Ok I have some friends of mine that are running a Star Wars game. They want it to be after the Clone Wars but before the Rebellion. Thinking about this myself, how exactly did the Emperor turn a respected mystical order into the most feared/wanted heretics in the galaxy in less than 20 years time?

At the start of A New Hope it seems like the Empire's been around for awhile (hell even the Palpatine himself looks around 150 or so), but it's only been in exsistencefor 20 years (roughly).

Anyone have any pet theories on this?

My pet theory: George Lucas is a moron.

(Sorry.)

Yeah, we already have that covered.
But we need something tangalbe for this.

How did Hitler transform Germany from a civilised country to a nation genocidal goose stepping clones? How did the genocide in Rwanda happen?

Aliens in the Star Wars Empire are second class citizens and slavery is much more common as opposed to during the Republic.

Fear is a powerful motivater and the Emperor is a master politician and fear is of the Dark side.

One of the seeds is in Episode 2. Make sure conflict doesn't stop, which means he doesn't have to set down.

Then bring in the propoganda (what a wonderful invention). Start up a cult of the kings or just kings being popularized. Then throw in a plebicite (I think Napoleon said they were tools, tools, and only tools of those in power). Bam, king Palpatine. Given his coming from Naboo, a monarchy or an elective one would seem like a real stabalizer which could even be something for those who think: the senate can't get anything done. Well in Nabo, we have an elective monarchy and it works. Well, let's give this idea a whirl.

Discrediting the Jedi is a harder problem and requires a lot of PR to convince people that they aren't worth having around. Horror stories, finding out that a king's only child is force-capable, anything that point the finger at the jedi for being the ones destabalzing anything.

Oh well, back to work.

Don

Sorry that I wasn't clear on this before. We're smart enough to see how he established the Empire from the Republic (though it took twenty years. That Admiral said that the Emporer had dissovled the senete in Eps 4), we were wondering how the Jedi order could have been labled as "EVIL" and destroyed in such a short time (relitivly).

They don't have to be evil, just discredited. As I stated before, make sure that the jedi are to blame for anything that destabalizes people. Maybe they make the mistake of allying against the republic. Answer: brand them traitors, end of order. You have to make them hated; propoganda does that. Point out how the jedi lose the propoganda war. It doesn't have to be all that serious. Look at our change in attitude toward the military between WWII and now. Something similar can occur with regards to the Jedi.

Don

Hmm, well I'm not sure the Jedi were ever discredited/turned into heretics. Personally I suspect the Emperor just had hatchetmen kill them all and that was an end of it. In some of the books it seems to point that way. Then again at least some of the books show that the force has no dark side at all so I refuse to read them anymore.

Logically speaking the Jedi never did much for the Republic. Remember that there's only about 10,000 of them in an entire galaxy. . . of a hundred billion stars. If only one out of every thousand stars had a habitable planet. . . there would still be 10,000 planets for every Jedi. And since a large portion of Jedi stay on Coruscant, and the rest seem to usually travel in pairs, your average being will never see a Jedi. Even if every Jedi visited a new planet every day a Jedi would only be on your planet one day every 27 years. In reality they would hop to only the largest most important hotspots and the common folk might see a Jedi every few generations. If you want the Jedi discredited play up to that.

"What did the Jedi do for you? When the Food Riots killed 2 million in alpheratz, where were the Jedi? When a plague killed 5 hundred thousand in Sarsaparilla, did the Jedi come? No!"

Remember, as respected (read:feared) as the Jedi are, they are not well liked by the general populace. Most folks are afraid of them, because they can and do fall, power does corrupt. Remember, the order is not a 'good' organization, as to lean one way or another is to give into passion. they are at best 'neutral'. They strive to preserve order of law, not the ideal of good, that is something that varies from Jedi to Jedi.

Also, look at how Palpatine staged teh conflict, no matter how it turns out, he comes out ahead. Andm, the cloners said that a Jedi ordered the clone army some several years ago, that means that if it comes out int he senate (of course it will) it will seems as though teh Jedi Order placed the request, without Senate approval, the Senate will be outraged and withdraw it's support of the Jedi, thus negating their power base as a policing force insid ethe Republic. Without the Jedi having official power to enforce laws, the planets will ahve to do so (most have a security force, but nowhere near as advanced sinc ethey had the Jedi to rely on for stopping criminals.

Also, jedi are also known for only doing 'big-picture' tasks involving criminals, the criminals that affect the basic citizen on the small scale will likely be allowed to exist, but the mass murderer that just killed 100 folks over the past month or so will be eagerly sought after, this gives the illusion that the Jedi don't care for the well-being of the average citizen, they feel jaded, thus will be less likely to provide support for the Jedi once they become hunted.

Also, the Order may be severly depleted in this war, making it very easy to wipe out one or two small groups. Plus Anakin is stronger in the force than any 5 jedi (Yoda being a possible exception, after taking skill into account) put together. That counts for a great deal, they might not know someone is approaching, then bamn, thermite detonator in the camp while they sleep.

from my understanding the jeti were hunted down and killed, i cant remember if it was legal but it was done by some very GOOD bounty hunters killed a large number, as well as imperial jeti hunters storm troopers and some extremely talented secret agents

palpatien looks so old because the dark side of the force was eating him alive.

But. . . the force has no Dark Side!

Heh, have you ever considered what the movies would have been like if the Jedi had just been a little smarter?

Quai Gonn: "This boy may be the chosen one who will bring balance to the force."
Mace Windu: "Then Kill him."
Quai Gonn: "What?!?"
Yoda: "A Stupid moron you are, hmm? If balance to the force is brought, many Jedi will suffer."
Quai Gonn: "I'm not following you."
Mace Windu: "Let me put it this way. Right now things aren't balanced, there's only one, maybe two sith, and ten thousand Jedi. If balance comes who do you think is going to lose around 9,998 of their men?"
Quai Gonn: "Er, right."
*Sound of a lightsaber igniting in the background as the screen goes dark.*

Take a note from history.

Julius Cesear managed to do it in just about the same amount of time. The establishment of an imperial system, however, takes longer than 20 years. The only problem is that you are generally not aware of it until the very end. You'd have to assume that the senators are only concerned with their self-agrandizement and not the well-being of the populace. In this circumstance, one individual can assume power.

In actuallity, the way the films presented the takeover of power almost directly mirrors what happened in Germany in the 1930's. Present the people with a percieved threat, suspend the constitution for "the sake of the security of the people" and you have an instant dictatorship. In the words of Vader "All too easy"

Since there's only 2 Sith and 10000 Jedi that would be kinda hard...

anyone who decides to call their movie "attack of the clones" deserves the derision they get, whether they have the 'right' to do it or not.

i'm pretty sure the "only two sith" thing refers to the fact that they work in master-apprentice teams, the same way jedi do. after all, darths tyrannus, sidious, and maul all existed at the same time; and after maul bought the farm, tyrannus picked up the crazy bald chick (ref the Clone Wars toons on Cartoon Network).

a) "attack of the clones" is nothing. The original title of Return of the Jedi was "Revenge of the Jedi." Good movie, I'm just grateful he stepped back and let someone else name it

b) Kakkaraun is right on. I hate what Lucas has done with everything, but I don't have a right to bitch

c) I believe stormtroopers would HAVE to play some role in the extermination of 10,000 Jedi, and I don't recall anywhere in SW canon stating specifically that the Sith did it all themselves. More likely, they coordinated minions doing it.

d) It bothers me that Vader is Dark Lord of the Sith if there's only one other Sith, and that guy is giving Vader orders. It's like if I started calling myself the Dark Lord of Me, only there would need to be another me bossing me around...

You're a consumer. You have every right to voice your dissatisfaction with a product you have purchased -- in this case, your movie ticket or DVD or video rental or whatever else.

The rules of the Sith is poorly conceived and executed. But that's no shock all things considered. I still get a chuckle out of the "made the Kessel run in under three parsecs" bit, where "parsecs" was clearly being used as a measure of time (even though they've tried to rationalize it away in the novels).

And now just an entire duet...

It is pretty clear that a force-sensitive person could easily be rejected from the Jedi Order in the Old Republic because he or she was not just right; too old, too angry, too emotional, etc. This means that there was a decent-sized pool of force-sensitive people for the Empire to recruit dark jedi from easily, because it would not be difficult to get at the Jedi records as to who was force sensitive but passed over.

In addition, it is clear that the Jedi missed some force-sensitive bloodlines altogether, as indicated by the number of Jedi that pop up over the decade or so following the origional movies. Several dozen potential jedi surface, indicating the possibility of nearly that many blood-lines that survived the purges.

What I think happened was the the Empire contacted all of the force-sensitive people passed over by the Jedi and all the ones it could find on its own and then turned them against the Jedi Order. Most of these died killing off the Jedi. Others were probably killed by the Emporer for various acts of disobedience. A few more show up after the origional movies in various novels.

In addition to dark Jedi, there were many highly skilled bounty hunters, as was mentioned before. Fett's armor and armor like it, although rare, allowed them to match Jedi, as is seen in the movies. In addition, the Empire built various assassin droids.

Once the afore-mentioned propoganda campaign kicked in and the weaker Jedi were killed off, the Empire just clamped down whenever Jedi were sighted. The Jedi would quickly find themselves alone in the galaxy.