Chapter 3: Origins in the Unknown Regions
The Unknown Regions had always lived up to their name. This vast swath of the galaxy, comprising roughly a third of its total volume, remained largely uncharted throughout galactic history. Natural hazards abounded: unstable hyperspace routes, gravity wells that could tear ships apart, nebulae that blocked sensors and communications. Few had ventured there and returned to tell of it. For most of galactic civilization, the Unknown Regions were simply a blank space on the map, irrelevant to the concerns of everyday life.
But Emperor Palpatine had known something that others did not. Through the dark side of the Force, through ancient Sith texts and his own terrible communion with powers beyond the veil of death, he had sensed something in the Unknown Regions—a presence, a calling, a destiny. Long before his apparent death at Endor, he had begun sending expeditions into that uncharted darkness. Surveying teams mapped safe hyperspace routes. Construction crews built hidden installations on worlds that had never known civilization. Resources were stockpiled. Ships were constructed in secret shipyards far from prying eyes.
The Contingency, as Palpatine’s plan came to be known among those few who were aware of it, was designed to ensure that if the Empire fell, it would rise again—stronger, purer, and free of the weaknesses that had allowed rebellion to take root. The Emperor had always believed that his Empire was held back by the vestiges of the Old Republic that he had allowed to persist: the bureaucracy, the corruption, the petty ambitions of officials more concerned with their own advancement than with the glory of the Empire. In the Unknown Regions, he would build something new.
When the Empire fell at Endor and Jakku, Gallius Rax activated the Contingency. Loyal Imperial officers, those who had been vetted and recruited specifically for this purpose, received coded transmissions directing them to rendezvous points in the Unknown Regions. They brought with them warships, personnel, and resources—everything needed to begin again. Behind them, Rax ensured that the old Empire was thoroughly destroyed, its records purged, its remaining leadership eliminated. There would be no going back. The future lay ahead, in the uncharted darkness.
The journey into the Unknown Regions was perilous. Many ships were lost to the hazards that had kept this region unexplored for so long. But those who survived found the installations that Palpatine had prepared: shipyards capable of constructing Star Destroyers, academies for training the next generation of officers and stormtroopers, and—most importantly—the infrastructure needed to sustain a military power base far from the New Republic’s reach. Here, in the darkness between stars, the First Order was born.
Chapter 4: Ideology and Purpose
The First Order was not simply the Empire reborn. It was something new—and in many ways, something more dangerous. Where the Empire had tolerated inefficiency and corruption as long as the machine kept running, the First Order demanded perfection. Where the Empire had relied on fear to maintain control, the First Order cultivated fanaticism. Where the Empire had been content to rule, the First Order was driven by a burning need to conquer, to purify, to impose its vision of order on a galaxy it viewed as hopelessly corrupt.
The ideological foundation of the First Order rested on several core beliefs. First, that the Empire had fallen not because of any inherent flaw in authoritarian rule, but because it had been too lenient, too willing to compromise with the democratic traditions it had inherited from the Old Republic. The Senate, even in its ceremonial form, had been a weakness. The tolerance of alien species in positions of authority had diluted the Empire’s human purity. The failure to completely crush the Rebellion when it was still small had allowed treason to metastasize into a galaxy-wide cancer.
Second, the First Order believed that the New Republic was inherently illegitimate. It was founded by traitors and terrorists who had murdered the rightful Emperor. Its democratic institutions were a facade hiding the same corruption that had brought down the Old Republic. Its weakness invited chaos—piracy, crime, the resurgence of the Hutts and other criminal enterprises that the Empire had suppressed. The galaxy needed order, and only the First Order could provide it.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the First Order cultivated a mythology of victimhood and righteousness. Its members were taught that they were the inheritors of a great civilization that had been unjustly destroyed. They were the chosen ones, destined to restore order to a galaxy that had fallen into darkness since Endor. This sense of historical mission gave the First Order’s personnel a fanatical dedication that Imperial forces had often lacked. They were not just soldiers—they were crusaders.
The First Order’s leadership carefully cultivated this ideology through education and propaganda. Children taken from their families or born to First Order personnel were raised in military academies where they learned that the New Republic was evil, that the old Empire was a golden age unjustly ended, and that their sacred duty was to restore galactic civilization to its proper order. These young people, knowing no other life, became the First Order’s most devoted soldiers—stormtroopers whose conditioning went far deeper than any Imperial recruit had ever experienced.
Chapter 5: Military Structure and Assets
The First Order military represented a significant evolution from the Imperial model. While it retained many Imperial designations and organizational structures, it refined and improved upon them in ways that made it a far more effective fighting force than its predecessor. The failures of the Empire were studied exhaustively, and solutions were implemented to address every identified weakness.
The Stormtrooper Corps underwent perhaps the most significant transformation. Imperial stormtroopers had been recruited as adults, given relatively brief training, and deployed in large numbers with the expectation that their equipment and numerical superiority would compensate for individual shortcomings. First Order stormtroopers, by contrast, were taken as children and subjected to years of intensive training and conditioning. They were taught to see themselves as part of a single organism, their individual identities subsumed into the collective purpose of the Order. Desertion was virtually unknown, and combat effectiveness was significantly higher than Imperial standards.
The First Order’s naval forces were equally impressive. The Resurgent-class Star Destroyer, which would become the backbone of the First Order fleet, was nearly twice the size of the Imperial-class vessels that had once terrorized the galaxy. These massive warships incorporated decades of technological advancement and lessons learned from Imperial defeats. Their shields were stronger, their weapons more powerful, their hangars capable of carrying larger complements of the improved TIE fighters that First Order engineers had developed.
During this era, the First Order fleet is still growing but already formidable. Dozens of Star Destroyers patrol the shipping lanes of the Unknown Regions, protecting First Order territory and conducting raids against New Republic interests when opportunity presents. Each vessel carries thousands of stormtroopers, hundreds of TIE fighters, and enough firepower to devastate a planet. The fleet operates from a network of hidden bases throughout the Unknown Regions, moving constantly to avoid detection while maintaining the capability to strike anywhere in the galaxy.
Special forces units within the First Order serve particular functions that regular stormtroopers cannot fulfill. The First Order’s Special Forces TIE pilots are among the most skilled aviators in the galaxy, trained from childhood in advanced simulators and then honed through actual combat operations. Intelligence operatives infiltrate New Republic institutions, gathering information and cultivating assets among sympathetic politicians. Assassins eliminate threats before they can mature. Each of these specialized units reports directly to the highest levels of First Order command, ensuring that their activities remain secret even from most First Order personnel.