Imperial cronies

... The main corridor [of the new Death Star] was filled with courtiers, all awaiting an audience with the Emperor. Vader curled his lip at them – fools all. Pompous toadies in their velvet robes and painted faces; perfumed bishops passing notes and passing judgments among themselves – for who else cared; oily favour-merchants, bent low from the weight of jewellery still warm from a previous owner's dying flesh; easy, violent men and women lusting to be tampered with.

Vader had no patience for such petty filth. He passed them without a nod, though many of them would have paid dearly for a felicitous word from the Dark Lord...

- James Kahn and George Lucas, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (London: Futura, 1983), p 90.