This all sounds really fascinating. . . except Voss isn't in the Kathol Sector. The "Nightmare Lands" in the Kathol sector are just a place with the same name as the "Nightmare Lands" on Voss. Like, I'm sure Tattooine isn't the only planet in the entire Star Wars galaxy to have a "Dune Sea." When you're talking about things mentioned in TOR, context is important. In the context of a crew mission. . . it's pretty much irrelevant. Crew Skill missions work where you have Gathering and Crafting skills, and send the companions you acquire during play through the story out to either gather resources or craft things with those resources. Higher level missions grant resources to make higher level stuff, and take more time. There's no real risk involved, and the missions only take between one minute and one hour to complete. If you care about reading through the little lore entry for a specific mission, where you're sending someone and why that would give you those resources amounts to an Easter Egg about Star Wars lore, but that's really it. The Kathol Sector, I believe, was detailed as a setting for the West End Games Star Wars RPG, so it's got a bit of history to it. If you can find the old sourcebook detailing it, that might give you some ideas.

I'd say that's the difference between "heroic characters" (the PCs and important NPCs) and "everyone else," but maybe that's just me. I mean, the characters the story is about, the PCs and their important allies and enemies, are the ones shaping the story with every action they take. It's their galaxy, everyone else is just living in it. Part of what makes PCs special is that drive, the special spark to attain and persevere to get what they want, whether that's peace and harmony or unity through threat of planet killers and being Force Lightninged into oblivion. I would imagine that, even in the Sith Empire, the ability to really look at yourself and say "Yes, I am evil, I serve an evil regime, and I want to RUN THAT EVIL REGIME EVILLY" is rare. Most would simply believe its the best of bad options, or that it's the way of the society they were raised in and don't even really think about it, or that it might be evil but it provides some benefit to them and it's not like they're out doing the really evil stuff. That combination of ambition, wisdom, and power should be peculiar to PCs and select NPCs. And yes, I know "wisdom" and "Player Characters" are not traits that are often included in the same sentence. My point stands. As for a mechanical. . . hmm, "disincentive," perhaps? . . . to not make use of Light Side pips. . . I think that's already covered by the rules. Just like Light Siders have to take a Strain and flip a Destiny Point from Light to Dark, a Dark Sider has to take a Strain and flip a Destiny Point from Dark to Light. Incentive not use the points. . . unless you really, really need those Force Points to accomplish your goal. Pretty equitable for both sides. Which isn't to say I don't have a problem with it. For Light Siders, it's a good representation of the temptation of the Dark Side. Using that little bit of Dark power to do something really important, something good. . . well, that can't be bad, right? So maybe using Dark power in and of itself isn't bad, if you do it for the right reasons. . . a good cause. A good enough cause. Because it would create problems if you didn't. Because you wanted to. Because it felt good. Because shut up, I HATE YOU! There's a road that's paved with good intentions. . . But for Dark Siders, they aren't really "tempted" by the Light (Kylo Ren being the exception). Rather, I feel the "difficulty" in being a Darksider is not having a realistic grasp on your power. Drunk on the Dark Side is a trope for a reason, and many Darksiders seem to have a very, very overinflated sense of just what it is they can accomplish with all the Dark Power at their command (one of my favorites, again from the RotS novel, is Dooku internally sneering at Obi-Wan and Anakin, because Jedi allow the Force to control them, but a master of the Dark Side controls the Force. Pause to appreciate that blindingly stupid level of arrogance). Palpatine and Vader both succumbed to overconfidence, and it ended badly for both of them: Vader missing three limbs and burning, Palpatine going down a reactor shaft. But that's something I'd be really hesitant about putting into game mechanics. Even if it might be a fitting idea to say "Dark Siders can't use Light Side Force Pips," making it understandable why Darksiders might overestimate their abilities until they get one really bad Force roll with nowhere near enough Dark pips to do what they need. . . that would feel overly limiting.

Well, the idea that the Dark Side "extracts a terrible price from those consumed by it" is because Star Wars is fundamentally idealistic, and as such the bad guys lose, and the good guys win. So, yeah, at the end of the day, no matter how awesome any given Darksider is, they are going to lose, because that's the nature of the story being told. There have been attempts to codify this in other games, with "Dark Side Corruption" or somesuch that applies attribute penalties to characters of sufficient Darkness. That's never sat well with me, because especially for a Dark Side campaign, it feels like punishing the characters for playing the setting they've all agreed to, and just doesn't quite match what we see on the screen. Yes, Vader and Palpatine suffered greatly for their ultimate Dark Siderness, but Palpatine's was delayed for QUITE some time, and Vader in some respects got a lot MORE powerful in the suit (a lot less powerful in others, but hey). I even remember, I think it was WotC's d20 Star Wars, a whole huge convoluted explanation that Palpatine actually had visible Dark Side corruption for the entirety of the Prequels, but used a Sith illusion to hide it, which was permanently burned away (and never able to be reapplied?!?) when he took a zillion jolts of his own lightning to the face. OR, you could say he faced down one of the most skilled Jedi Masters of the age, one with the absolutely perfect skillset to use against Palpatine, and Palpatine walked away from the battle with permanent disfiguring injuries, but alive. Yeah, the second one makes a lot more sense. Anyway. . . part of all that is the idea that Dark Siders become "enslaved" to the Dark Side in some way, but that depends a lot on your interpretation and what, really, being "enslaved to the Dark Side" even means. Are they bereft of the ability to make choices? Are they incapable of doing things for reasons unrelated to sadistic glee? I think not. Consider this. Anakin and Palpatine's long discussion about the Jedi and Sith, their similarities and difference, in Revenge of the Sith. In the novelization, Palpatine has a line stating, if I recall correctly, "Jedi seek wisdom and gain power, Sith seek power and gain wisdom." Now, you can certainly say that Palpatine's at least bending the truth to turn Anakin to his way of thinking, but it's consistent with how the Force is portrayed. Knowledge and wisdom equal power within the Force. The ultimate knowledge is knowledge of oneself. So, to attain ultimate power in the Dark Side, a Dark Sider must, at some point, look at themselves in the mirror, admit that by any civilized metric they are evil, and be okay with that. Now, that's a pretty rare level of understanding within the Dark Side, but its one that Palpatine almost certainly achieved, along with likely other exceptional Sith like Darth Bane. Sure, a lot of Dark Siders (Vader included) mostly thought of themselves as "evil for the greater good" or something like that, but that puts a bit of a limit on how ultimately powerful they can become. . . and, perhaps, leads into that "obsession" that has been talked about. Focusing on a few small things that they can use their power for, still believing it will ultimate be for the best, instead of facing and embracing the ultimate wisdom that they are now evil. But what does this mean mechanically? Ultimately, I think, not much. Any mechanics you could really inject into this would feel arbitrarily limiting or empowering for characters who state they agree with the GMs interpretations. It's kinda the same argument that "well, I don't think that action was wrong, so I shouldn't get a Dark Side Point/Conflict for it." "My character agrees that he is evil, so he should get all the best Dark Side goodies." "Wait, my character agrees he's evil too, he just thinks being evil is beneficial on the whole, so he gets the goodies too, right?" What it really boils down to, especially in terms of the Sith of The Old Republic, is being unfettered. There is nothing that can check my behavior, I can take any action and do anything I feel is necessary to achieve my goals. What those actions will be (and how evil they are) will depend on the character's goals and the situations and opportunities they have to advance them.

I was bounced off the screen a bit by this as well, and did some thinking, and this was more-or-less what I came up with, based on some earlier confusions like Han calling hyperspace "the jump to lightspeed." Maybe "lightspeed" and "sublight" are colloquialisms in Star Wars, not technical terms, with "lightspeed" basically meaning "travelling though hyperspace," and "sublight" meaning "not travelling through hyperspace." So you might have an engine that can achieve speeds faster than the speed of light, but it's a "sublight engine" because it's not a "hyperdrive" that propels you through hyperspace. Granted, this completely breaks the laws of physics, but Star Wars has a long, proud history of spanking physics on its behind before sending it to its room with no supper.