"Extremely" pro-slavery? I'll need a citation on that, since the Empire is now manumitting non-Force-using slaves, which it previously didn't. I'd also say that the war didn't begin on Ossus, but rather Iokath, where the Republic struck first. As for Darth Marr, the incident you mention, IIRC, was for producing unnecessary comm chatter (while his flagship was being torn apart), not bringing bad news (also, it was Darth Baras who made the tongue-cutting threat). I'll give you Darth Lachris, though.

All of my characters are LS. The only Imperial I've been able to really enjoy playing long-term is my Inquisitor, who would be happy for the Empire to have a different government, but doesn't remotely trust the Republic to be a better solution for the Empire's people.

What if you don't think the Empire will win the war, but you don't want the Republic to win either because of its habit of attempted genocide?

However, you don't know that the Alliance isn't an option at the time of making the choice.

True, but the Republic did it first, and it was an aggressive move against both the Empire and the Alliance.

The way I'd put it is that the Alliance has a treaty with the Empire and not the Republic; as such, it'd seem to me like a betrayal to side with the Republic on Iokath either way (Ossus is a different situation).

Oh, right. Fair enough, though I still doubt the Empire would tolerate serious corruption if it caught it.

I agree with the stuff above this part, but this is a bit too generous to the Republic; it tries to do the right thing some of the time, and then sometimes accomplishes it. The Republic has a lot of good people, but also plenty of bad ones, and it can be a tossup as to who obtains power (the Empire, admittedly, outright selects for evil people, which is why the Republic is usually better). I also think that you're incorrect about the "Imperial ideals" part: quite a lot of the Republic's bad seeds are venal, greedy, and selfish, and the Empire tends to deal harshly with officials like that (see the fate of the Bounty Hunter's contact on Balmorra). The Sith, of course, are an exception if they have enough power to back it up, but the Sith are an exception in a lot of ways. There's also one area in which the Republic has repeatedly shown a very nasty side: genocide. Twice, at least, the Republic has attempted to exterminate the Empire entirely (only once in TOR, yes, but it did happen).

With Belsavis, the Dread Masters don't seem that much more evil than most other Sith when you rescue them; they're just very powerful. It's also a purely military objective. Whether the Empire is truly the aggressor on Quesh is debatable, since the Three Families were the ones who broke the Hutt Cartel's neutrality policy by siding with the Republic. A lot of the Alderaan missions let you help Thul retain its honor, and your main enemy, Ulgo, seems at least somewhat worse than Thul. The Flame's group would have been screwed no matter what. Even if they killed Admiral Ange, the Empire would retaliate with extreme prejudice. Just getting off Nar Shaddaa alive is the best fate possible for them. Or you could just buy one of those boost tokens and do only the class story.

How would you define "bad thing?" Balmorra and Taris are out, that much is clear, but other worlds like Tatooine and Hoth are pretty innocent.

Interestingly, the Sith Inquisitor is the one Imperial class who doesn't work for evil people starting with Chapter 2... because you work for no one, having no master and navigating the Empire's politics on your own. I would argue that while the Inquisitor is definitely an antihero, a full LS run doesn't have you doing any real evil, assuming you dodge some of the nastier planetary stories.

Play a female Knight?

Not to go too far into it, but this is actually false. I think saying anything more would start breaking politics rules, though.

I think that you're whitewashing Belsavis kind of a lot. I mean, Noble Focus is pretty much the same thing as encouraging captured slaves to kill each other, to say nothing of the fact that its leaders are almost certainly just fall guys for a project backed by the Republic's leadership in general, but the entire concept of Belsavis is screwy. The Condemned are an obvious atrocity, but even the idea of a secret prison destroys all possible public accountability for its operators and can't really exist for any purpose other than to ignore the Republic's own constitution when the Senate deems it expedient. Also, the Republic--who in the Republic authorized it is unknown, but it happened--helped orchestrate Revan's attempted genocide campaign with the Foundry. I'm not saying that the Empire isn't evil, or even that it isn't worse, but while the Senate doesn't flaunt its corruption, I have a hard time believing that it's not utterly riddled with it.

Just so you know, the triple parentheses are associated with some extremely problematic political views. It's not just another version of scarequotes.

Oh, is Jaesa available to women now?

Doesn't that exact thing fail if you try to heal the Balmorran president, for basically the same reason? Not everything is within your powerset.

I really think the best answer is to just say that it's inconsistent and there's no one true answer, because different people wrote different things and even disagreed with themselves from time to time. Star Wars is big enough for many perspectives.

It's mentioned a few times for a Sith who's LS that they don't really seem to follow Sith teachings.

I think it's probably safest to say that Star Wars is simply inconsistent on this subject. Personally, I don't think "Gray" is a useful definition at all. One thing, though, that does seem like a major wrinkle in TOR is that a Sith Inquisitor can use the dark side for everything, yet still be a perfectly decent person. What would they qualify as?

That's a Disney canon thing, I'm pretty sure. From The Clone Wars, probably.

I'm guessing that what you're looking for is closer to the Sith Warrior, if you play it more or less LS, though the Jedi Knight isn't bad (it depends a lot on what you're looking for with "honor"). The Bounty Hunter also can qualify as this once they become a Mandalorian.

I don't really see how he'd rise again. If he can't overwhelm me with raw power, which he didn't, he really has no other resources. I sort of thought the point of the Alliance was to defeat the Eternal Empire, which Arcann no longer belongs to after KotFE. To that end, I'm willing to take as many allies as I can get. I understand why you'd say so, I just disagree.

And as the Commander, my decision is that we shouldn't undertake summary executions unless there's no other option. Which I don't see as being the case with Arcann, especially not when you're making the decision in the moment. It's Star Wars, so I'm not going to turn my nose up at a bit of family drama. And said drama is rather integral to Vaylin's character, as well as to Valkorion's in a somewhat lesser way. What I'm saying is that I don't see why the Commander is obligated to kill someone in that situation.

I'm not entirely sure when the Alliance Commander became judge, jury, and executioner for every jurisdiction in the galaxy... not to mention that Arcann is a guest on Voss, so you'd think that storming in to kill him and Senya would upset some people too. There are lots of gaps in the story both ways, but generally, I think that summary execution is best avoided, and killing him (or trying to) on Voss now because you know you'll never be able to afterwards doesn't make any sense to me from an IC point of view. What do Lana and Theron have to do directly with Valkorion and Vaylin? I think that having the whole family be there works out better, narratively.