Deskyl shrugs - Sith - but then gestures at Margaret: Not Sith. You okay?

"Yeah, I've stayed well out of it so far and will probably be able to keep doing that. Also in a few more months I should have my new body done, and that one will be nice and armored and strong and fast and generally much harder to mess with than this one. And I've got backups, whatever problem droid backup hardware has on your world didn't happen to me."

Good. Shields?

"What do you mean by shields, armor plating?"

She shakes her head. Energy shields. For - projectiles, plasma weapons, stuff.

"Oooh, that sounds cool. And useful. I should definitely read up on your world's tech, I bet you have all kinds of things we don't and vice versa. In particular, how's your crypto, I've been looking at ways to make myself safe from hostile mind-readers and if you've got AIs and something-like-psychics I bet that's a solved problem."

Sith don't sense droids.

"Huh, none of them? I wonder if it's a brain chemistry thing, then, the psychics back home can apparently 'operate directly on consciousness' and that includes reading my mind."

Like that, yeah. The Force cares about biology. Aliens are harder, can't sense you at all.

"You have contact with aliens? That's so cool! How many kinds, how much do they vary?"

Thousands. Hundreds of near-humans, plenty not even close. Hutts - DZ -

    "Hutt empire is the third largest, after the Sith Empire and the Republic. Hutts look like giant slugs with humanlike arms and froglike faces."

"Neat! Is it mostly one country per species like that, or are there mixed-species countries?"

Planets.

    "The empires Deskyl mentioned cover thousands of planets each. Most places have some degree of mixing, though the Sith empire is run entirely by humans and the Hutt empire is run entirely by Hutts."

"Wow, that's a lot of planets! I guess it make sense that there'd be some one-species or nearly one-species countries, since if the species are different they'd want different laws. 'Empire' sounds like you're both monarchies?"

    "The Sith Empire is run by the Dark Council, which is made up of the twelve most powerful Sith. The Hutts have a council as well, but they mostly answer to their individual syndicates."

"Most powerful Sith politically, or like, magically? How are they chosen? I'm vaguely imagining some sort of combat tournament like we have at school but that's probably not it."

    "A combination of those, Ma'am. Sith generally advance via combat, but alliances and political maneuvering to weaken a rival are important too, especially for more powerful Sith."

"What do they politically maneuver about, if they don't have elections?"

    "I don't know much about it, Ma'am, I'm sorry."

Policy, Deskyl chimes in. Effectiveness, tradition, near vs. far goals, things like that. Sith are opinionated.

"Huh. It doesn't sound like a great way to run a government to me, but I haven't lived there. Do the council do a good job, generally?"

At their goals, yeah. Sith goals, though. Selfish.

"Hmmm. In my country, everyone interested in being part of the government announces their interest, and then every adult says who they want in the government and the people who get the most votes end up in the government. It isn't perfect but it generally forces the government to at least try to do what will benefit the citizens."

Sith'd kill everybody, you try that.

"You don't seem like the killing-everybody type, are other Sith worse?"

Yeah.

    "Deskyl is remarkably calm for a Sith, yes."