With the cooperation of the two Jedi factions, Daimon had continued talks with the leaders to reform the Jedi Order. Jedi families were allowed to remain a thing; however, families were not allow that much power in the way the order works.
The reasoning was simple: allowing Jedi to have families grounded them in something real, something mortal and consequential. A Jedi who had never loved anyone was not a Jedi who had transcended attachment. They were simply a Jedi who had never been tested by it. But a family whose bloodline-controlled council seats, temple resources, and apprenticeship assignments were no longer a family. It was a dynasty wearing robes.
The compromise was uncomfortable for both sides, which Daimon took as a reasonable sign that it was probably correct.
The formal restructuring document, which had no official name yet and was referred to in internal memos simply as the Reformation Accord, outlined three primary changes to the Order's governance. First, no family member could hold administrative authority over another family member within the same temple or chapter.
Second, the selection of apprentices would be overseen by a rotating council drawn from all three surviving factions, with no single faction holding majority representation in any given cycle.
Third, and most contentiously, the rank of Grand Master would remain elective, but candidates would require confirmation from both the Provisional Council and an Imperial observer before taking office. This last provision had generated the most resistance, predictably from the Preservationists more than anyone else, since the Absolutists were in no position to object to anything and the Penitents had never much cared about formal hierarchy to begin with.
Grand Master Daas had raised the objection diplomatically, framing it as a concern about precedent rather than personal opposition. Daimon had listened, acknowledged the concern as legitimate, and kept the provision unchanged. The Imperial observer role was not about control. It was about accountability. There was a meaningful difference, and he had said so plainly.
Whether Daas fully believed him was another matter. Trust of that kind was not built in conference rooms. It accumulated slowly, through demonstrated behavior over years, and Daimon was realistic enough to know that the Jedi Order would spend at least a generation watching for the moment when the Imperium's stated intentions diverged from its actions.
That was fine. Healthy, even. Institutions that trusted their overseers completely were institutions that had stopped paying attention.
The Republic itself was progressing well. The Provisional Council had surprised him somewhat. He had expected the kind of cautious, procedural governance that typically emerged from bodies assembled in the aftermath of catastrophe, committees forming subcommittees, reports generating additional reports, every decision requiring seventeen signatures before anyone committed to anything.
Instead, Senators Bru, Geibend, and Hann had moved with a sense of urgency that suggested they understood exactly how short their window was.
Senator Bru in particular had proven to be a more capable administrator than his Senate record had indicated. Political records rarely captured the full measure of a person. They showed votes and speeches and committee assignments, the public performance of governance, but not the private quality of judgment. Bru's judgment, Daimon had concluded, was genuinely sound.
The elections were being organized ahead of schedule. Candidates were already declaring across the Republic's member worlds, and the early polling data that Imperial Intelligence had quietly gathered suggested the electorate was moving in a direction Daimon found cautiously encouraging.
The militarist faction's surviving members were performing poorly almost everywhere. Thrace's name had become synonymous with catastrophe, and those who had associated themselves with his administration were discovering the particular political difficulty of running on a record that had been publicly dismantled and prosecuted simultaneously.
The Joint Tribunal had begun its proceedings in a converted hall three levels below the Senate chamber. Daimon had attended the opening session briefly, not to observe the proceedings themselves but to ensure his presence was noted. He had said nothing.
He had simply sat in the gallery for forty minutes, visible to everyone in the room, and then departed. The effect on the tribunal's willingness to proceed without political interference had been, according to Lord Maxim's subsequent reports, immediate and measurable.
Thrace himself was being held in a secure facility on the outskirts of Coruscant's governmental district. He had not spoken publicly since his arrest. His legal representation, three attorneys from a firm that had previously specialized in corporate law and clearly had no experience with war crimes proceedings, had filed seventeen procedural challenges in the first two weeks.
The tribunal had dismissed fourteen of them without comment and was still considering the remaining three, which suggested they were at least treating the process seriously rather than simply performing the appearance of justice.
Daimon had no particular interest in what sentence Thrace ultimately received. The man's political relevance had ended the moment the guards brought him out of his office with his face pressed against his own desk. What mattered was that the process was visible, documented, and legitimate, that the Republic's citizens could watch it and understand that accountability was not simply a concept their new provisional government endorsed in speeches but something it was actually willing to enforce against people who had previously been powerful.
That distinction, between declared values and demonstrated ones, was where most governments eventually failed.
He was reviewing a summary of the tribunal's first week when his terminal signaled an incoming Holo call. The identifier code indicated it was coming from the Tempestaris Ascendants in the Unknown Regions.
"Progenitor Vos," Daimon said, answering the Holo call.
Liraen Vos's image materialized above the terminal. She had been managing the Unknown Regions stabilization for nearly two months now.
"My Lord," she said. "I wanted to give you a personal summary rather than relying solely on the written reports. Some things don't translate well when documented."
"Go ahead."
"The situation on the majority of worlds has stabilized. The garrisons are holding, local administrative structures are being rebuilt, and the initial panic that followed the conquest has largely given way to the more manageable problem of resentment." She paused. "Resentment I can work with. Panic tends to produce unpredictable variables."
"And the exceptions?"
Her expression changed as the exceptions were the reason why she requested called him personally. "Three worlds. Verath's Crossing, the Sanctum of Kalyndra Prime, and a world the locals call the Mournfield. All of them are straightforward insurgency problems. Remnants of the Theocratic Dominion's priesthood have been organizing resistance cells. They're not militarily significant, but they're culturally embedded, which makes them considerably harder to uproot without creating martyrs."
"I don't care about creating martyrs. I want absolute control over these conquered systems. What do you need to ensure this happens?" Daimon asked. There were hundreds of worlds within the unknown regions that they had conquered.
The Imperial administration on each of these worlds were still trying to accumulate accurate population data, economic value, planetary production capacity, and more. But the people were making it hard to gather this information with their non-compliance.
This was one of the headaches that Daimon wanted to avoid, but because of some very stupid people in power, he couldn't.
"Throwing sheer manpower in this section of the galaxy will result in us having to establish more supply lines, which could result in more raids from the insurgents. Instead, I think we should establish droid fleets to avoid having to waste the lives of soldiers."
Daimon considered this for a moment. Vos was correct on both counts. Extending organic supply lines through the Unknown Regions was an invitation for attrition, the kind of slow bleeding that didn't show up as a single catastrophic loss but accumulated quietly over months until the cumulative cost exceeded what anyone had originally calculated.
"Approved," he said. "Draft a requisition through the Ministry of War. We will establish 20 droid fleets led by specially created AI Admirals and Generals. Cortana can oversee the development of this so that we don't run into having to deal with rogue AI in the Imperium."
"Understood." Vos said as the Holo call ended.
In the beginning Daimon didn't want to create droid fleets since he wanted to fight wars using people. But in order to not waste lives, he figured that having droid fleets wasn't a bad idea in this scenario.
————
On Veldari, the Imperial High Council was dealing with the aftermath of the war which included, payment to dead soldiers' families, setting aside funds to develop the hundreds of newly conquered worlds to the Imperium's standards, and so on.
Leading the Council was Grand Chancellor Thoryn. The other members included the High Lords, the Overlord of Expansion, Archon of the Treasury, and several other important members.
Garrick Dain, the Archon of the Treasury, was the first to speak. "We have calculated the total expenditure from the start of the war to the end of the war." he said sharing the report for all to see. "Including military production, fleet operations, occupation administration, medical services, and the initial development surveys on newly acquired territories, comes to approximately 4.2 quadrillion Imperial credits." The sheer number of zeros in that number would have shocked any normal citizen.
"Alongside this, projected long-term economic value of the newly acquired systems, once developed to Imperial standards, is estimated at between twelve and eighteen quadrillion over the next fifty years." To compare, the total Imperial budget was between 10-12 quadrillion. However, military spending was only about 100 trillion.
"While it's great how much our budget would increase, we still have to note that we have no money for the development of all the newly acquired territories at once." Thoryn pointed out.
"This will likely cause an increase in poverty in some place and over stretch the administration. Already our temporary administrations on those hundreds of worlds are encountering problems and some mishaps are being overlooked." explained the Grand Minister of Health, Progenitor Darek Thalor.
"I agree. It will take time to integrate those economies with ours, establish trade routes between worlds, and identify industrial worlds. We should promote temporary governors from among the locals and give them limited authority until we stabilize things." Thalor suggested.
"I agree with this." said Dain. "This will help with some of the local issues and allow us time to prioritize which systems receive immediate development investment versus which can sustain themselves on existing infrastructure while we build toward them."
Grand Chancellor Thoryn nodded slowly, reviewing the figures on his own display. The numbers were staggering even by Imperial standards, yet the math was ultimately sound. The difficulty was the gap between expenditure and return, which was measured not in credits but in years.
"The prioritization question is the central one," Thoryn said. "We cannot develop everything simultaneously, and attempting to do so would stretch our administrative capacity to the point of failure. What I want from this council is a tiered classification system. Which worlds have immediate strategic value? Which have long-term economic potential but requires significant investment before that potential is realized? And which are essentially liabilities in the short term that we are obligated to administer simply because we now control them?"
Orin Volkar, the Overlord of Expansion pulled up a holographic star map which showed the newly acquired territories.
From there they started to go over the things that Thoryn just asked about. They had a long list of things to go over and present to Daimon for approval or any changes. They had to move fast in order to prevent things from spiraling out of control into thousands of conflicts between them and the people of the conquered regions.