The Story: Star Wars Legacies

[Star Wars Legacies (OLD)]

The Star Wars RP
Star Wars Legacies: The Story So Far

The fall of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader heralded a new era of peace for the galaxy. Though there would always be wars, with the governments facing threats from within and even from beyond the known galaxy, it at least seemed that the Sith had been destroyed forever. For over one hundred years, however, the surviving Sith were led by a Dark Lord called Darth Krayt, who forged them into a weapon to reclaim the Galactic Empire. When his Sith finally returned, they seized control of the Empire and once again ruled the galaxy.

To defeat this new Emperor, an unprecedented partnership was formed between the forces of the Galactic Alliance Remnant, the anti-Sith Imperials, and the New Jedi Order. For years, these allies brought their forces to bear until Darth Krayt was finally killed by Cade Skywalker, the last known member of the Skywalker line. Having worked together to defeat Krayt’s Empire, the Galactic Alliance and the Galactic Empire kept their alliance and lived in peace for centuries. As they did, the Jedi hunted the remnants of the Sith before being content that the Sith no longer posed a threat—but history always showed that such beliefs were wrong.

After Krayt was killed, Cade Skywalker left for parts unknown to find peace, free from the responsibilities that being a Skywalker brought. Though the line of Jaina Solo Fel continued throughout the galaxy, the line of Luke Skywalker was at an apparent end. Yet, Cade’s descendants continued to live in unknown space, where their name and heritage was lost.

Centuries later, the remnants of Krayt’s empire were scattered into mystic cults and dark worshipers throughout the Unknown Regions, where some Skywalker descendants lived among them. They lived as nomads until one of the worshipers, Layda Aren, learned the teachings of the ancient Sith and set out to unify the dark siders once more. She travelled throughout unknown space, bringing the descendants of Krayt’s Sith back into the fold, until she was finally declared Darth Aevum, Dark Lady of the Sith. This new Sith Order spent decades manipulating the Empire with pro-Sith propaganda, telling the Imperials that their benevolent Emperor was weak and only the strong rule of the Sith could restore their peaceful Galactic Empire to the once-glorious war machine it once was.

The Sith publicly revealed themselves in 1,002 ABY, when they launched a coup on the Imperial capital of Bastion. They soon found that their propaganda was a success; rather than facing stiff resistance, most of the Imperial military swore their allegiance to the Dark Lady. The Imperial Knights, the light-sided protectors of the Emperor, were forced into exile, and the Emperor himself was killed by the newly-proclaimed Empress. It was a simple coup; the Imperial people wanted the Sith in power.

The same could not be said, however, for the Galactic Alliance and the Jedi. Terrified by the prospect of another war, the Alliance rapidly began building up its military to defend itself. For nine years, the Alliance and the Sith remained locked in a state of cold war; the Sith were not yet ready to attack, and the Alliance tried desperately to engage in diplomacy. By 1,011 ABY, it was clear that diplomacy had failed when the Sith emerged from behind their iron curtain and destroyed The Will of the Force, the Jedi flagship.

For two years after formally declaring war, the Alliance suffered one defeat after another. By 1,013 ABY, the Core Worlds themselves were at stake. The new Sith Empress, Andraste, struck a deal with the Mandalorian Clans to lead an assault on the Core. The Mandalorians made a push from planet to planet, clearing the way for the Sith to bring their fleet to Coruscant for one final battle against the Galactic Alliance.

When the Sith finally arrived, the fighting was everywhere, even the underworld amongst the criminals that resided there. The Imperial forces overwhelmed the Alliance in its last stand, and everything fell. The Jedi Temple was left in ruins, and the Galactic Congress was infiltrated. Jedi Grand Master Sigur Vainikainen, who had been arrested after announcing that the Jedi would be retreating from Coruscant before the battle began, was killed in a final, heroic stand against Darth Vereor, the Dark Lord of the Sith. Chief of State Nathanaeu Bastele fell after ordering an evacuation of the planet. Even Mandalore himself, Corden Vencu, was killed.

Coruscant was left in ruins even before the battle even came to a close. With the remaining Alliance forces in chaos, the Dark Lord was joined by Andraste—the Empress herself—to launch one final, devastating attack against Coruscant. Harnessing all the energies of the Force, the two Sith Lords launched a torrential flood of energy towards the planet’s Force nexus, where the Jedi Temple stood, and allowed it to explode across the surface of the world. The government collapsed, and the Galactic Alliance was no more.

After the Fall
(1,013 - 1,015 ABY)
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With their planets in ruins, and having already declared their intention to leave the Alliance, the Jedi had nowhere left to go. Some remained congregated together, trying to maintain some semblance of unity and order amongst their ranks, but many others were left behind and scattered, with no means of communicating with the centralized Order. The Jedi who remained with the centralized Order found themselves in the midst of a power struggle; as the Sith forces rallied around their victorious Empress and Dark Lord, some Jedi Masters vied for power. The Jedi split into their own factions, trying to re-create the Jedi in their own image. For the first time in nearly a thousand years, it seemed like the Jedi were on the brink of collapse.

Beyond the concerns of the Jedi, the surviving Alliance forces joined together to create the Alliance Remnant in the hopes of pushing back against the Sith conquerors. With no political establishment, this was solely a military force with the singular goal of repelling the Sith back to the former Imperial borders. In an effort to keep from being detected, the Remnant split up into multiple fleets that were stationed apart from one another. With one battle-experienced commander at the head of every fleet, the Remnant hoped to be able to launch an operation aimed at taking back Coruscant.

Those hopes were soon dashed by the recklessness of one of the fleet commanders. Admiral Ohrun Stazi, a veteran of the Battle of Teth, believed that his forces had the tactical advantage needed to launch an incursion into the former Alliance territory. Aided by intelligence from Remnant spies, Stazi rallied his fleet at Bimmisaari, one of the worlds still loyal to the Alliance in the eastern-most quadrants of the galaxy. What Stazi did not know was that the intelligence was fake, planted by the Sith to lure unsuspecting Remnant forces into a trap. A massive Imperial force emerged from hyperspace and destroyed Stazi’s fleet. It was a crushing defeat for the Remnant. Worlds that were resisting the Imperial conquest had second thoughts and began swearing allegiance to the Sith in order to save their people.

Having scored a major victory, the Sith turned their attention to major worlds within their new borders that had not yet fallen into their rule. The Empress chose Onderon and Kashyyyk as their next campaigns, but elected not to send an overwhelming force to those planets. With the Imperial fleet engaged throughout their territory to secure their new planets, the Sith relied on enough smaller forces moving in and out to continue supporting a strong front, all while the Onderonians and Wookiees were beaten back into submission.

As the Sith fought their own battles, the Mandalorians began the campaign that the Empress promised them when they agreed to lead the assault on the Core. Having gathered all the forces they could bring to bear, the Mandalorians attacked the Kuat Drive Yards. For nearly a year, the Mandalorians fought tooth and nail against the massive fleet there and eventually emerged victorious. The shipyard suffered massive damage, but enough of the yard was still operational in order for the Mandalorians to consider the campaign a success. The fall of Kuat allowed their own company, MandalMotors, to be the preeminent shipyard in the galaxy.

By 1,015 ABY, what for two years had been known as the Great Sith Expansion period was beginning to come to an end as the Empire’s expansion throughout the galaxy began to slow. The Sith fell into a holding pattern, preferring to wait until they had a more concrete grip over their territory to continue pushing south. Most southern worlds had become independent with the fall of the Alliance, and the Remnant was in no position to create an effective military or governmental resistance in the free territories.

Rise of the Hutt Cartel
(1,015 - 1,017 ABY)

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That same year, the Sith suffered their first major setback of the war when the Chiss Ascendancy began to collapse from economic mismanagement. Having long been the pawns of the Sith, the Chiss were keen on establishing themselves as a major galactic power in their own right. They spent years acquiring fleets, major defensive systems, weapons, personnel, and more, believing that their destiny was one of galactic conquest as well. Most of these acquisitions were made using loans from the Hutt Cartel. With so much of their resources devoted to acquisitions, however, commerce and other sources of income were neglected to the point that the government ran out of money to pay the Hutts. The Chiss defaulted on their debt, so the Hutt Lords repossessed the fleet. The Chiss economy began to collapse, and the territory they had gained from the Battle of Endor slipped out of their hands and became independent from any major government. With the Chiss unable to launch any sort of offensive orprovide a meaningful contribution to the Sith war effort, the Sith broke all ties with them, content to let the government collapse into irrelevancy.

The decline of the Chiss and the repossession of their fleet gave the Hutt Lords reason to believe that the time was ripe to begin military conquest of their own, something they had not been prone to do on a large scale since the Great Hutt Wars millennia earlier. The Cartel turned its attention to the neighboring Bothan space, believing that taking over Bothawui and their other planets would provide critical intelligence and military resources needed to take on additional campaigns. With the Sith in no position to stop the Cartel, and the Remnant still in a weakened state, the Hutts sent their forces to the border.

What the Hutt Lords assumed would be an easy campaign was immediately stalled by major military resistance from the Bothans. For two years, the Hutt forces attempted to drive further into the region, but they were only able to modestly push back the borders of Bothan space. It was Bothawui that proved to be impenetrable, with a massive planetary energy shield that prevented bombardment and penetration to anyone who did not have the codes. The only course of actions the Hutts could take was to put up a blockade to try and starve the Bothans out, all while attempting to bribe Bothans to destroy the generator or give the Hutt forces the codes needed to lower the shields. They could not find any willing participants to bribe to their side.

As the stalemate continued, the Bothans gained control of the hyperspace lines into their space, preventing critical Hutt resources and reinforcements from arriving. The Hutt Lords finally decided that it was too costly to continue the war effort. Once their forces retreated, the Hutt Lords realized that outright military might was not as effective as economic manipulation. Knowing that bacta would be the galaxy’s most precious resource as the war dragged on, the Hutts began investing in the Bacta Cartel of Thyferra, which they would continue to do over the next several years.

Long Arm of the Empire
(1,015 - 1,020 ABY)

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As the Hutts engaged in war with the Bothans, the Sith set their sights on the two major worlds left to conquer in the Core along the Corellian Run, the control of which would allow the Sith to move further south into the galaxy: Corellia and Duro. With many Imperial forces engaged throughout the Empress’ new domain, the attacks on the two planets were precisely crafted, using the successes of Onderon and Kashyyyk as a guide; rather than sending a massive force to overtake the planets at once, a smaller but continually replenished force would be utilized, allowing the Sith an advantage over the war-weary planets.

Duro was hit first. It was the most fortified of the two, but it would be easier to take than the fiercely independent Corellia. Duro was different in another way as well: rather than living on the surface, the planet was surrounded by dozens of orbiting cities and shipyards that the Duros called home. Those cities and shipyards were protected by the fleets that the shipyards were able to build, and the Sith took them on one by one. Once the majority of the fleets were destroyed, the Sith were able to set their sights on the cities; destroying or conquering them was essential, as the planet itself had mostly been abandoned generations earlier and provided no strategic advantage to the conquering Sith.

By the end of the campaign, only the capital city remained. Rather than outright destroying it, the Sith chose to send in an invasion force to keep the city for themselves. Intelligence also suggested that a group of several dozen Jedi had arrived in order to defend the city. The Sith sent a massive invasion of ground personnel, including Crusaders and Lords, to kill or capture the Jedi and secure the city. After several months, the city fell to the Sith, thirty Jedi were dead with four captured, and Duro no longer stood in the way of a Sith incursion into the south. In the years to come, the destruction of almost all the Duros orbiting cities would be known as the Duros Genocide.

The invasion of Corellia happened concurrently with the Duros Genocide. Shortly after the Duros campaign began, the Sith launched the remainder of the primary fighting force against the Corellians. The Empress knew that this engagement would be the most difficult of the war, as Corellians would fight to the bitter end. Conquering Corellia also meant taking the entire system, and all the planets in it, though Corellia itself was the primary threat. The Corellian campaign lasted for five years, until 1,020 ABY, with fighting both above and on the planet; unlike Duro, Corellia had strategic advantages, so bombarding the planet was not an option.

Throughout the invasion, the Sith engaged formidable opponents, the first time they had done so during the course of the war. One of them was the former leader of the Alliance himself, Nathanaeu Bastele, who had survived his brutal injuries during the fall of Coruscant and was now the leader of the Corellian resistance fighters. For years, the resistance engaged in guerilla warfare, choking off Sith supply lines, bombing Sith facilities, and creating just enough setbacks to keep the Sith from accomplishing their objectives. Both sides knew this could not last forever, and indeed it did not. By the campaign’s end, most of Corellia’s primary rebel holdouts were in shambles and the Sith had secured both the local governments and the major planetary resources. Though pockets of resistance would remain, the Sith flag flew over the skies of Corellia.

The fall of Corellia sent a warning to the rest of the Core: if Corellia could fall, any planet could fall. This became a catalyst for the rest of the Core to fall in line and declare allegiances to the Sith, bringing the entirety of the Core Worlds under the rule of the Empress. As the Sith were securing the Core, two planets from the Colonies, Fondor and Bestine IV, attempted to attack the Sith forces to prevent an independent invasion of their region. The force was too small, however, leading to their quick defeat and Sith control over the rest of the Colonies.

The Jedi Exiles
(1,017 - 1,021 ABY)

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As the Sith continued to fortify and push further into south, the Jedi remained fractured and in disarray. For several years, various Jedi sects debated and argued amongst themselves as to who should become the new leaders of the Jedi and set the direction for the Order. In some cases, these arguments grew into open combat, with many Jedi becoming radicalized into Dark Jedi cults. The centralized Order was nearly torn apart by this conflict; although other sects did not wish to get involved, the aggressive nature of those who had broken into combat was becoming a threat to the remainder of the Jedi.

In an effort to reunite the Order, the remainder of the Jedi sects attempted to formally organize and end the fighting, using a hidden temple on Anoth as their base. A Master’s Council was called to discuss the state of affairs of the Order, as well as the galaxy as a whole. This Master’s Council, however, was attacked and mostly killed by the Dark Jedi radicals attempting to take control of the newly re-organized Order. They nearly succeeded before a group of Jedi took a stand and fought back against them, driving them either into the ground or deep into space, where they could not threaten the Jedi again, at least for the time being.

What had previously been an internal Jedi issue soon sent signals throughout the Force. The schisms and Dark Jedi cults indicated a further destabilization of the Force, proving that the Force had grown so dark that even the Jedi were falling into infighting as the Sith were historically known to do. This caught the attention of the Sith, and they launched a massive campaign of Jedi hunters throughout the galaxy, with anti-Jedi propaganda becoming more effective as the Sith used the Dark Jedi cults and infighting to their advantage. To combat this, the once-again disorganized Jedi worked to grow the effectiveness of their own forces. They reinstated the Jedi Shadow, as well as the ancient Antarian Rangers, to fight back against the Sith Jedi hunters.

Despite renewed vigor, rumors of a major Sith siege against the Alliance Remnant on Manaan did little to deter the Jedi insistence on remaining out of the war. The sects believed that they were still too weak, and they did not know anything for sure about the Remnant’s long-term survival prospects. Just as they had done before the Battle of Coruscant, the Jedi left the Remnant to fend for itself while the Jedi fought to preserve their own Order.

By 1,021 ABY, the Jedi were successfully hiding from most of the Jedi hunters and were able to focus on rebuilding themselves. That year, Jedi Master Ebberla Daw gained influence throughout the Jedi sects for her tempered approach to reuniting the Order, as she wanted to find a way to make sure all of the Jedi sects could co-exist and be represented on a new Council. To do this, she called for the sects to come together and create a new Jedi Council, and the Jedi agreed to reinstate a formal Order once again.

The debate over who should serve on the Jedi Council was, unsurprisingly, the most tense of all the discussions. Nearly a decade of resentment, bitterness, and even hostility coalesced into one last argument, but a compromise was reached to ensure that each sect was represented in the re-established Order. A new Jedi Council was formally voted in, with Daw elected Grand Master.

The Mandalorians Fracture
(1,018 - 1,020 ABY)​

In the years that followed the Core campaigns, it became evident that the strength of the Mandalorian clans came from the unifying presence of Corden Vencu. Though he was once a controversial figure due to his overthrow of Roxton Dagger and the Mandalorian Civil War that followed, Vencu’s leadership brought the Mandalorians together in a united front against the Core. This campaign gave the Mandalorians what they had wanted for thousands of years: to escape the shadow of a greater force and be seen as a major player in their own right.

The Mandalore who rose to power after Vencu’s death, however, was unable to keep control over the clans. The man who would later be called Mandalore the Foolish took the reigns in a leadership duel shortly after the Battle of Coruscant, and his five-year rule brought about the same fissures that led to the Mandalorian Civil War in 1,011 ABY. Mandalorians were pit against one another in a heated conflict over who the true Mandalore was. Each clan had its own contender, until finally Mandalore the Foolish was killed and a new leader rose to replace him. The new Mandalore was short-lived, however; leaders rose and fell every few months, as the infighting broke into open war.

As the conflict dragged on, the need for a Mandalore all but disappeared, with clans declaring their own autonomy within their sections of Mandalorian territory. Major clan leaders became warlords, fighting over control of more territory and the allegiance of smaller clans. The disunity crippled the Mandalorian war machine. Large portions of the fleet were decimated within months of fighting, while others were held by the most powerful of the warlords as deterrents against other clans. Despite the lack of cooperation between the clans, many of them continued to maintain the sector’s defenses to oppose any outside interference. No one, not even smugglers, risked venturing into the war-torn sector. Mandalorian space became a no-man’s land.

Concerned about the war spilling into her own territory, the Empress ordered a firebombing campaign against dozens of Mandalorian worlds with known ties to the major warlords, hoping to convince them to cease hostilities and instead focus on a war with the Remnant. Rather than capitulating to the Sith, however, the Mandalorians put their own wars on pause to repel the Sith invaders, unwilling to be forced out of their own space like they had been before the previous civil war. Rather than continuing a conflict with the Mandalorians, the Sith blockaded the entire Mandalore sector and declared neutrality. The Mandalorians were left to kill themselves without interference. Outlying Mandalorian worlds such as Roon became inaccessible, with the Sith not allowing any Mandalorians to pass through their blockade.

Despite the wars, however, MandalMotors maintained its status as the primary weapons manufacturer for the Empire. The company was always loyal to a unified Mandalorian people, so it broke ties with the warring clans to become its own separate entity. That way, no one clan could claim to have the financial power to build a new war machine and take on the Sith. MandalMotors evacuated its facilities in the Mandalore sector and moved exclusively to Balmorra and Kuat, fully taking over the drive yards there.

After years of infighting, Mandalorian society began to collapse inward. Having exhausted most of their resources, infighting was no longer a realistic option. The various clans retreated to their own corners of Mandalorian space, forced to focus on surviving without a unified fleet or the income that MandalMotors once provided them. The people set out to find other sources of income, with many of them reverting to the old ways of working as bounty hunters and mercenaries. Some, however, remained with what was left of the Mandalorian fleets, guarding the sector from any potential incursion.

Whether to launch a war to take Mandalorian territory was a major source of debate within the highest levels of the Imperial government. Ultimately, the Empress decided not to expend the resources to launch an incursion. She did, however, bring MandalMotors into the Empire, promising them protection and riches for using their drive yards at Kuat to continue building ships for the Sith. She had her sights set on destroying another potential enemy, one far more dangerous than the broken Mandalorian clans: the Hapes Consortium.

Fall of the Hapans
(1,017 - 1,022 ABY)​

The most aggressive campaign of the war came when the Sith made a push to destroy and conquer the Hapes Consortium. The first steps to a conquest of the Hapan territory began early in the war, with the Sith using Chiss agents to infiltrate the Consortium, even though the Chiss Ascendancy declined in power. The Sith felt that the Chiss were best suited to the role of infiltrators; both the Chiss and the Hapans were xenophobic, secretive, and technologically advanced, and it was simple enough to cosmetically alter a Chiss to look Hapan. The Chiss culture was also similar to that of the Consortium, so the Chiss found Hapan politics and culture easy to understand and, as such, manipulate to their advantage.

Because the Consortium was made up of and ruled by various different noble houses, the Sith knew that the easiest way to garner influence was to help upstart families from the historically rebellious sectors, along the rims of the Hapan territory. Because the Consortium was home to a major industrial sector, the Chiss agents were able to promise these upstart houses industrial influence and riches if they agreed to side with the Sith. Meanwhile, the Chiss stroked the egos of these houses, making them believe that the Sith only wanted a friendly voice in the Consortium. What the houses did not know was that these outlying territories were being used to establish a beachhead in the Hapes Cluster to begin the long and dangerous process of blackmail, assassination, and eventually conquest.

After it became clear to the ruling houses that the upstarts were attempting to take over the power of the region, infighting began to break out in the Cluster. As the Chiss had left no evidence that they were Sith agents, the Sith themselves approached the ruling Hapan houses and offered to assist them in fighting the upstarts. All they asked for in exchange was safe passage throughout the region, though their true interest was to use that passage to allow the Chiss agents to infiltrate the industrial regions. As the Chiss seized industrial power, it gave the upstarts a chance to seize control over numerous fleets, and a long and bloody war was waged between the two sides, all with the Sith doing as little as they could to uphold their end of the deal with the ruling families.

Once both the upstarts and the rulers had weakened themselves, the Sith revealed their full hand and sent a massive invasion fleet into the Cluster, spending the remaining two years of the campaign mopping up Hapan resistance and breaking the Consortium. The entire Cluster fell to the Sith, with what remained of the Consortium forced to retreat as a shadow of what it once was. Though they were far too weak to be in a position of power again, the surviving Hapans swore to one day return and fight the Sith. The fall of the Hapans also signaled to the Centrality that even heavily-fortified holdouts could fall, and so its leaders swore allegiance to the Sith.

The Siege of Manaan
(1,017 - 1,022 ABY)​

During the Corellian and Hapan campaigns, and in the immediate aftermath of the Duros Genocide, the Sith set their sights on Manaan. Even though kolto, the healing agent found in the seas of Manaan, had been primarily replaced by bacta centuries earlier, the Sith knew that controlling the kolto would be a key advantage in the war, as it would choke the Alliance Remnant’s ability to heal their forces. Not only that, but given the intensity of the war effort, the demand for bacta was growing more and more stressful on the supply, and the Sith were beginning to feel the effects of what could turn into a full-blown shortage.

The Imperial forces from Duro were sent to Manaan, as the Sith believed the native Selkath would easily fall, but instead the Sith discovered how fortified the planet really was. Given that the Sith did not have the tools for an aquatic invasion, they had to rely on Ahto City, the only surface structure, as a choke-point, taking on Selkath and Remnant forces on the surface. It was not particularly effective for a planetary conquest, but it allowed them to maintain control over the city while the Selkath kept the oceans for themselves.

In order to make a more concerted effort to take the planet, the Sith began expending what resources they could for research and development into effective aquatic technology. This took two years before it could be deployed in 1,019 ABY. Once it was completed, the Sith launched a series of minor skirmishes in and around Ahto City against the combined forces of the Selkath and the Alliance Remnant, the latter of which was led by former Jedi Master Kara Vaalki. The Selkath and Remnant were able to fight for two years, despite the overwhelming odds against them. Stories of their efforts began to spread throughout the galaxy, with Kara’s defiant forces being given an endearing name in circles sympathetic to the Remnant: Defiance Squadron.

Defiance Squadron's crest.​

The holding-out during the Siege of Manaan was not without its ulterior motives. The prolonged attacks gave the Selkath and their Quarren and Mon Calamari allies time to build a secret armada under the ocean, far from where the Sith could detect it. In 1,022 ABY, these forces launched a massive counterattack against the besieging Sith navy, ending in a decisive victory for the defenders. The victory and the Sith retreat was bittersweet, however; after so many years, most of Vaalki’s forces had been destroyed during the various battles of the campaign.

Although the Sith were unable to capture Manaan, their prolonged siege gave them a victory in and of itself: the dissolution of any semblance of Alliance Remnant forces. Those forces still loyal to the former Alliance were no longer militarized in any organized fashion, and the fight against the Sith would transition into being waged by loosely organized cells and factions utilizing whatever methods and forces were at their disposal. What the Sith had started a decade earlier was complete: the Alliance had fully collapsed forever. Yet, what they could not anticipate was that the story of Manaan would become legend, and would serve as inspiration for various rebel forces throughout the galaxy to keep fighting, no matter the cost.

Rebel Dawn
(1,022 ABY - )​

The failed Siege of Manaan and the long and exhaustive invasion of the Hapes Consortium proved to be major turning points in the war. With Imperial forces spread thin across ever-expanding territories, and with causalities mounting, the need for medical supplies like bacta began to rise at an exponential rate. Within a few short months of the Manaan and Hapan campaigns, military forces across the galaxy were faced with bacta supplies dwindling to critical levels. The Bacta Cartel on Thyferra, now owned by the Hutt Cartel, found itself under increasing pressure to supply armed forces across the galaxy with their limited resources. Production was soon eclipsed by demand. Subsequently, bacta prices began to skyrocket, as what little reserves remained dwindled to nothing.

However, where crisis rose, so too did opportunity. The Hutt Cartel, having foreseen a prolonged conflict and an opportunity to capitalize on the needs of the galaxy, revealed an enormous stockpile of bacta. With prices at exorbitant levels, the Hutts easily made trillions of credits selling the substance in limited amounts. At the same time, the Hutts began to organize clandestine raids on planets bordering their territories, worlds that were still recovering from the war between the former Alliance and the Mandalorians that had occupied the territory some ten years ago. Capitalizing on the economic frailty of the region, the Hutts used their newfound monetary resources to buy out entire systems, expanding their territory considerably for the first time in centuries. With the Alliance gone, and the Sith without a foothold in the region, there was no one to stop the combined greed of the Hutt Lords.

That did not mean that there was no one to keep the Hutts in check, however. Having escaped a catastrophe in their war with the Hutts, the Bothans remained a preeminent force in intelligence-gathering and infiltration. Bothuwai officially declared themselves neutral; they vehemently opposed the Sith, but there was no coherent force to stand against them and the Sith were not yet a threat to Bothan space. The Bothan spies instead monitored all sides of the war, especially their former Hutt enemies. Despite the Cartel’s apparent retreat from military-based tactics, there remained a concern that the Hutt Lords would become greedy enough to once again launch an incursion into Bothan territory.

The Hutt monopoly of the bacta trade was rivaled only by the Selkath of Manaan, who revealed significant stockpiles of kolto that had survived the siege of their homeworld. As the Sith had suspected when they first launched their campaign on Manaan, kolto was enjoying market prices that it had not seen in millennia, and it became a go-to resource for military forces. Between the combined forces of the Selkath, Quarren, and Mon Calamari, as well as their ability to capitalize on the legends surrounding Defiance Squadron, Manaan once again enforced a rule of strict neutrality, threatening to destroy the source of the precious fluid should any faction seek to conquer their world. To further assist with defense, Manaan formed a mutual defense pact with Cato Neimoidia and Commenor, declaring that if any of those two planets were attacked, the Selkath would consider it an attack on Manaan. This buffer zone essentially stopped Sith expansion in the region due to those planets standing in their way. Even the Empire knew that it could not afford to risk losing the remaining bacta supplies and all of the kolto supply in the galaxy.

The Hutts responded in kind to the Sith expansion in the southern Mid Rim, once more stalling their expansion by way of Thyferra, where the Hutt-controlled Bacta Cartel had all but seized control of the planet. Imperial expansion had slowed significantly since the Manaan and Hapan campaigns, but now ground to a complete halt as a result of the bacta shortage and the threats posed by the Hutts and Selkath. The Sith used this opportunity to turn inward, and they began a long process of consolidating power in their new territories, giving the remaining free worlds of the galaxy a brief reprieve from the Imperial war machine’s inexorable march.

It was only by this stroke of luck that the scattered rebel forces were finally given a chance to start organizing themselves. For the first time in years, resistance cells were able to begin communicating with one another, and they learned that the Imperial Knights were attempting to form a resistance in Imperial territory. Even the Jedi were beginning to emerge from hiding and communicate with the rest of the galaxy. Though the cells were in no condition to launch any organized fight against the Empress, they were able to begin gaining influence and resources throughout free space, where the people there saw a new hope on the horizon.

Among that hope was a young girl, the child of the Empress herself. She lived in secret with an old Jedi Master, training as his apprentice, as her mother once did. Soon, the entire galaxy would know her name, the name of her ancestors.

Skywalker.

The Star Wars Saga is far from over....​