Territorial Governance

The Grand Moff is the Empire's senior territorial governor. The twenty Oversectors descend from the late-Republic Priority Sectors that supported the Grand Army of the Republic's twenty Sector Armies. Following the Imperial Ascension, those wartime jurisdictions were made permanent and their civil and military coordination vested in Grand Moffs.

Every Sector Moff within an Oversector reports to its Grand Moff. The Grand Moff supervises their performance, reconciles policy between sectors, directs intersector priorities, and may intervene where a sector government cannot meet a regional requirement. Each Sector Moff nevertheless remains responsible for the routine administration of an administratively distinct sector.

• Coordinates sector governments, ministries, strategic infrastructure, and intersector commerce.
• Oversees regional security, emergency planning, mobilisation, and enforcement of Imperial policy.
• Exercises overall authority over the named Oversector Command and all forces assigned beneath it.
• Represents the Oversector within the Imperial Ruling Council.

The Sector Moff is the chief executive governor of a conventional sector and the principal Imperial authority for its civil administration, security, economy, and fulfilment of central policy. Sectors remain the standard territorial divisions inherited from the Republic, each encompassing numerous star systems and retaining its own administrative identity within an Oversector.

The Moff sets sector-wide priorities, directs the Imperial bureaucracy, supervises subordinate governors, coordinates ministry activity, and ensures the collection of revenue and resources owed to the Empire. Routine local administration remains with subordinate officials and indigenous governments unless intervention is required.

• Issues executive directions within the sector and resolves disputes between subordinate jurisdictions.
• Coordinates sector-wide law enforcement, transportation, communications, trade, and emergency response.
• Directs the sector's territorial security requirements through its combined command structure.
• Provides accurate information to lawful Imperial authorities, including the Senate when properly requested.

A subsector is an optional intermediate jurisdiction established only where strategic, cultural, geographic, economic, or administrative circumstances justify a level of government between the sector and its systems. Most sectors do not require subsector government. Others may contain one or several where populations and Imperial responsibilities are unusually concentrated.

The Subsector Moff coordinates the systems within that territory and gives the Sector Moff a single accountable authority for a particularly demanding part of the sector. The office does not divide or diminish the Sector Moff's authority over the whole sector.

• Supervises system governments and common infrastructure within the subsector.
• Coordinates security, commerce, logistics, and emergency action across system boundaries.
• Administers a historically or culturally coherent territory where unified treatment is useful.
• Provides closer oversight of a strategic corridor, dense population centre, or troubled region.

A Governor administers a developed star system as a unified jurisdiction, including its worlds, moons, asteroid fields, orbital routes, stations, and major installations. The office coordinates responsibilities that cross the boundaries of individual worlds: system customs, interplanetary transport, orbital security, resource concessions, communications, and system-wide emergency planning.

The Governor directs Imperial agencies within the system through their lawful chains and may require appropriate support from assigned forces. Ministry police, military garrisons, and specialist agencies retain their own professional commands; they are not a governor's personal forces.

• Coordinates the Imperial administrations and local governments operating throughout the system.
• Implements sector policy and reports strategic, political, and economic developments upward.
• Directs system-wide public-order and civil-defence priorities.
• Supervises the administration of principal planets and moons.

The Lieutenant Governor is the normal Imperial executive for a principal planet or major moon, but the grade follows the weight of the jurisdiction rather than the type of celestial body. A sparsely populated system that does not warrant a full Governor may be administered in its entirety by a Lieutenant Governor.

On a loyal world, the Lieutenant Governor may work beside an elected government, monarch, council, or other indigenous authority, leaving most internal civil affairs in local hands. The Imperial administration handles central obligations and watches the competence and loyalty of the local government. Where necessary, the Lieutenant Governor may assume broader direct powers under superior authority.

• Administers Imperial law, revenue, infrastructure, records, and central-government programmes.
• Coordinates with indigenous authorities and ensures fulfilment of Imperial obligations.
• Maintains public order and directs appropriate territorial security measures.
• Reports unrest, corruption, economic disruption, and strategic threats to the superior government.

A Prefect administers a limited jurisdiction too small or specialised to warrant a higher regional grade. Assignments may include a province, continent, city, industrial district, lesser moon, important orbital habitat, spaceport, penal territory, military-support zone, or isolated Imperial installation.

Prefects provide the Empire with accountable local administration where ordinary municipal or indigenous institutions cannot alone manage Imperial responsibilities. Most orbital habitats remain under an existing system or planetary government; only those of sufficient strategic or administrative importance ordinarily receive a dedicated Prefect.

• Implements the directives of the superior territorial government.
• Coordinates local services, infrastructure, regulation, and public order.
• Works with indigenous municipal authorities without transferring command of Imperial forces to them.
• Escalates matters that exceed the resources or lawful authority of the prefecture.