THE SERPENT'S SMILE
"Dark Greetings!" - Supreme Leader Snoke
Emperor Palpatine's return had shaken the galaxy even harder than the Hosnian Cataclysm, but none felt it as keenly as the Imperial Remnant. Shortly after the Sacking of Coruscant, another First Order diplomatic delegation attempted contact with Imperial leadership, this time accompanied by a mass propaganda campaign across the front lines and galactic media. On Bastion, the Central Committee of Grand Moffs was in disarray as the Remnant's leaders watched Snoke and Palpatine address the galaxy, offering wealth and power to those who peacefully welcomed annexation, as well as a return to the glory days of the old Empire. Much of the senior Remnant leadership still remembered those days, longing to enjoy the power and prestige of yore. Many "Old Guard" Moffs like Crowal, Flennic, and Freyborn initially called for a return to the days of the old Empire, advising Pellaeon to cut ties with the Corellian Treaty. In contrast, Moffs Sarreti, Garreter, and Lecersen remained firmly opposed to the First Order. Debate raged among the Moffs for days as Pellaeon kept his silence, each side competing to be louder than the other. In truth, Pellaeon had never intended to bend the knee to Palpatine again, but he needed to make sure that his words would convince the rest of the Remnant as well.
Three days after the First Order's galactic address, Pellaeon spoke. The Moffs cared not for righteousness, patriotism, or other such nonsense. Instead, Pellaeon appealed to other sensibilities. He pointed out how everyone in the Remnant, from the lowest Army trooper to the grandest of Moffs, had been betrayed by their First Order fellows during Operation Cinder. The loyalty of the Old Guard on Bastion had been rewarded with abandonment and a blaster bolt to the back. They had been duped before, and Pellaeon had no doubt that the First Order would stab them in the back again. He reminded them of the losses suffered since the Hosnian Cataclysm, and how the mob would react if they were told that their fathers, sons, and brothers had been sacrificed all so that their leaders could indulge in nostalgic ambition. He told them that it would be far more profitable for the Remnant to conquer First Order space and plunder its wealth than to compete for the galactic pie with the First Order's many officers and vassals. The Unknown Regions were an untapped motherlode with riches that would only be won at the end of the Remnant's guns.
The Moffs, as expected, were easily swayed by appeals to their self-preservation and greed, quickly falling back in line. Pellaeon made a series of short, simple public announcements that day: the First Order's offer would be rejected, business would continue as usual, and all Imperial citizens were to resume their normal routines. On Bastion, things remained relatively bloodless, with the Imperial Elite Guard taking to the streets to enforce public order. On other Remnant worlds, however, Pellaeon's rejection of Emperor Palpatine was the cause of much resentment among the Remnant's old patrician families, who yearned to retake the holdings they had lost in the Galactic Civil War. Clashes broke out between the patrician houses and Imperial law enforcement on multiple worlds. Most uprisings were quelled with a few stun blasts and imprisonment, although the Remnant was not above setting examples via public executions or other, similarly brutal means of repression to put down more violent rebellions.
On Prasidion, the Imperial situation was one of crisis. While the entire Navy was unquestioningly loyal to Pellaeon, the ground forces were an entirely different story. In an unusual turn of events, much of Dragases' problems came not from unruly enlisted, but from disloyal officers. Most Remnant officers hailed from the patrician nobility, in contrast to the mostly-plebeian enlisted ranks. The public address from Coruscant was broadcast across the planet from First Order positions in conjunction with an effort by FO agents to bribe and misinform Imperial forces. Panic, confusion, and defection sapped the momentum of the Imperial advance. Seeking to exploit this momentary weakness, the First Order launched a series of offensives across Prasidion, with the Remnant forces struggling to maintain cohesion. Amid the fuel extraction platforms of Prasidion's Tervili Archipelago, General Voss engaged the forces of the Sith Lady, Lamashtu. Despite initial gains, Voss' campaign came to an abrupt halt on the island of Segarta. First Order agents had secretly managed to convert a number of Voss' subordinate commanders, mostly nobles who resented serving under the commoner-born Voss. The traitorous officers assassinated Voss' second-in-command and sabotaged friendly comms, causing Voss' calls for reinforcement and artillery to fall on deaf ears. Abandoned and isolated, Voss was captured by the enemy when his beachhead on Segarta was finally overrun by Lamashtu's legions.
Following Voss' capture, mass reports of friendly fire, and an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Vauban's command staff, an infuriated Dragases ordered a large-scale purge of the officer ranks. This action culled many would-be traitors from the Imperial ground force but also caused the loss of many well-trained, veteran leaders, which led to a reduction in unit cohesion and discipline. Additionally, Operation Ballet, the Imperial plan to invade Prasidion's northern industrial heartlands, was sent back to the drawing board mere days before it was set to commence, as Dragases found himself with a shortage of replacement officers who were both loyal and experienced enough to coordinate the many moving parts of his strategy. With the Imperial invasion thrown into disarray, the fate of Prasidion now rested on a knife's edge.
STARDUST CRUSADERS
The NJO's efforts during the early war, as we already saw, were not without cost, but the knights who survived the trials of 34 and 35 ABY emerged as some of the most dangerous fighters in the galaxy, stepping out of the shadow cast by their predecessors. As the war progressed into its third year, the Jedi grew in confidence, buoyed by their tally of victories at Kashyyyk, Vulpter, Ruusan, and other battlefields. Rather than waiting for orders to come down from Corellian Treaty brass, more and more Jedi took on the role of knights-errant, walking the stars of their own volition in between the Treaty's major campaigns. Indeed, the refurbished Green Jedi temple that served as the NJO's temporary headquarters on Corellia was nearly empty during the war, the silent halls mostly populated by young padawans and a rotating skeleton crew of Knight instructors primarily led by Jaden Korr and Grandmaster Katarn.
In the far galactic northeast, Kyle Katarn assisted the forces of NR-aligned Dac in their battle against the armies of the Karakuri Shogunate, a First Order puppet state founded by the mad Colicoid droid-master, Kegare. Wielding potent chemical weapons, the Shogunate's droid armies devastated the Hakawa Islands and the deep-sea cities of the Murul Trench. Though the subsequent New Republic counter-attack pushed the Shogunate fleet to the Reginard System, Dac's forces continued to face problems at home. The fighting around the Murul Trench had awakened a mythical beast known as the Sleeper of Murul, which attacked both armies when it awakened. In the ensuing battle, the Trench was rendered uninhabitable due to a combination of the Sleeper's excreted bio-toxins, the Shogunate's chem weapons, and the destruction of multiple industrial hazmat containment facilities. Katarn and Dac's aquanauts were able to pummel the ancient monster back into its slumber through overwhelming firepower, but it would take years to cleanse the Trench's waters. While the poisoned waters flooded into most of the Trench cities' habitats, the tomb of the Quarren Jedi Shorakk Nall remained miraculously untainted, becoming a temporary sanctuary to a number of civilian survivors. After the battle, Katarn assisted in the tomb's temporary conversion into an aid station for the wounded and sick.
On Fresia, Valin Horn and other Corellian Treaty test pilots joined the New Republic's defense of the Galactic West. Taking KDY's Delta Zero prototype, Horn joined the defense of the Pranapur Gulf, flying alongside Horton Salm and Edor Crespin against the First Order's cosmo-barbarian vassals. Horn and the Delta Zero proved to be a highly effective pair, playing a pivotal role in taking down the FOSF's Irkalla Squadron and King Desidain the Half-Blood, monarch of the Lascarae and Chereuscids. By landing the kill-shot on Desidain's flagship, Horn threw the Lascarae and Chereuscids into disarray, allowing the New Republic's veteran 48th Fleet to sweep in and scatter them. The siege of the Pranapur Gulf had been temporarily beaten back, and the New Republic's western flank was given a much-needed rest. As the New Republic's attention turned towards Coruscant, Horn and his fellow CT pilots prepared for the journey back east, where the Battle for the Perlemian continued to rage.
Baldwin of Hyades journeyed to the silent Hyadic Cluster to investigate the great darkness he sensed in his old home. When he returned, it was in the mourner's black with new, terrible wounds to mark his exploits. Of his benighted homeland, he spoke little, save for fearful mutterings about cursed stars and a black lake. In place of his lost lightsaber, he had acquired the ancient, force-imbued Spear of Hali, as well as the bone reliquary of his honored ancestor, Reynauld the Great. Until his dying day, Baldwin swore that he was haunted by a grinning shadow. On certain nights, even his fellow Jedi might have sensed a hungry presence watching from just out of view. Nightmares snatched away any comfort he could have found in sleep, unless it was on the hallowed ground of Ossus or the temporary Corellian enclave. Though he never faltered, Baldwin would know no rest until his dying day.
On the feudal shrine world of Sophia VI, Godfrey of Montressonne did battle with the nomadic cosmo-barbarians of the Phuran Tribe. At the Battle of Castle Courolaine, Godfrey rescued Princess Annelise, daughter of the planet's monarch, from the clutches of the invading chieftain Thorogast. Godfrey defeated Thorogast in single combat and hurled the chieftain's body from the parapets of Castle Courolaine. Enraged, Thorogast's brothers challenged the Jedi Knight, only to be bested and slain as well. The chieftain's son fled from the battlefield with his bodyguard retinue, causing a panic that led to a general Phuran retreat. For his chivalry, Godfrey won the favor of King Alberic and the princess' hand in marriage, inadvertently becoming the first Jedi Lord of the modern era.
Along the Saint's Trail hyperlane, Ben Skywalker, Jaden Korr, and Wraith Squadron were tasked with hunting down the sorcerer Marduk Ghul, identified during the Battle of Ruusan as the so-called "Vermissiah." Masquerading as a mad prophet, Ghul established dark side cults to destabilize and conquer the Saint's Trail, hoping to acquire the resource-rich worlds along the hyperlane. The Vermin Cults seized the nova crystal reserves of Hesperion and phrik mines of Selford, plunged Nis into screaming anarchy, and defiled Aramithrae before being halted at Tiresia, the resting place of the eponymous Saint. The details of the Saint's Trail campaign will be covered in a future chapter.
WRIST ROCKET RELAUNCH
"If you want to watch these wrist rockets, you're gonna have to buy into pay-per-view." - Teo Skarbi, CMO of Baktoid Industrial Systems
The post-Rebellion era was a time of many reboots: a rebooted Republic, a rebooted Jedi Order, multiple polities claiming to be the rebooted Empire, and curiously, a rebooted Confederacy of Independent Systems. Following the Galactic Empire's collapse, two new states arose claiming to be the CIS' true successor. The first was the Confederacy of Corporate Systems, a corporate oligarchy situated in the space of the old Corporate Sector Authority. The second was the New Separatist Alliance, a collection of planetary governments and interplanetary states scattered across the galaxy. While initially united in their desire for independence from galactic powers, the Confederacy and Separatists split over disputes regarding profit allocation and choices of trade partners, leading to a schism in 15 BBY. For all intents and purposes, the CCS was the CSA, just rebranded by new management following a wave of post-Endor mergers and acquisitions. The CCS had a presence in every industry imaginable. If there was something you wanted to buy, there was a zaibatsu somewhere in the CCS that sold it at an astronomical markup. Friendly izakayas, jolly pop music, and imported palm trees above false oceans can elicit a plastic nostalgia for imaginary summers past. But under the neon glow and shiny new battle droids, chromed corporate cronies continued to connive, sipping Synthetic Slings at sunset in seedy cyber saloons. Remember to tip generously. The back-alley chop shops don't like misers.
The New Separatist Alliance evolved into a different beast than its corporate cousin. The New Separatist Alliance was not a single unified blob on a galactic map, but rather a scattering of dots on a galactic canvas, distant member states and planets united by trade treaties and historical allegiance. Planets as far to the galactic north as Serenno, Jabiim, and Raxus Secundus pledged allegiance to the same flag as the likes of Geonosis, the Neimoidian Purse, and Hypori. Separated by astronomical distances, the Separatist states could never hope to achieve military power on the level of more conventional galactic powers. Instead, they sought to gain relevance on the galactic stage as economic powerhouses. Geonosian factories flared to renewed life, gorging themselves on the dust of distant suns to churn out a legion of new mechanical terrors. Coin and cocktails flowed on wealthy Serenno, where nouveau-noblesse carrion-eaters fell upon the carcasses of old houses, building their banks and ports on a foundation of Dooku's bones. Across the border gore of a rapidly fragmenting galactic map, rising economic dragons stepped boldly towards their new Hyperspace Renaissance on the precarious knife-edge of galactic war.
As the New Republic fragmented and the galaxy fell into darkness, so too did its market share, allowing competitors like the Separatists and Confederacy to swoop in with their own homegrown businesses. Where the New Republic's military and businesses retreated, Separatist and Confederate traders put on their road shows, offering "fair" deals to the people of the galaxy's edge. These often took the form of a two-step transaction. First came the open hand of friendship via contractual trade deals. With their business savvy and valuable resources, the Confederates and Separatists held the clear advantage in bargaining power and naturally tilted the deals in their favor as much as they could. If business did not go according to the liking of the Separatists or Confederacy, then the open hand would become the closed fist as mercenary garrisons turned their guns inward to become occupiers and blockades. While not quite as militaristic as the CIS of old, the New Separatists and CCS were still ultimately the most ruthless businessmen outside of Hutt Space, a reputation they were quite proud to uphold.
That being said, one often got exactly what was paid for. Though highly expensive, New Separatist and Confederate mercenaries were high-quality, highly loyal provided their contracts were upheld, and always in good supply. Geonosis and Colla IV were renowned for their tech-savvy riggers with their droid maniples. Serenno's condottieri-led companies and the CCS' sternsknecht PMCs offered expensive but elite frontline infantry. From Raxus Prime's satellite colonies came motley bands of howling junk berserkers. There were hired guns to cater to every buyer's paramilitary needs, no matter how unsavory they might be. Indeed, the troops of a given mercenary company might find themselves on both sides of an interstellar conflict, exchanging banter and halfhearted volleys of blaster fire while their employers fought to the death. If you were in the business of war, then the galaxy of the 30s ABY would have been the most lucrative bubble in decades.