"Shadow Hand Strategy," also referred to as Operation Shadow Hand, designated the period of the Galactic Civil War that took place after the Thrawn campaign. This label was assigned to the series of "wave assaults" initiated by the Dark Empire, under the command of the resurrected Emperor Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious, emanating from Byss and other locations within the Deep Core against the New Republic. These assaults were part of an attempt to regain control of the galaxy.
Initially, the Galactic Empire withdrew from the territories it had conquered during the Thrawn Campaign. The Imperial fleets relocated to the Deep Core under the secret orders of Emperor Palpatine. The New Republic Defense Fleet pursued the collapsing front lines into the Outer Rim Territories, dispatching additional vessels towards the rim to confront the Ciutric Hegemony and the "Restored Empire" in the Corva sector, thereby leaving Coruscant and the Core Worlds with inadequate defenses.
Emerging unexpectedly from the Deep Core, the Imperial fleet launched an assault that caught the New Republic off guard. They laid siege to Metellos and the Kaikielius system, leading to the New Republic's abandonment of its capital. The Galactic Empire was reinstated, and the New Republic was once again referred to as the Rebel Alliance almost immediately. The New Republic's governing body re-established itself on Dac in the Calamari sector, and at Pinnacle Base located on Da Soocha V within Hutt Space.
However, soon after the Empire had secured the Core, disarray and turmoil erupted. The semblance of Imperial solidarity disintegrated, and the Galactic Empire descended into a catastrophic civil war. The Alliance, utilizing captured Star Destroyers, exacerbated the chaos, resulting in the destruction of entire worlds and the concentration of warfleets around Imperial planets such as Gyndine and Aargau. New fortress worlds emerged, and Coruscant was reduced to a wasteland. From Byss, the resurrected Emperor observed these events, asserting that such actions served to eliminate the weak and cowardly. In a twisted parallel to the numerous Sith Civil Wars, Palpatine witnessed his war machine self-destruct, obliterating entire worlds and massacring civilian populations. He might have even incited the Imperial Mutiny through the dark side of the Force, as it aligned with his intentions to establish a "Dark Empire," a magocratic government spanning the galaxy and governed directly by the dark side of the Force, rather than by military force.
The New Republic became involved in the Imperial Civil War by instigating regional animosity through attacks on rival Imperial factions, using captured Imperial starships. During one of these operations, Luke Skywalker was caught in a powerful Force storm, which transported him to the Deep Core world of Byss. There, Skywalker encountered the resurrected Emperor Palpatine.
Upon facing a revived Darth Sidious, Skywalker resolved to undertake what many had attempted previously—to dismantle the dark side from within. He consented to assume the role of Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet, and to lead the renewed assault on the Republic.
Shortly after capturing Luke Skywalker, Sidious reclaimed control of the Empire, dispatching the Imperial Navy and fleets of World Devastators to attack the Borderland Regions, advancing towards Dac, with the aim of bisecting Rebel territory. The World Devastators, commanded by General Titus Klev aboard the Silencer-7, proved exceptionally difficult to destroy, and an attempt by Han Solo, Salla Zend, and Leia Organa Solo to rescue Luke on Byss was unsuccessful.
However, Luke had managed to smuggle the command codes for the World Devastators to Leia, enabling the New Republic to remotely disable them. The Battle of Calamari resulted in the Empire losing its newest superweapon, but Palpatine succeeded in fully converting Luke to the dark side during their duel on Byss.
With Luke now his true apprentice, Palpatine personally escorted him aboard his new dreadnought Eclipse to Da Soocha V, demanding Leia Organa Solo's surrender in exchange for truce negotiations. Nevertheless, after Leia boarded the Eclipse, she was able to revert her brother to the light side of the Force.
Incensed, the Emperor conjured a Force Storm to obliterate Da Soocha and the New Republic base. However, overwhelmed by Skywalker and Organa Solo, he lost command of his Storm, which subsequently engulfed the Eclipse and himself.
Having returned to the New Republic, Skywalker initiated the formation of his own New Jedi Order to oppose the Emperor and his Dark Side Elite.
Despite these setbacks, the Shadow Hand campaign was assumed by Executor Sedriss QL, who targeted defiant worlds within the Core and the Colonies adjacent to the territory seized during the initial campaign. He also launched assaults on numerous worlds in the Slice and the industrial planets of Duro, Kuat, and Balmorra.
However, during the Battle of Balmorra, Sedriss' SD-9 battle droids and Shadow Droids were repelled by Governor Hinch Beltane's new SD-10 and X-1 Viper "Automadon" droids. Captain Maximillian Veers was killed in action, and the campaign was stalled long enough to compel Sedriss to initiate truce negotiations: Sedriss accepted a shipment of Viper battle droids from the Balmorran factories in exchange for recognizing Balmorran independence.
With Palpatine still recuperating from the defeat at Da Soocha and Sedriss discredited at Balmorra, two Dark Side Adepts, Nefta and Sa-Di, attempted a coup on Byss. Having returned from Balmorra, Sedriss engaged and defeated the pair before submitting himself to Emperor Palpatine, who had returned in a second clone body.
Shortly thereafter, Sedriss traveled to Ossus aboard an Imperial Hunter to capture Luke Skywalker, who was investigating the ancient library world of the Jedi Order as part of his efforts to rebuild it. In the ensuing battle, Sedriss' force was annihilated, and the Executor was killed by the Neti Ood Bnar, who had survived there in a tree-like form since the planet was devastated by Exar Kun.
The New Republic placed its hopes on assassinating Darth Sidious, mirroring their success at Endor. With the backing of Balmorra's Governor Beltane, a New Republic commando unit led by Lando Calrissian intercepted the shipment of Viper droids arranged by Sedriss and seized control of the droids from within their internal command cabins. On Byss, they emerged from their freighter and assaulted the Emperor's Citadel. However, the Viper droids proved ineffective against Palpatine's alchemically-enhanced Chrysalide Rancors, forcing the expedition to retreat in defeat after being rescued by a group of smugglers led by Salla Zend.
In the aftermath of the raid, Palpatine unleashed the Galaxy Gun, a colossal artillery weapon capable of firing planet-destroying missiles across interstellar distances. Da Soocha V was obliterated in the Gun's initial firing, although the New Republic leadership had since evacuated to the Nespis VIII Space City. A plan to attack Byss a second time to destroy the Galaxy Gun was thwarted when it destroyed the troopship Pelagia, resulting in the deaths of a hundred thousand troops. Subsequently, the Galaxy Gun destroyed the Space City, scattering the New Republic.
The Galaxy Gun shifted the momentum against the New Republic, as the Emperor employed it to destroy worlds such as Krinemonen and Hirsi, leading to the re-submission of thousands of worlds to Imperial rule.
With the destruction of the rebel bases on Da Soocha and at Space City by the Galaxy Gun, the New Republic was dispersed, disappearing into the galaxy. The Empire, for all practical purposes, had achieved victory, forcing the Alliance into complete concealment. However, this military triumph was contrasted by the Emperor's deteriorating health: Palpatine's command of the dark side was gradually causing his mind to weaken. Confronted with the Emperor's escalating insanity, a faction within the Imperial Ruling Council, including the Emperor's physician and the treacherous Royal Guard Carnor Jax, who aspired to succeed Palpatine as Emperor, poisoned the genetic material used to produce Palpatine's clone bodies.
Palpatine journeyed to Korriban to consult the spirits of the Sith Lords, who advised him to inhabit the body of Leia Organa Solo's youngest son, Anakin. Taking the Eclipse-class dreadnought Eclipse II to Onderon, the Emperor engaged the Alliance and Jedi. Catastrophe ensued, with the Emperor being definitively defeated and the Eclipse II launched towards Byss due to sabotage by the astromech droid R2-D2, where it collided with the Galaxy Gun, causing it to fire a missile into Byss. This destroyed the throneworld and the Imperial fleet surrounding it, which, combined with the demise of Darth Sidious, effectively severed the Empire's political and military core.
The campaign commenced with the Empire controlling half the galaxy at the conclusion of 9 ABY, and witnessed the Empire relinquishing most of this newly acquired territory in the weeks following Grand Admiral Thrawn's death, only to re-consolidate half of the galaxy under the cloned Emperor. Following further expansion, the Emperor was ultimately killed, and the Empire abandoned Coruscant and the Core Worlds, splitting once more but still maintaining control of a third of the galaxy in the Outer Rim—more than the Empire initially held before Grand Admiral Thrawn's return.
In the aftermath, the majority of the Imperial fleet retreated into the Deep Core, with Blitzer Harrsk and Treuten Teradoc becoming the primary warlords. The Pentastar Alignment remained a significant Imperial power in the Outer Rim, and fortress worlds with limited fleet strength persisted throughout Imperial territory. The Empire proper was governed by the Imperial Ruling Council under Emperor Carnor Jax and his Crimson Empire, but this did not endure long after Byss's destruction.
Thereafter, the Empire's fleets were severely depleted, with the most powerful Deep Core warlord, Admiral Teradoc, commanding only seventy Victory-class Star Destroyers. The unification of the Deep Core under Admiral Natasi Daala, which possessed the majority of the Imperial Fleet, saw fewer than two hundred Star Destroyers assembled under her command.
The New Republic was similarly devastated in the conflict, barely claiming membership of 11,000 worlds by 16 ABY, and fielding only four fleets, in contrast to both sides fielding hundreds of Sector Fleets. During the Shadow Hand Campaign, the Republic retreated into the Outer Rim, establishing its main bases within Hutt Space, the Cron Drift, and the Corporate Sector, rather than in territory accessible to or largely part of the mainstream galaxy. The Republic did not experience substantial membership growth until it finally defeated the Empire at the Battle of Anx Minor, forcing it back to only eight sectors.
The New Republic Navy's inadequate performance against Imperial Star Dreadnoughts during the campaign spurred the development of its own dreadnought analogues, the Mediator-class battle cruiser and the Viscount-class Star Defender, as part of the New Class Modernization Program in the aftermath of Operation Shadow Hand.
Notably, Operation Shadow Hand marked the last significant action of a Sith-led Galactic Empire for over a hundred years, and the ensuing decades witnessed the Empire progressively distancing itself from the Sith and their ideologies, culminating in the absence of political relations. A segment of the Empire remained under the control of the Sith apprentice Carnor Jax, but his death led to the emergence of only isolated factions of Sith or Dark Jedi-led Imperials, such as the Empire Reborn and the Disciples of Ragnos. Eventually, the relationship deteriorated, and during the Yuuzhan Vong War, the reigning Dark Lady Lumiya attacked the Imperial Remnant in the Battle of Yaga Minor. Ultimately, the reborn Galactic Empire, under the Fel dynasty, reluctantly allied with the One Sith during the Sith-Imperial War, but was fragmented into a Second Imperial Civil War by a Sith coup in 130 ABY. Following the destruction of Darth Krayt's faction, the Empire was at war with the Sith until their destruction in 139 ABY. Consequently, the Galactic Empire, originally created by Palpatine to benefit the Sith, ultimately turned against and annihilated them.