Vitor Runge

Vitor Runge was an Imperial Inquisitor during the height of the Galactic Empire. He spent most of his time posted on the secret planet of in the, where he carried out dark side and psychological experiments on behalf of Emperor Palpatine, most notably a eugenics program involving Imperial Orphanage 511. After the and the collapse of the Empire he went into hiding.

Biography
Details regarding his background remained elusive for researchers. Vitor Runge was a Force-sensitive Human male who originally served as an officer in the during the waning years of the old Republic. By the time of the, he came into contact with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and was an ally of the man, although the exact nature of their relationship remained unknown. It was known that Runge was a psychologist by training and in his work for Republic intelligence he specialized in psychological operations, or psyops, and to a lesser extent propaganda. Most of his work during the Republic remained a secret and the details were lost when Imperial records were destroyed after the. Around the time of the Runge was transferred from intelligence to the newly formed, and it was believed that he was involved in special projects that were of personal interest to the Supreme Chancellor.

In 19 BBY, after the, as a Force user he would be inducted into the ranks of the , an agency established within that served to assist Emperor Palpatine in hunting down Jedi and other dark side matters. Runge eventually attained the rank of and primarily spent the early years of the Empire on the secret planet of Byss, where he was also involved in dark side research. By this point Runge had taken an interest in dark side eugenics and in 17 BBY he started an experiment to create a new class of "over-men," a secret project authorized by the Emperor. The goal was to create a group that would have a high level of intelligence, charisma, and dark side power on a scale approaching that of the Emperor in order to serve as a future "." This elite would be the ruling class in a theocratic dictatorship that Palpatine planned to have rule the galaxy overtly sometime in the future, which he would preside over.

As part of the project, Runge oversaw a special orphanage on Byss known as Imperial Orphanage 511, which was not overseen by the but was directly controlled by the  and Inquisitorius. The orphanage became home to children who were former Jedi or otherwise Force-sensitive, including those of former Senators and other political dissidents. They were to serve as the subjects of the experiment, with a program in place organised by Runge to create this class of dark side elites. The spartan conditions of the Imperial Orphanage 511 were also intended separate the natural-born leaders, the ambitious, from the regular children, in order to create not only perfect servants for the Emperor but natural leaders of men themselves. Although by then Palpatine had a large group of Dark Side Adepts, through Runge's research he sought to mold children from the very beginning in his image and cultivate their power to be similar to his own. Basically, to create new Palpatine-like individuals who would help him lead the galaxy.

Chief Inquisitor Runge was entrusted with overseeing the project, presumably because of his past as a psychologist as well as a Dark Side Adept. Those that ended up at Imperial Orphanage 511 were subjected to inhumane cruelty, a program consisting of brainwashing and the erasing of all their memories through the dark side, including their real names, cultivating them with negative emotions like fear, hatred, and distrust in order to destroy their innate compassion toward living beings and their ability to create social bonds. The "students" were encouraged to form factions and create rivalries with each other which stoked conflict. Essentially the experiment's goal was to reduce a person to nothing, breaking down their ability to feel love or any other emotion towards other people and to see themselves as nothing but incarnations of the dark side itself, similarly to Palpatine, but forced onto them. After the brainwashing, the children were then taught various skills, first and foremost in usage of the dark side, but also others since after the brainwashing the children's minds were turned into sponges that absorbed large amounts of information.

In this process the 511 orphanage would create an unknown number of alumni over the course of a decade, but out of them many were deemed to not be as useful. Children from the orphanage who were deemed undesirable were initially transferred out to other institutions like as special agents, but remained completely broken and proved to be unreliable, eventually ending in their own self-destruction. The successful ones who "graduated" from the institution were extremely intelligent, manipulative, calculating, and emotionless, though with the side effect of becoming nihilistic and having no identity. Because of the memory erasure many of them only remembered fragments of their time at the orphanage. After that, they were transferred to other parts of the Empire to be implanted into powerful positions, from where the 511 alumni were intended to rise to power while being secret agents of the Emperor who would eventually be called upon to play an important role in his future "."

Runge oversaw the experiment initially until he chose to step down to focus on other tasks, and a year after that the orphanage would be completely destroyed during the "incident" that occurred in 10 BBY with the introduction of a certain boy to the institution. The orphanage remained closed down after that as the experiment was already considered a success by both Runge and the Emperor. After the Battle of Endor the whole plan was derailed as there was no longer anyone guiding the 511 group. Runge would go into hiding to evade not only New Republic authorities investigating Imperial crimes, but more importantly former graduates of his program searching for their origins that might seek revenge.