I am a dreamer...an ideologist...and I am an Imperial.

Two decades ago, I served the old Empire...Palpatine's Empire. Like many who now found true purpose and meaning to hold on to a failed promise and made it a reality, we found the means and motivation to break away from the dying Remnant of a corrupt Empire.
Two decades ago, I died with the destruction of Alderaan, only to be reborn with a new purpose in my life after shattered dreams.
I believed to be alone then...a traitor to Palpatine and the Empire which I once embraced and took heart in.
But those were the dreams of a younger man who had ambitions to change the galaxy in the false visions of Palpatine.
No.
No, many of us in the beginning did not know or realize we were serving a sith.  We believed like the old republic senators who voted that faithful day to form a new galactic Empire out of the old republic.

We had such hope...such motivations of bringing peace to this otherwise chaotic galaxy and one which had been raged with war...the Clone Wars.
We embraced Palpatine's vision of this Empire to end the war...to end all wars.

Only.
Only it was the start of extinguishing all light, all hope in our galaxy. We did not realize the path upon which this vile sith whom we all had embraced as our emperor would lead us.
We hung on to some hope that perhaps the means would justify the end.
But the end came for Alderaan... My beloved Alderaan.
God as my witness, I died that day also.
Died as a young lieutenant naval officer, in the Emperor's corrupt and vile Empire.
There i stood alone. There I remained within the Empire to truly find a way to end my physical life as my soul had died. But I was going to take a good chunk of this Empire along with me. I planned on a suicide mission to take out as much naval hardware as I could possibly orchestrate. I believed to be alone in this. I believed to be the only traitor standing within the ranks of the Imperial navy.
I was corrected.
I was discovered.
I was saved.
I was discovered by my commander, Barton DeLain. He was a brilliant Imperial officer. One whom I had looked up to, while I first believed in the Empire. Little did I know then, that he too was like me... a traitor. But he had already crossed that line years before the destruction of Alderaan, before I opened my eyes. Barton was part of a group of other secret conspirators that were amassing and organizing within the high ranks of Palpatine's Empire to bring it down from within. And they all still believed that much of the Empire, as the one envisioned by the Old Republican Senators,  could truly be saved and resurrected to become what it is today.. The New Imperial States ...the NIS.

Two decades ago, I once served Palpatine. Then with the destruction of Alderaan, I awakened.
Now with the many systems that once were behind Imperial lines, we have emerged as a viable Empire. An Empire which was first envisioned and embraced by the old republic. Only this time, it is real. It is just, and it is the Empire which I will defend with my last dying breath...

 I am Thyssen Stehl, NIS loyalist.
I serve in the ICI, the Imperial Central Intelligence. I became indoctrinated into the ICI bureau when I was a Colonel. The ICI has no ranks. But the Colonel title has somehow remained to follow me in my footsteps toward achieving my ICI status. Perhaps it is a small reminder of who I am, regardless of the status of what I have been given to be.

The NIS (New Imperial States) is what the Old Republic once dreamed of becoming.... that is, before it was corrupted by a vile sith and his lies.