Games took many risks in defining the growth of the Empire when the prequels were far from becoming a reality. Nonetheless, many of the concepts introduced in the book have stood the test of time: the HoloNet and COMPNOR, for example. The pre-Empire predecessor, COMPOR, comes from the HoloNet News column in Star Wars Insider #70 (2003, Paizo Publishing), and the transition from one to the other was told in the HoloNet News column in Star Wars Insider #84 (2005, IDG Entertainment). Ishin-Il-Raz and his involvement in the founding of COMPNOR was introduced in a Who's Who guide to Grand Admirals in Star Wars Insider #66 (2003, Paizo Publishing).
Details surrounding the destruction of Caamas forms the plot of the Hand of Thrawn duology of novels, starting with Specter of the Past and ending with Vision of the Future (both 1998, Bantam Books).
While subjects such as new clone hosts, subversive strikes against the Death Star project, Vader and the Emperor's searches for new apprentices and the disappearance of the Jedi fugitives have not been broached in fiction or source material, they are all directives that come from Lucasfilm as new tales begin to be developed in this era.
The early formation of the Rebel Alliance was first described in The Rebel Alliance Sourcebook (1990, West End Games). While specific in some details, the sourcebook only described the coming of the Alliance as the joining of three major resistance groups, but did not specify who the three parties were. It described these events as "The Corellian Treaty." It wasn't until the novel Dark Force Rising (1992, Bantam Books) that Garm Bel Iblis was introduced and identified as the third founder of the Rebellion, alongside Organa and Mothma. The Rebel Alliance Sourcebook is also the first to describe the Ghorman Massacre.
Jan Dodonna's origin story was first told in Galaxy Guide 1: A New Hope (1989, West End Games). Cody Sunn-Childe is from "The Dreams of Cody Sunn-Childe," Star Wars #46 (1981, Marvel Comics), a single issue of the original Marvel comic run that was gathered in the compilation, A Long Time Ago... Volume 3: Resurrection of Evil by Dark Horse Comics in 2002. The defection of the Incom design team was first described in the Star Wars Sourcebook (1987, West End Games).
The early Alliance bases come from several sources. Chrellis was first identified in The Rebel Alliance Sourcebook (1990, West End Games), while Briggia and Orion IV are from the X-Wing space combat simulator game (1992, LucasArts). Dantooine was cited as the home of a former Rebel Base in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope (1977, Lucasfilm). The description of Operation Strike Fear is entirely based on its depiction during a set of missions in the aforementioned X-Wing game.
