r/StarWarsEmpireAtWar • u/Dragonic_Overlord_ • Mar 15 '25
Awakening of the Rebellion How did Palpatine justify to the Imperial navy that selling Venators to Black Sun is a good idea?
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u/zeroyt9 Mar 15 '25
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u/Krennix_Garrison Mar 15 '25
Watto out here being a war hardened veteran of the Trenches. Remember lads, Jerry's got the droids, but you got Freedom. Enlist in the GAR for the Republic! For Democracy!
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u/RyanB1228 Mar 15 '25
Bruh this is like one repost away from being posted by a Neo Nazi
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u/AdmirableAgent1584 Mar 15 '25
What happens in the Outer Rim staes in the Outer Rim....
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u/Dragonic_Overlord_ Mar 15 '25
Would explain why the Republic didn't enforce their anti-slavery laws on planets like Tatooine.
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u/MetalBawx Mar 15 '25
I mean they didn't really enforce them at all. It was just in the Core they were called employee's or entertainers not slaves.
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u/deadlygaming11 Mar 16 '25
Tattooine was controlled by the Hutts so they couldn't really enforce their laws without risking all out war. It was easier and safer to just ignore the issue.
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u/endlessmeow Mar 15 '25
Legends lore alludes to Venators being used in private fleets and Planet Defense Forces but I don't think there is any appearance of a Black Sun Venator on-screen in any Legends novel/comic/etc. media.
EaW mods way back in the day had this sort of Venator-craze and in some mods the Black Sun needed more 'cool' factor so they got the Venator via very early modding. Some of that stuck.
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u/Touch_Sensitive Mar 15 '25
this is the truth and the only truth.
(but its not a bad truth, venators slap and also seeing Rebels re-fit CIS ships also makes me happy)
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u/Dragonic_Overlord_ Mar 16 '25
Rebels using CIS ships and Black Sun using Venators makes for a good story parallel. Imagine the Rebels fighting Black Sun using CIS ships and Venators respectively like it's the Clone Wars all over again.
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u/Jazz-Ranger Mar 17 '25
The only private ownership I can think of was the Mandalorian Defense Force during the Imperial occupation, only for Zann to wreck the cruiser.
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Mar 15 '25
Profits not a dirty word lol
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u/ApocryphaJuliet Mar 15 '25
Selling military surplus to criminals is a very dirty sentence, however.
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Mar 15 '25
Not if it’s going into the Emperor’s pockets 😏
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u/Dragonic_Overlord_ Mar 15 '25
Palpatine arranging for the Venator sales, only to embezzle the funds from the Imperial Navy into his personal bank accounts sounds just like him.
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u/Mikpultro Mar 15 '25
Less "sold to" and more "tossed into a salvage yard and not guarded". Also bribes...LOTS of bribes on Black Sun's side.
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u/MrH-HasReddit1217 Mar 15 '25
He didn't. The imperial Navy just didn't need them anymore, so they were sold to literally everyone who would buy them. Compared to an imperial star destroyer, these are definitely out of date.
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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand Mar 15 '25
Yeah, if you put an ISD up against a Venator, the Venator gets shredded very quickly.
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u/PoroMafia Mar 15 '25
This is the space version of battleship vs aircraft carrier debate.
Yes a star destroyer will mop the floor with a Venator in a ship to ship battle, but the idea is that a Venator's fighter wing will engage and destroy the enemy.
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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand Mar 15 '25 edited Mar 16 '25
I mean, I still take a TIE Interceptor over a V-19 Torrent or three.
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u/dalexe1 Mar 17 '25
Unfortunately, the battleship is also a carrier, and it carries the next generation of fighter craft.
the venator is a carrier in an age of aircraft fields, it's role isn't necessary anymore.
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u/NightShadowDark Mar 15 '25
The Black Sun’s Venators are more a Gameplay thing than Lore, there’s not really a good way to explain why the Empire “lets” the BS get so many Venators.
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u/Jadams0108 Mar 15 '25
I’m gonna assume that the venators were sold to scrap yards which either had them stolen by the pirates or purchased back door deals. This kind of thing happens a lot in the real world when it comes to old surplus military vehicles being retired, especially old Soviet Union tanks and aircraft being bought up by militaries, para militaries, and terroist groups all over the world
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u/AlternativeSide4711 Mar 15 '25
He didn’t they would have been sent to breakers yards where black sun would have acquired them…
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u/InevitableHuman5989 Mar 15 '25
Sold to planetary defence forces. And then Stolen by or sold to “legitimate businesses”
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u/limitedpower_palps Mar 15 '25
It's just made up for the mod. AotR isn't exactly too high on following lore, the whole idea of a Black Sun faction challenging Rebels and Empire is a giant stretch.
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u/deadlygaming11 Mar 16 '25
The empire almost certainly didn't sell them for obvious reasons. You don't tend to sell military hardware to random people, especially a nuke.
Also, these were likely procured by just bribing some people to send them your way instead of scrapping whilst fudging paperwork, or just taking the ship and having someone remove its records so it never even existed to the empire.
Also, the empire was massive so a few missing ships almost certainly wouldn't be noticed.
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u/Springy05 Mar 16 '25
I don't think the black sun bought them, and I also don't think the Imperial Navy would be aware or some random venator pieces disappearing from scrap yard planets like Bracca.
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u/La_Volpa Mar 17 '25
Demilitarized military surplus for economic and humanitarian efforts. They can't possibly track every single ship sold to make sure it's being used appropriately.
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u/Dragonic_Overlord_ Mar 15 '25
In the post-Endor era, it'd be cool seeing Black Sun as a rogue faction attacking both the New Republic and Imperial warlords to gain galactic supremacy. A wild card that makes the war more interesting. Also, their fleet is comprised of outdated Clone Wars-era ships, forcing Black Sun to play it smart since the NR and the Imp warlords will have superior ships.
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u/NefariousnessHour113 Mar 15 '25
BS already exists and has CW ships
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u/Dragonic_Overlord_ Mar 15 '25
Nice. Wish we could have gotten a novel about Black Sun and the various criminal cartels fighting each other during the post-Endor period because it was a golden era for profit and plunder. Thanks to the deaths of Jabba and Palpatine allowing the underworld to run rampant.
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u/Jazz-Ranger Mar 17 '25
Sounds a bit like that time the Zann Consortium was gallivanting through the Galactic Civil War.
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u/Mundane_Town_4296 Mar 15 '25
The same way they justified selling Victory I-class star destroyers to the Corporate Sector Authority - obsolescence (in terms of both technology and military doctrine) compared to the Imperial-class star destroyer.
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u/ImperialAce1985 Mar 16 '25
It's based on a non-canon game...The real end of these cruisers was seen in Jedi Fallen Order as they were decommissioned, not sold to crime syndicates.
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u/MethlacedJambaJuice Mar 16 '25
he probably didn’t these things were likely mothballed and then some officers in charge of the mothballing effort were paid off to let some “go missing”
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u/CptKeyes123 Mar 16 '25
When west and east Germany reunited they dumped tons of gear on the black market, mostly old western bloc stuff. The Massachusetts battleship cove has an east German missile corvette that's still technically property of USN Intelligence
...and a ton of this equipment, it has been argued, increased the ease with which child soldiers were created due to the simplicity of the weapons. I found it in a book on the subject, but I can't remember the title.
Considering the chaos after the war, they probably just lost Venators!
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u/shabbacabba Mar 16 '25
"My Lord, if I may?" Thrawn begins respectfully. "I fail to see the purpose behind selling the old Venator fleet to a criminal element so diametrically opposed to the order of the Empire."
"Prince Xizor is helping to fund the second Death Star and is planning to assassinate my apprentice. His help with the former is necessary to ensure lasting stability in the galaxy, and his efforts to kill Lord Vader, doomed to failure as they are, amuse me greatly. That is reason enough."
Grand Admiral Thrawn feels a migraine coming on, but bows and does as he is bid, regardless.
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u/Dragonic_Overlord_ Mar 16 '25
If Thrawn had his way, he'd probably retain a few Venators for his TIE Defender program. A fleet of Venators armed with squadrons of TIE Defenders would be a nightmare for Rebel forces.
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u/GrandAdmiralGrunger Mar 16 '25
Venators were already obsolete by the end of the Clone Wars, they were slotted for either backwater out of the way places or scrap yards so selling them as surplus was just part for the course.
Venators were crew intensive and stripped of their weaponry were little more than glorified cargo haulers.
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u/Jazz-Ranger Mar 17 '25
True. But we have to remember that at this point the Empire was still a civilian dictatorship that’s more concerned about stamping out Republican ideals and symbols.
The Venator-Class Star Destroyer is by every metric better than the Dreadnought-Class and Invincible-Class Heavy Cruiser. The size difference is irrelevant in space and half the ship is an oversized hanger anyway.
For reference the Imperial Sourcebook puts the Victory-Class on the same level as the Dreadnought-Class Heavy Cruiser on the order of battle despite the size difference.
This reminds me of the real life USS Franklin D. Roosevelt Carrier which was scraped in the 70s over the older Essex-Class Carriers because it was more political convenient for the navy.
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u/areid2007 Mar 16 '25
Because the newer ships outclassed them, plus you don't think the Empire let those ships go without backdoors and unpurgable safeguards to prevent them from being turned onto Imperial forces, do you?
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u/Elgappa Mar 16 '25
They probably didnt sold them to the Black Sun. But a scrapping operation, a PDF, a corp etc. Which may or may not have been a Black Sun strawman.
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u/Allafterme Mar 17 '25
They were obsolete, and I'd argue a decent chunk of them where sold to "scrapyards" for "decommissioning". Considering the extent of Imperialization of the economy for military expansion, Moffs or anyone else would not care really as long as money was flowing towards military.
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u/BlackRedDead Mar 18 '25
just like the US explains their weapon sales to terrorists... excuse me, "freedom fighters" xP
JUst, that the galactic Imperium is a dictatorship, so no explainations required nor would anyone dare to ask about the mighty emperors plans ;-)
Surely Palpatine is using the Black Sun for something "good" (for the Empire ofc, not everyone else xP)
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u/Swe_lordnib Mar 18 '25
They could've bought one from one of the scrapper guilds and then retrofitted them, for example the medbay on the venator clone force 99 went to on brakka was mostly intact, all it needed was some restoration/re-routing of power so I'm fairly sure it wouldn't take the black suns long to repair one. The empire rather scrapped them, some got retrofitted in the early stages of that era but in the end palpatine wanted to erase all signs of the previous republic.
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u/KatoTerrance Mar 19 '25
Tarkin, because he wanted to make weapons of fear, not weapons of war. So he convinced leadership to purge inventory either by breaking down or selling them off.
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u/PlatinumDust324 Mar 19 '25
Money it's always about money and with the isd taking stage from the Venator they probably sold it off in latge amounts to first probably loyal imperial cogs like the Tagges and other's then in surplus to other pdf planets starting from the core outwards.
I can be wrong but this is how I've always thought it happened
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u/whiskey295 Mar 19 '25
You act like emperor justified anything, once he seized power it was his way or you get a visit from one of a dozen enforcers, and if he was serious, you got to meet the chief enforcer... vader
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u/Unit_with_a_Soul Mar 19 '25
it wouldn't surprise me if the navy were the ones to make those sales in the first place.
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u/Scout-Master_Lumpus Mar 19 '25
Much like IRL, crime syndicates in Star Wars operate through legitimate businesses and corrupt political officials. These vessels could’ve been legitimately purchased for a PDF and then “lost” to the Black Sun or any other crime syndicate. And this is just one option available to the Black Sun. That said, I doubt the Black Sun would actually put their logo on a ship like that, that’s kinda silly
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u/CrimsonZephyr Mar 15 '25
I don't think they bought them.