Star Wars: Shadows of the Sith Empire - alternate KotOR timeline

[Yora]

Knights of the Old Republic
SHADOWS OF THE SITH EMPIRE

Twenty years have passed since the returned Sith Lord Darth Revan has been destroyed for a second time in the Battle of Chandrilla, bringing an end to his seemingly unstoppable invasion of the Galactic Republic. With the death of their master, the surviving Sith forces were driven back into the Outer Rim.

Under the leadership of the mysterious Sith Empress the SITH EMPIRE has been rebuilding its fleets and recovered its strength, slowly conquering many of the small independent systems of the Rim. Many fear the threat of a new great galactic war on the horizon.

In these dangerous times, a small ship carrying a delegation of JEDI KNIGHTS is being attacked by unknown enemies in the skies above the ancient jungles of Onderon.

Spoiler: Sith Space and the Old Republic

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Shadows of the Sith Empire is a campaign I am currently preparing, set two decades after the Republic Fleet assisting Master Vandar and Bastila Shan in destroying Darth Malak has been annihilated in the Battle of the Star Forge. Following their victory, the Sith fleet began with an invasion of the Republic. However, the invasion ended with the mysterious death of Darth Revan and the remaining Sith disappeared back into Sith Space. For years they faught among themselves while the Republic was in no shape to pursue them and end the treat of the Sith once and for all. After a period of silence, rumors reached the Republic that a new Sith Empress has taken control of the Sith worlds. She is turning the planets of her empire into strong fortresses and is expanding huge amounts of resources to rebuild those that have been devastated in the Mandalorian War and the Second Sith War. Unlike her failed predecessors, she seems to be determined to build herself an empire that will last.

But the Republic is always aware of the threat that a rising Sith Empire presents and few doubt that the silence will last forever. A new war with the Sith seems inevitable. If not in this generation, then in the next. New fleets are being build and the worlds along the hyperlane routes of the Mid Rim are heavily patrolled. Meanwhile the Jedi are still recovering their numbers from the losses of those who had been killed by Darth Revan or joined him. But a new generation of Jedi Knights has completed their training and the council of the Jedi Temple on Alpheridies is keeping a close watch on both the Sith and the Mandalorians that are roaming the Outer Rim beyond the territory controlled by the Republic.

Between the Republic and the Sith Empire lies a large region of small worlds that are seen as too unimportant for either side to actually enforce their claims on the systems. Lacking any real centralized governments or any valuable resources, they are left to their own devices for the time being, while the two rival powers are more concerned with strengthening their core worlds. However, this lawlessness is attracting many others, like the Hutts, Czerka Corp, the Exchange, or Mandalorian mercenaries, making them far from safe places in the wilderness of the Outer Rim.

The plan is to make this game a semi-sandbox without a fixed script in which the players can take their ship to any of the space ports marked on the campaign map. If they want to they can start whatever fun and crazy plans they want, but in addition there are also Sith agents furthering hidden goals of the Empress and two big conspiracies in which the Sith also have their fingers. Each of these storylines has four to six of the planets playing a major role in them and related side quest NPCs could be find anywhere.
The PCs can be Jedi or scoundrels doing a job for the Jedi. No character has to be a Jedi and they don't have to take orders from the Jedi council either. Two of the storylines should work just as well with an all scoundrel party.

But I think for a Star Wars sandbox, what you need is not a collection of maps of places. A ship with hyperdrive basically lets you teleport to whatever planet you want in little time and there are no random encounters in hyperspace. And planets and even settlements are way too big to possibly make accurate maps for them. Star Wars also isn't really that big on dungeons, even though sneaking through space stations and huge ships is a common thing. Star Wars is not about visiting places, but about visiting people. I think a Star Wars sandbox should consists of general overviews of spaceports and one fully mapped out cantina for each planet, plus lots and lots interestingly fleshed out NPCs. Sith lords and agents, bounty hunters, smugglers, crime bosses, Republic officers, Jedi masters, barkeeps, informants, and so on. I plan to put together a decently sized folder with sections for each of the 24 planets containing information on space ports, special bases and installations, and all the local NPCs the players are likely to meet or have met. The general non-secret stuff I want to post here to see if any of you have any interesting ideas to add.

[Yora]

Worlds Overview

The Republic
Alpheridies: The icy homeworld of the Miraluka. The Jedi Temple of this world has become the new center of the Jedi in the region and is home to a council that is greatly respected by most Jedi.
Arkania: A snowy, mountainous world that is the home of the Arkanians. It is ruled by a wealthy caste known for its scientists and businessmen while a genetically engineered worker class is laboring in the great mines and factories. The biggest Arkanian company is Adascorp, one of the greatest producers of biotechnology and specialized electronics in the galaxy with an extremely shady history of selling terrible weapons to the highest bidders.
Ithor: This quiet forest world is the home of the Ithorians, a reknown by often unrespected race of great scientists and diplomats. The wilderness of the planet is almost untouched while most industry and business is located on massive space stations in orbit.
Onderon: An ancient world of the Republic on the outermost reaches of the Inner Rim. It is covered in a near endless wilderness with its entire population living in the massive fortress city Iziz that has been ruled by the royal family for hundreds of years. It was a major planet in the Great Sith War over 60 years ago and was the place where the Sith first emerged after having disappeared for a thousand years.
Dxun: This moon of Onderon is a wilderness even more dangerous and savage. During the Great Sith War it was home to the headquarters of Mandalore the Indomitable, who at the end of the war was shred to pieces by the beasts of the jungle.
Ord Mantell: A heavily industrial world that is the site of both huge shipyards and weapons factories and the headquarter of the Republic Navy in this part of the Mid Rim.
Roche Asteroids: This asteroid field is the home of the Verpines. Whether they colonized it or it is the remains of their ancient homeworld is unknown. It is well known for its shipyards and weapons factories and also a hub for smugglers in the region, who are under control by the Exchange.
Taris: One of the many planets destroyed by Malak. All civilization used to be concentrated in a single giant city that has been turned into a burned out ruin but some inhabitants survived in the deepest tunnels below the ground and made their way into the forests beyond its edges.

The Sith Empire
Cadomai Prime: A cold planet at the outermost edges of the Sith Empire that is home to the Snivvian species.
Ch'hodos: One of the worlds of the ancient Sith Empire whose shipyards produced the Sith flets of the Great Hyperspace War over a thousand yea
Korriban: The ancient tomb world of the Sith that holds the Valley of the Dark Lords, where most of the ancient sith lords are laid to rest.
Ord Radama: A world of swamps and marshes covered by several massive cities that take up the few places of solid ground. It is the homeworld of the diminutive Devlikk but has become the throne world of the new Sith Empire that controls the cities.
Telos: This farming world has been completely laid to waste by Darth Malak during the Second Sith War. At some point after taking the throne, the Empress has started a massive restoration project to return the planet to its former state. Both to make herself stand apart from the savage destruction of her predecessors and to regain its huge possiible food resources that her empire greatly needs.
Toprawa: A busy trade hub on the edge of the Sith Empire that serves as the main gateway from the neutral worlds of the Outer Rim.
Rhelg: This ancient Sith world holds the ruins of the castle of Ludo Kressh, one of the two contenders for the succession of Marka Ragnos, who was much more commited to the old Sith traditions than his rival Naga Sadow, who lead the empire to its end.
Ruuria: This very remote world is the home of a race of giant centipedes but has also long been famous for its great libraries that have made it the main center of science and learning in the new Sith Empire.
Yavin 4: A forested moon of an unremarkable gas planet that doesn't appear on any maps. The only thing of note on this world are the remains of temples build by Naga Sadow's followers after his defeat in the Great Hyperspace War. At the end of the Great Sith War, the Jedi destroyed the hideout of the Brotherhood of the Sith in the temples, turning everything inside them and the surrounding forest into ash. (Not actually everything, obviously.)
Ziost: The capital of the ancient Sith empire and home to the castle of Marka Ragnos, the last great Dark Lord of the Sith before the fall of the empire in the Great Hyperscpace War.

Neutral Worlds
Cathar: A minor world of great steppes and small forests with barely any major cities or industries. It is the homeworld of the Cathar, many of which have fled the planet for other worlds during the Mandalorian War that devastated their home.
Dantooine: This remote agricultural world has long been home for a Jedi academy and the Jedi council in this part of the Outer Rim. However, the academy was destroyed by the Sith during the Second Sith War and there isn't anything of even remote interest to the rest of the galaxy left.
Dathomir: Home to a reclusive sect of force users who reject the ways of both the Jedi and the Sith. Also home to the rancors, who have become of great interest to the keepers and trainers of war beasts.
Felucia; A very strannge and gloomy world at the borders of Sith Space that is home to countless types of giant funguses that cover the entire planet. As far as it is known, it is entirely uninhabited and has so far been of no interest to either the Republic or the Sith. Recently Adascorp established a research station there and discovered a fungal vine that can kill all plant life near it and turn it into fertilizer, which would have devastating effects on any ecosystem or agricultural world where it could be released as a weapon.
Gand: A remote desert world with a toxic atmosphere and acidic oceans that is the home of the stocky insectoid Gand species. It is one of the most inhospitable places in the galaxy that is nontheless seeing the occasional visitors.
Kashyyyk: This planet is covered in massive forests of gargantuan trees and home of the Wookiees. There are no major cities but most visitors are surprised that the seemingly savage wookiees are very skilled mechanics and engineers that have starship hangers right next to their wooden tree houses.
Kessel: A massive asteroid in Hutt Space where slaves are made to mine for the incredibly valuable drug gliterstim.
Mandalore: The homeworld of the Taung and the center of Mandalorian culture. Almost no outsider has ever set foot on the planet for countless generations and very little is known about it by either the Republic or the Sith.
Ossus: This planet was the site of the great Jedi Library for a thousand years until it was destroyed by the Sith in the Great Sith War by causing the multiple stars of the system to explode. While the whole planet has been burned to cinders, some of the deeper parts of the library remain intact, though its exact location is unknown since the loss of its star caused it to drift out into empty space sixty years ago.
Saleucami: A little known planet of deserts, steppes, and mountains between the Sith Empire and Hutt Space. The planet has several major cities and space ports and is home to a population of Pentorans and Twi'leks. Czerka Corp has heavily invested in the planet and it's of high interest to the Exchange who are trying to get a foothold in the region that is strongly dominated by the Hutts.
Sriluur: A rather unimpressive desert planet on the edges of Hutt Space. It is the homeworld of the Weequay and well known to be in the pocket of the Hutts.
Trandosha: Another desert planet in the same star system as Kashyyyk. While the wookiees are in diplomatic contact with the Old Republic, the Trandoshans have no interest whatsoever in joining it. Trandoshan slavers are regularly raiding Kashyyyk or capturing wookiee ships to capture very valuable wookiee slaves who they sell to the Hutts and the Exchange.

[Saintheart]

A random thought: shoehorn in the vornskr and ysalamiri concepts from Heir to the Empire by suggesting that these are the results of Sith (or earlier? A precursor race - maybe the Kathol, since their technology was organic?) genetic experimentation (since lost over the millennia) so Jedi can't easily penetrate the Empire: ysalamiri as the shields, vornskrs as the swords. Maybe the whole planet of Myrkr is inhabited by ysalamiri and vornskrs not because of natural evolution on that world, but because it's keeping some massively powerful and unknown Force artifact "in hibernation", because the ysalamiri reinforce each other out to the better part of a planetary radius or something.

[Yora]

Certainly an option to use them, but I don't see what the Sith would gain from that. Sacrificing their own powers to interfere with those of Jedi doesn't seem like something the Sith would do. Selfishness and overconfidence are the defining traits of the Sith.

I updated the list of planets with a couple new additions.
Since slave hunting near Hutt space is one of the ongoing conflicts, not making use of Kessel would be a huge waste.
I also found out that the home of the Verpines in the Roche Asteroids sits right in the center of my map (though not on the reference map I was using earlier.) I was looking for more nonhuman species that have their homeworld in this region and while verpines are cool, having a world that is actually an asteroid field and producer of high quality space ships is a really nice extra.
I also put Dathomir on the map, because why not? Same with Taris. A recently ruined giant city could be a fun background for cool action.

Spoiler: Updated Map

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[VoxRationis]

So the Republic naturally is larger than is seen on the map, since Coruscant doesn't make an appearance. Is the Sith Empire similarly extending off-screen, or is it smaller but more vigorous as a state?

[Yora]

In size it is much smaller, I would say. But Malak equipped it with a massive fleet produced by the Star Forge while the Republic was still weakened from the Mandalorian Wars. When the Empress disposed of Revan and retreated with her fleets into Sith controlled space, the Sith fleet was still quite strong while the Republic forces where badly battered. The Sith where not strong enough to defeat the Republic in an invasion, but at this point the Republic wasn't in any shape the invade and defeat the Empire either.
The Empress is in it for the long game and so she concentrates on digging in and fortifying her Empire and not risking to lose it all in a hurried invasion like Malak and Naga Sadow did.
But of course, with the Republic being much bigger than the Empire, it is only a matter of time until the Republic will be much more powerful than the Empire. So to preserve the Empire, a fourth Sith War will be inevitable at some point. Eventually one of the two powers will destroy the other. But as things are going now, this war might still be off a century or more. Though both the Republic and the Empire are very much aware that at any time an opportunity could arise that would allow the Sith to cause a severe setback for the Republic. Nobody is expecting another major invasion anytime soon, but sudden suprise attacks to destroy or take over worlds on the border of the Republic are always possible. The most likely targets would be the Republic Navy Headquarters on Ord Mantell, the biotech facilities on Ithor, and the Jedi Academy on Alpheridies.
And that the Mandalorians are sitting right where the two territories are almost touching doesn't make anyone concerned happy. In this cold war, they are a ticking time bomb.

Coruscant, Alderaan, and Chandrilla would actually be in the very bottom corner of the map, but I left them out to not tempt players to go on adventures into the Core Worlds. I want to keep it all lawless Outer Rim with the Sith Empire and Hutt Space. Arkania is only on it because I had so many fun ideas with Adascorp.

[VoxRationis]

I'm a little confused at the strategic situation from the point of view of the Sith. They currently have a stronger military, but less territory, so the Republic will gradually catch up and eventually surpass them once it rebuilds. I don't think there's enough symmetry between the sides to produce a cold war scenario. It sounds like there's little reason why they wouldn't attack as soon as they can possibly manage. Every standard year that passes will simply make the situation worse for them. Waiting a century seems senseless.

[Yora]

Any idea how to improve this?

One thing that is working in th favor of the Sith is that they are working on a biological superweapon to wreck the Republic's supply situation.
And having an expedition to search for the records of Marka Ragnos and Ludo Kressh should also help them getting an advantage against the Jedi.

My aim is to make the Empire more like the Sith Empire before Naga Sadow wrecked it, and before Malak threw everything against the Republic that the Star Forge could crank out. Where it's some kind of semi-stable entity that exists next to the Republic, at least for a while.

[VoxRationis]

My Old Republic knowledge isn't perfect; I'm not quite sure how Naga Sadow wrecked the old Sith Empire. I thought it was the case that Ajunta Pall et al. were responsible for its initial downfall by infighting.

But yes, having a specific condition that the Sith Empire can be waiting for would be a good reason for them to hold off on the attack. The preparation of a specific weapon would be a good one; so would the creation of a political situation more amenable to the Sith, like negotiating an alliance with another power or encouraging a rebellion among some of the Republic's systems. You mentioned infighting before the rise of the Empress; it's possible that she's eliminating the more troublesome Sith Lords or restructuring her chain of command to make it more useful as a nation before going on the next attack. Heck, it might even be good to wait until a crop of apprentices are trained with a slightly less mindlessly aggressive mindset; since it seems to be quicker to train Sith than Jedi, you could probably still get the drop on the Republic if you did that.

[Yora]

I like that line of thinking. Infighting is what the Empress regards as the biggest threat to the Empire and her immediate goal is to find a way to force the lesser Sith Lords in line. This could very well be the reason why the Sith are currently unable to make a move against the Republic. All the Empire's resources and forces are bound up in preventing a rebellion.
This also adds a nice element of urgency, whose lack was always one of the big problems with the overall concept. Preveting the agents of the Empress to provide her with knowledge that will make her government more stable in the long run is not something that feels like a life or death threat. If the players fail, so what?
But if that knowledge allows the Empire to turn their attention to the Republic that is not ready yet to fight a unified Sith fleet, things will get much more dire.

The agricultural superweapon is a paralel branch that the players could explore, eiither before or after they dealt with the Dark Side threat. Both can be flexible in their time progress. Whatever the players will do, they will get close to the Castle of Marka Ragnos just as the agents of the Empress are, and discover the location and purpose of the Telos 4 Lab just as the scientists are preparing for the final tests.

History Time: Ajunta Pall was the one who split the Jedi and was exiled with his Dark Side apprentices. They found the original Sith on Korriban and made them their minions, and called themselves the Dark Lords of the Sith.
Much, much, much later the Sith Lords Naga Sadow and Ludo Kressh were competing over the title of Dark Lord and once Naga Sadow got the support of the other lords through lies and deception he immediately launched an invasion of the Old Republic. The invasion was repelled and when he returned to Sith Space he was ambushed by Ludo Kressh, which ended up all the remaining Sith forces. Naga Sadow's ship was the only one that escaped and without any other ships, minions, or allies he went into hiding on Yavin 4 where the crew build the Massassi temples. Naga Sadow's spirit then trained Freedon Nadd, who then destroyed him. Freedon Nadd's spirit trained Exar Kun, who then destroyed him.
In KotOR it is not made clear how Revan became a Sith. In The Old Republic it gets retconned that he was really just a pawn of an ancient Sith spirit that predates Naga Sadow but I've decided to completely ignore the whole can of worms that is that game in my continuity. I say he found some ancient Sith writings and to create a new Dark Side tradition based on it and called it the Sith as well. But then Revan got betryed by Malak, then Revan turns against Malak, and in this campaign Revan then gets again betrayed by the Empress. The conclusion the Empress is drawing from this is that both the lineage of Naga Sadow as well as the new tradition founded by Revan are lacking something very important that all the Dark Lords up to Marka Ragnos had had. And with Ludo Kressh being much more of a traditionalist who opposed Naga Sadow's ignoring of traditions, he might be the true successor of Marka Ragnos (and he did claim the title of Dark Lord after Naga Sadow lost the war with the Republic). Or at the very least, he might have left behind clues on how Marka Ragnos did keep the Sith together.

[VoxRationis]

If internal politics and organizational structure represent the major holdups that keep the Empire from immediately attacking, it would probably be worth coming up with at least a rough sketch of an org chart for the Empire's leadership and an idea of what the Empress is trying to do to make things more stable. That way, the players' actions can potentially help or hinder this process. If the players do something that embarrasses a Sith governor and makes them look weak or incompetent, that either represents a setback for the Empress (if the governor was one she appointed or whose loyalty was something she was counting on) or a bonus for her (if the governor was troublesome, and this gives her an opportunity to remove or transfer him to somewhere where he won't be as much of a bother).

With that in mind, I have a few questions about how you see the Sith Empire as being set up:

• Is there a civilian-military distinction?
• Is the Empire's administrative organization bureaucratic and divided according to task, or "feudal," divided according to region?
• How high can a person rise in the ranks without being a Sith? Without being Force-sensitive?
• How important is personal power (and in particular, the "Klingon promotion" factor) in determining rank?
• How heavily do jurisdictions and areas of influence overlap? Are there multiple spy agencies or military groups that compete with one another?
• How heavily has the Empress changed codes of conduct from "classic Sith" modes? Can you just go around Force-choking people ad libitum?
• How much control does the Empress have over the assignment of personnel? How much of that is the result of preexisting factors like heredity, personal history within a jurisdiction, or master-apprentice lines of succession?
• How does the Empress personally relate to the organization? How does her title relate to the organization? How will succession work, and how does she intend to prevent someone from simply killing her and ruining all her work?

[Mechalich]

In KotOR it is not made clear how Revan became a Sith. In The Old Republic it gets retconned that he was really just a pawn of an ancient Sith spirit that predates Naga Sadow but I've decided to completely ignore the whole can of worms that is that game in my continuity.

I feel like you're making things much more complicated for yourself by ignoring the SWTOR timeline, because you basically have to redo all that history for the express purpose of creating a Cold War scenario that already exists ready for use. For instance, if you use the SWTOR Sith Empire - which is functionally identical to the one you have proposed aside from the gender identity of the sovereign - all of VoxRationis' questions have readily available answers.

[VoxRationis]

Yes, but the answers from SWTOR aren't necessarily universally well-loved, and it can be fun to exert your own creative spin on things.

[Yora]

The thing is that I know almost nothing about TOR and with these types of games it would be a huge undertaking to learn every detail about the KotOR retcons and new history for the first decades, and all the new information about the various planets. If the final group ends up with no huge TOR fans, they won't know the difference. If there will be huge TOR fans, they probably won't be pleased by me getting half the things wrong. It seems much more reasonable to me to just completely ignore TOR (and KotOR2) and place the campaign in my own continuity.

The main reason I don't want to give those games two or three playthroughs myself to make myself fully familiar with all their content is that I don't like the constant upstaging that has become ubiquous with Star Wars for quite some time now. Nothing that is established can be taken at face value because a couple of years later some writer decides to retcon everything by stating that it was actually all a deception by a much more powerful and genius character who is preparing for a much bigger but completely unknown threat. Then they twist things around to make a villain actually kind of good, and every newly introduced force user is always the most powerful force user ever. The Emperor actually learned that some aliens from another galaxy would threaten to wipe out the Republic so he made himself a ruthless dictator to save them all. Thrawn also only wanted to protect the galaxy from a greater evil, I think. And now Revan was good all along and only wanted to protect the galaxy from a much more evil and powerful Sith Empire that managed to stay completely hidden for two thousand years. And the people who love KotOR2 the most praise it for completely overthrowing everything that was eatablished about the Force and the Dark Side before. And I think in all of this the spirit of 80s and 90s Star Wars is getting lost. I don't want that. I want to go back to the roots and run a campaign that is in the spirit of 90s Star Wars, and using many of the worlds, aliens, and organizations that are prominent in the KotOR game and comics.

On then Empire Government I write later.

[Mechalich]

The thing is that I know almost nothing about TOR and with these types of games it would be a huge undertaking to learn every detail about the KotOR retcons and new history for the first decades, and all the new information about the various planets. If the final group ends up with no huge TOR fans, they won't know the difference. If there will be huge TOR fans, they probably won't be pleased by me getting half the things wrong. It seems much more reasonable to me to just completely ignore TOR (and KotOR2) and place the campaign in my own continuity.

Well, you can obviously build your own continuity as you wish. The reason I mentioned it at all though is that what you have laid out is incredibly similar to the baseline scenario of TOR. I mean, it basically reads like a fanfic version where you changed the emperor into an empress.

I want to go back to the roots and run a campaign that is in the spirit of 90s Star Wars, and using many of the worlds, aliens, and organizations that are prominent in the KotOR game and comics.

KOTOR and TOR both had Drew Kapryshyn as the lead writer. You are inadvertently describing TOR.

[Yora]

I'm not worrying about that too much. I am just setting up a post KotOR1 environment that is the way I like it. For the last 20 years, Star Wars has been a random pile of things to pick from and put together as you please.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Very excited for this thread. Will be monitoring with eagerness. Sad to see the best Star Wars game (KotOR 2) being left out, but at least the worst one (TOR) is also gone. I guess.

[Yora]

Now back to the Empire. I have a vague idea of the Empire being organized like the Soviet Union, as someone who doesn't really know how the Soviet Union was organized. But also a bit like the Persian Empire.

At the bottom, planetary governments still exist and are taking care of most business. But every system also has a military governor who is in charge of all military and police work and can overturn any descisions or local laws that go against the rule of the Empire. The governor commands all the local militia troops that take care of police work and planetary defense, but also has a garrison of Sith troopers. Militia officers of any ranks have no authority over Sith troopers, who also serve as military police. If the militias are unhappy with what the Sith troopers do, the only thing they can do is to complain to the governor to make them stop. Which he either might ot might not do, depending on how he sees the situation.

At the very top is the Empress who can give orders to everyone else in the empire and overrule all orders. Below her are the governors and admirals, who are in charge of the Imperial Navy and the Sith Troopers.

The other Sith Lords are technically neither part of the military hierarchy or of the civilian government. Instead their power is more like that of official representatives of the Empress who are speaking in her name. If there is any doubt that they are really acting on behalf of the Empress one could always check with her, but the true situation is that she doesn't have full control over them yet. The Empress lets them have a great deal of autonomy as long as they don't openly challenge her rule or interfere with her plans for the Empire. If they take things too far, the Empress can have them removed. Usually by sending two or three of their rivals to kill them. And the governors and admirals know this. In theory they would have to obey orders from a Sith Lord, as they are on behalf of the Empress. But some of them who are high in the favor of the Empress or other Sith Lords are brave enough to stand up to them and are confident that even a Sith Lord would not dare to kill them.

The total number of Sith Lords is only about a dozen, and there are only a bit over 100 Sith disciples in the entire Empire. In a full scale war against the Republic, the Sith would need a lot more than that to deal with the Jedi, who are still very numerous in the Core Worlds, but until she has the power to fully control them, the Empress does not dare to recruit more apprentices.

[Saintheart]

In terms of how your military governors would keep order - one of the more successful ways that empires were held together on Earth tended to be that imperial power wasn't absolute as such, but rather more indirect: traditionally, the empire wouldn't try to maintain absolute control over any given region, it would tend to support regional, native elites in return for the region's obeisance to imperial power. That's how they maintained control over local governments - because the elites controlled the local government, and therefore indirectly it was controlled by the empire. This much reduces the need for a military governor to overturn local laws, because the local laws are controlled by the native elite. This would particularly work in the case of elites who have the lion's share of the interest in offworld trading, since that's how the empire runs: on the exchange of goods between worlds. If you control the trade to and from the planet, you are rich; you are essentially the elite. Your interest in the empire's presence is because they assure your monopoly or oligarch-like hold on trade in return for taxes and your service in keeping the local activists in line.

This approach also allows for any diversity of local governmental models, but allows the empire to hold control over all of them. It also makes your military governors as much political figures as military - indeed the political aspect of their job may be more important than the military one.

At this model, the local militias are more likely under the control of the native elite rather than the governor directly, but they're generally outgunned and far less well-equipped than the Sith trooper garrisons, which function similarly to Roman garrisons a little bit west of the Persians ;)

[Yora]

That's what I meant with the Persian model.

I also find it very useful because it doesn't really need much work on my part. I don't need to put a lot of thought into how the Empire is actually being run. People in power can more or less do whatever they want. Corruption is always good for a campaign and it means I don't have to bother with what is officially the law. If any Imperial leaders want the PCs to be arrested or killed, it doesn't really matter what the laws are.

[Saintheart]

Or alternatively, the PCs can get themselves tangled up in a particular system's relationship with the Empire: Elite Group X is currently in favour with their Sith Empire overlords, and Elite Group Y wants that role instead, which can be carried out by stealing Z document, blackmailing person 1, assassinating person 2, etc ...