The Emperor's Contingency, also referred to as the Contingency, represented a covert scheme orchestrated by Galactic Emperor Darth Sidious. Its purpose was to obliterate his own Galactic Empire and guarantee its resurgence within the uncharted territories of space, specifically the Unknown Regions, should he meet his demise. The execution of this elaborate Contingency was entrusted to Gallius Rax, a favored apprentice of the Emperor. Rax's agenda involved the systematic destruction of the Empire, eliminating its vulnerabilities and punishing it for its failure to safeguard him, while concurrently ensuring the Empire's reconstruction, a goal actively pursued by the First Order.
The ultimate objective was to annihilate the planet Jakku during an epic battle pitting the Empire against its adversaries, notably the New Republic, the governing body established by the Rebel Alliance. Following the Emperor's death at the Battle of Endor, Rax initiated the Contingency with Operation: Cinder, a campaign to devastate both loyal and rebellious worlds across the galaxy, including Naboo and Vardos. These directives were disseminated via Messenger droids. Furthermore, he orchestrated the assassinations of numerous Imperial Military commanders and strategically allowed the New Republic to secure a series of victories against the Empire.
Ascending to the position of self-proclaimed Counselor to the Empire, Rax consolidated the Empire under his authority. He directed them to Jakku, intending to detonate the planet during the confrontation between Imperial and Republic forces, effectively crippling both factions. However, Grand Admiral Rae Sloane intervened, preventing the final phase of the plan by fatally shooting Rax during the Battle of Jakku. With his dying breath, Rax implored Sloane to seek refuge in the Unknown Regions and reunite with their allies, declaring that she would now carry out the Contingency in his stead.
Sloane assumed command of Palpatine's Contingency from the expiring Rax and embarked for the Unknown Regions aboard the Imperialis alongside Brendol Hux, his son Armitage Hux, and their child soldiers. They joined forces with others aboard the Eclipse, where Sloane intended to execute the Contingency. Unbeknownst to all, Sidious had orchestrated his resurrection through a cloned body, allowing his spirit to escape to his secret followers, the Sith Eternal, who completed the construction of a massive fleet he named the Final Order. This fleet was intended to achieve the First Order's hidden purpose: a perpetual reign under a new Sith Empire. Sidious waited until his forces were fully prepared in 35 ABY to reveal them, marking the true final phase of the Contingency.
The secret scheme known as the Contingency was the brainchild of Emperor Palpatine, who secretly held the identity of the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious. Its purpose was to ensure the Galactic Empire's demise alongside his own, should he die prematurely. Simultaneously, it aimed to secure the Empire's rebirth using the resources and personnel that managed to survive the Contingency. Sidious intended for only the most ruthless elements of the Empire to endure his purge. Emperor Palpatine had been covertly dispatching Imperial scouts into the Unknown Regions of the galaxy for decades. During this period, he invested heavily in establishing storehouses, shipyards, and laboratories within the Unknown Regions, a fact known only to Palpatine and a select group assembled by him.
The Jakku Observatory represented the Contingency's initial component, one of many Observatories established by Palpatine throughout the galaxy. This Observatory served as an underground storehouse and repository situated in the Plaintive Hand plateau, constructed above a borehole leading directly to Jakku's core. In 30 BBY, while still serving as Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, Palpatine and his Adviser Yupe Tashu initiated the Observatory's construction, including the borehole. Palpatine employed an army of droids to erect the facility. The Contingency involved depositing Sith relics and artifacts down the borehole to trigger a detonation of Jakku's core, resulting in a cataclysm that would obliterate the planet and the Imperial and enemy forces orbiting and grounded on its surface. Drawing an analogy to a Shah-tezh game, Palpatine viewed this as a strategy to eliminate both the Empire and his adversaries.
Gallius Rax, a human native of Jakku, constituted the Contingency's second element. Palpatine recruited Rax as a protégé after he discovered the construction site. Palpatine entrusted Rax with guarding the site during his absence, during which Palpatine orchestrated his rise to power. After Rax demonstrated his loyalty, Palpatine rewarded him by inducting him into Imperial service once the Empire was fully established. Palpatine arranged for him to become a Commander in the Naval Intelligence Agency before his promotion to Fleet Admiral. In the event of his own death, Palpatine intended for Rax to execute the Contingency, referring to it as his destiny. To transmit posthumous orders, Palpatine had special sentinel droids constructed to communicate with Rax and other "worthy" Imperial officers.
The third aspect of the Contingency involved Rax and Palpatine's chosen few—a select group of "worthy" Imperial officers and personnel, expanded upon by Rax—fleeing into the Unknown Regions, notorious for their navigational challenges, using secret hyperspace coordinates. Utilizing information partially obtained from Grand Admiral Thrawn, a native of the Unknown Regions, ancient computers within the Jakku Observatory charted routes through the Unknown Regions for years, eventually mapping a safe passage. Once the safe route was established, Rax arranged for the Emperor's Super Star Destroyer, the Eclipse, to travel in advance to the Unknown Regions, where Rax planned to establish a New Empire.
Following Emperor Palpatine's demise at the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY, the Contingency was activated, commencing with Messenger droids delivering the Emperor's final command: Operation: Cinder. This operation involved deploying climate disruption arrays to devastate his homeworld, Naboo, and numerous other planets, including those loyal to the Empire, such as Vardos, and those that were rebellious, such as Mon Cala. Fleet Admiral Rax received his own Sentinel droid, informing him of the Emperor's death and instructing him to initiate the Contingency. In the aftermath of the events on Endor, Admiral Rax orchestrated the deaths of numerous Imperial commanders by leaking information about Imperial fleet movements and the emergency summit on Akiva to the New Republic, the government established by the Rebel Alliance after the Battle of Endor.
Admiral Rax kept the Contingency a secret, even from his own subordinates, including Grand Admiral [Rae Sloane](/article/rae_sloane], who disapproved of his secretive leadership style, and his Shadow Council, an advisory council composed of senior Imperial officials and commanders. After Sloane was presumed lost or captured during an attack on the New Republic capital of Chandrila, Rax assumed leadership of the unified Empire as Counselor to the Empire. He then ordered the Empire to assemble at Jakku for a final showdown with the New Republic. Unbeknownst to the Shadow Council, Rax planned to eliminate them, with the exception of the former Commandant Brendol Hux, whom he considered essential to the Contingency and the Empire's future.
On Jakku, Counselor Rax initiated the Contingency by setting the stage for a massive battle with the New Republic. Intending to destroy the "Old Empire," Rax had Commandant Hux train local children into a force of soldiers who would form the foundation of the new Empire. Commandant Hux had previously operated a secret society of child soldiers at his academy. A massive battle erupted between Imperial and New Republic forces, with an Emperor's Royal Guard fighting as part of the Imperial Military before perishing in battle. Meanwhile, Rax and Yupe Tashu poured Sith relics down the planet's core to trigger a cataclysm. Rax then killed Tashu as part of the Contingency, pushing him into the borehole. Before Rax could escape offworld with Hux, his son Armitage, and their child soldiers aboard a replica of Palpatine's yacht, the Imperialis, Rax was killed by a vengeful Grand Admiral Sloane with the assistance of New Republic operatives Norra Wexley and Brentin Lore Wexley.
In his final moments, Counselor Rax informed Sloane that she was now responsible for carrying out the Contingency and instructed her to accompany the others aboard the Imperialis to the Unknown Regions, where the Emperor's flagship Eclipse awaited in uncharted space. Despite Sloane thwarting Rax's plot, the attrition caused by the Contingency contributed to the Empire's defeat during the Battle of Jakku. Following the Battle of Jakku, Grand Vizier Mas Amedda formally surrendered the Empire to the New Republic and signed the Galactic Concordance in 5 ABY. The Galactic Concordance collapsed the Empire, confining its remnants within defined boundaries in the Core, Colonies, and Inner Rim, while on Coruscant, the capital world of the Empire, a provisional government overseen by the Republic was established.
Numerous Imperial remnants rejected the peace treaty signed between the Empire and the Republic, continuing to resist in the months following the end of the Galactic Civil War, though their numbers were diminished due to the Emperor's Contingency. Other Imperial forces fled into the Unknown Regions using the secret hyperspace coordinates. Burdened by New Republic restrictions and war reparations, the "Old Empire" eventually dwindled into a remnant of hardliners engaged in a Cold War with the Republic. Other Imperial sympathizers infiltrated the Republic itself, some aligning with the Centrists in the Galactic Senate.
Aboard the replica Imperialis, piloted by a Sentinel droid, Sloane, Brendol and Armitage Hux, and their child soldiers eventually reached the Eclipse in the Unknown Regions, where the Emperor's chosen awaited Rax. There, Sloane recognized an opportunity to rebuild the Empire, deeming it their "first order." This movement gave rise to the First Order, an offshoot of the Contingency that sought to restore the lost Imperial cause and glory. During their military buildup, the First Order conquered and colonized vast territories in the Unknown Regions. The First Order was later joined by Imperial secessionists from within the New Republic, as well as Imperial fleets that vanished from Imperial Space. The First Order was eventually taken over by Supreme Leader Snoke, a failed strandcast clone of Palpatine, genetically created by the Sith Lord and his Sith Eternal cult prior to his demise at the Battle of Endor. Snoke was initially discarded as a potential vessel for his creator's spirit but was instead utilized as the Sith's proxy in power over the Forces, overseeing the contingency. Force-sensitive and strong with the dark side, Snoke, regardless of not being a Sith, he possessed the knowledge and power to lead the First Order, which allowed Sidious to indirectly ensure the First Order was his own to control and gather the Forces which would form the hermit faction into a military capable of opposing the New Republic.
The dark side adept's rise to power was seen as unexpected by the last of the old Imperial leadership. Years later, as the First Order destroyed the New Republic, Snoke reflected on the Contingency, recalling how Emperor Palpatine had arranged for various assets and materials to be sent to the Unknown Regions beforehand. Ultimately, Snoke was a proxy Palpatine was manipulating to spread his influence across the galaxy through less direct means, much to his underling's and the rest of the First Order's obliviousness.
Though Snoke initially maintained an iron grip on the fascistic military junta, his reign was cut short during the conflict between the First Order and the Resistance spearheaded by General Leia Organa. Snoke had, in reality, been genetically engineered by members of the Sith Eternal cult, a zealous collection of dark side loyalists seeking to revive the Sith religion and establish a galaxy-wide authoritarian regime once again. Deep within the Unknown Regions existed Exegol, the hidden world of the Sith, which housed the reborn Darth Sidious as he manipulated Snoke to seduce the scion of the Skywalker bloodline, the young Jedi Ben Solo. Sidious's plans reduced the First Order to a mere pretender to the throne, one which he would guide through Snoke, that would rule until his new Sith Empire was ready to assert itself.
As Snoke's apprentice, Ben Solo took the name of Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren and champion of the First Order; a dark warrior who possessed raw strength in the Force. Ren tolerated years of abuse under Snoke's wing, eventually culminating in the assassination of Snoke at the hands of the dark knight and his subsequent usurpation of Snoke's position of Supreme Leader. Believing he had at last freed himself from harsh confines of apprenticeship, Ren had, in actuality, completed the final test crafted by Sidious' Sith Eternal by acting as a true Sith and killing his own master in the name of obtaining greater power. It was now clear that Kylo Ren had established himself as worthy of inheriting the mantle of Galactic Emperor, with Sidious eager to harness the power of his new Imperial heir.
Within a year of Ren's ascension to Supreme Leader, the galaxy was shaken by a broadcast of the presumed-dead Emperor, threatening revenge against free worlds and heralding the return of the Sith. Unwilling to allow this threat to his power to persist, Supreme Leader Ren immediately shifted his efforts from annihilating the remnants of the Resistance to locating and eliminating the phantom menace on Exegol. Though Ren had discovered the whereabouts of Sidious, he abandoned his original plan to simply kill the Emperor upon being informed of the extent of the Dark Lord's thirty-year-long machinations. Immediately prior to the death of his original physical body, Sidious had transferred his consciousness far into the depths of the Unknown Regions, where an imperfect clone body crafted by the Sith Eternal awaited possession. It was on this hidden world where Sidious and his underlings forged the groundwork of the new Empire: the Final Order, the largest fleet in the galaxy comprised of Xyston-class Star Destroyers, each housing an axial superlaser capable of obliterating entire worlds.
With the combined might of the Final Order and sizable First Order Naval fleet, Sidious was confident that his new Empire would subjugate the galaxy at large through sheer intimidation and military might. Ren was emboldened by the prospect of himself as new Emperor, though this position was promised to him on the sole condition that he would eliminate the only threat to Sidious' plan, the Jedi aspirant Rey, whom was also revealed to be the granddaughter of the Emperor himself. Ren feigned allegiance to Sidious, although the Supreme Leader had no intention of obeying the Emperor and still intended to go with his original plans of killing the Dark Lord and destroy the Sith. Sidious himself also lied to Ren; he intended to rule the galaxy alone, using the massive fleet to enforce his will and was only using Ren to get to Rey. Thus, the Final Order had been the secret final stage to the Contingency.
Through the bond the two Force users possessed, Ren deduced that he and Rey formed an exceedingly powerful dyad in the Force, a phenomenon which had not been seen for generations. It was the extent of their bond which gave Ren the confidence to declare that the combined strength of him and Rey would overpower Sidious and allow the dyad to rule the galaxy together as Emperor and Empress. While he nearly maintained his darkness to the very end, Ren was eventually redeemed by the combined compassion of his family and Rey herself, reclaiming the identity of Ben Solo once more. Not discouraged by this setback, he shifted his attention to his granddaughter, seeking to possess her physical body through an ancient Sith ritual which involved Rey striking him down in anger. Rey journeyed to Exegol in an effort to confront the phantom menace in the flesh, though she nearly succumbed to the temptations of Sidious; the Sith Lord claimed she could become empress and save the Resistance if his spirit transferred into her, but the ritual was instead a way for him to secure a new body, with which he could become an immortal emperor.
Upon sensing Solo's arrival, Rey rejected Sidious' offer, passing the Skywalker lightsaber to Solo through their Force bond. Upon Solo's defeat of the Knights of Ren and Rey's elimination of Sidious' Sovereign protectors, the dyad stood together in defiance of the Sith Lord, although the reunion was interrupted by the Emperor's mastery of the Force, inadvertently discovering the existence of the dyad which was held between the two Jedi. Seeing no need for a host body, Sidious drained the life force from both Ben and Rey, eventually restoring himself to full power and naming himself as the Sith Eternal's one true Emperor. In retaliation for his initial death thirty-one years prior at the hands of his grandfather the Chosen One Anakin Skywalker, Sidious disposed of Solo into a nearby chasm, declaring the end of the Skywalker bloodline with Solo's death. The Emperor's reign was short-lived, however, as Rey called upon the strength of all the Jedi from the past including Skywalker in order to ultimately defeat the Dark Lord of the Sith.
The immense strain and exertion to completely obliterate the Sith Lord as well as the surrounding amphitheater led to the subsequent death of Rey, whose life was restored by Solo (who had survived the Emperor's attempt on his life), at the cost of his own. With the permanent death of their figurehead, both the Sith Eternal and his planned revived Empire crumbled into nothingness, owing to the arrival of the Citizens' Fleet which bolstered the Resistance force that had invaded Exegol. The conclusion of the actions on Exegol marked the final end of Sidious' decades-long tyrannical influence over the inhabitants of the galaxy, with the decisive victory serving as the catalyst for a series of galaxy-wide uprisings which saw countless systems rise against the authoritarian rule of the First Order.