Dark Empire

The Dark Empire, also referred to as the Empire Reborn, was an empire located in the Deep Core and led by the reborn Emperor Palpatine following the Battle of Endor. The Dark Empire itself was headquartered at the dark side stronghold known as Byss. The new regime tried to reclaim the territory of the former Galactic Empire after it had succumbed to a civil war and splintered into various opposing factions. Although this new power was formed when Palpatine revived himself in a clone body in 4 ABY, it officially revealed itself in 10 ABY, when Palpatine became strong enough to attack the New Republic. It fell apart less than a year later in 11 ABY, upon Palpatine's final death on Onderon, as well as the destruction of Byss, the stronghold of the Dark Empire.

The Dark Empire was openly run by dark side users, and the Emperor kept a group of Force-sensitives, called the Dark Side Elite, to carry out his will, similar to the Emperor's Hands of the Galactic Empire. There were always seven of them, and once one died, another was immediately appointed. Despite being trained and empowered by the Emperor himself, the Elite took heavy casualties during Operation Shadow Hand and were wiped out by the end of it.

The Emperor intended to eventually use solely the dark side of the Force to run the Dark Empire, but had to use regular vehicles until that could be accomplished. His rule introduced a new line of superweapons to take the place of the two Death Stars his earlier Empire had. They were the Eclipse-class dreadnoughts, massive warships that were equipped with small superlasers. Both of them, the Eclipse and later Eclipse II, were destroyed. The first was consumed by Palpatine's Force storm, which he lost control of, and the second was destroyed when R2-D2 set it on a collision course with the Galaxy Gun, another superweapon, similar to the Tarkin.

Text and facts from the “Dark Empire” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.