Darth Sidious

Sheev Palpatine, AKA Darth Sidious, is the supreme leader of the Galactic Empire, and the main antagonist of Rico's Brigade.

Born on Naboo, at an unknown point in his life, Palpatine joined the Order of the Sith, an ancient group of Force-Sensitives dedicated to the destruction of the Republic and its protectors, the Jedi Order. Operating under the alias "Darth Sidious" and through proxies such as Count Dooku and General Grievous, Palpatine got himself elected chancellor of the Republic and orchestrated the Clone Wars in order to make the galaxy afraid and desperate enough to allow him to reform the Republic into an Empire, with Palpatine as the undisputed leader. During this time, Palpatine also corrupted Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, turning him into his apprentice, **Darth Vader**.

The Republic's army in the clone wars, to contrast their enemies of the Separatist Droid Army, was secretly funded and created on the planet Kamino by Palpatine. Each of these elite soldiers was also secretly implanted with a techno-organic chip inside their brains that, when activated in an event known as Order 66, would cause a clone to violently attack anyone resembling a Jedi, and become mindlessly loyal to their superiors. However, this very army meant to be Sidious's perfect assassins and enforcers would prove Palpatine's greatest challenge, as one clone, Rico, discovered the chips and realized that some doom was soon approaching the Republic. Palpatine used his power as Chancellor to shut down Rico's every attempt to warn others, so Rico assembled his own army of Republic loyalists and got them stationed to the Vergesso Asteroid Field, where they could not be affected by Order 66.

At the end of the Clone Wars (which takes place in *Revenge of the Sith*), Darth Sidious activated Order 66, and with the mind-controlled clones and Darth Vader, massacred the Jedi Order to a few fugitive survivors after framing their for a coup, and declared himself Emporer. Under Palpatine, the newly established Empire quickly established itself as a cruel, elitist, xenophobic, fascist state that treated all but those Palpatine needed to keep happy as expendable resources. Palpatine saw the key to galactic dominance as through military might alone, and so created a massive Imperial Army, and gave military leaders like Tarkin great political power.

Once Rico's Brigade emerged and began liberating planets, Palpatine had tried various methods to stop their advances, including Sith Assassins like Trip Hansen or assigning Commander Cody, one of the few remaining clones in the Imperial Army to defeat them. Palpatine was also personally involved in the hunt for Delta Squad, and recently set up a competition between The Dutchman, Fox, Cody, Tarkin and Boba Fett to see who could recapture territory from Rico's Brigade. His most important assignments, though, he reserves for Darth Vader. He is also almost never without his elite Red Guards.

## Trivia

* Darth Sidious is based off the Star Wars canon character of the same name, who first appeared in *Return of the Jedi* in 1983, played by Ian McDiarmid.
* The competition Sidious sets up between his generals may be a reference to Adolf Hitler's tendency to assign multiple underlings the same task in order to make them compete against each other under the belief that it would make the Nazi regime stronger and prevent his underlings from conspiring against him.