An Abridged History of the Great Galactic War

by Kaiser Chris

After centuries in exile, the Sith Empire returned to the galaxy. Upon their entrance a great and terrible war was raged for 28 years, ending in the Sith's victory and changing the course of galactic history. This is the story of the Great Galactic War, of the victors, of the losers, and how the war transformed the galaxy forever. GGW Expanded narrative, mostly canon compliant.

4. Opening Shots

Chapter 1 Opening Shots

"Supposedly my father journeyed into the Unknown Regions to face some grave threat. Mother feared that he may have discovered a lost branch of the Sith. Personally I believe he could not face responsibility for his actions and was drunk with guilt, leaving in cowardly exile."- Healing my Father's Scars, by Vaner Shan 21,178 AGC
"While we may never see our galaxy be truly rid of war, it is at the moment an endangered species."- Supreme Chancellor Brea Organa 21, 200 AGC
"Citizens of the Empire, today we have begun the centuries awaited war against the Republic. Following the great plan of our Empire, we have taken the first blow and as I speak our Armada is spreading across the galaxy to enact righteous vengeance against those who seek to make us extinct. Today we shall return, tomorrow Korriban shall be ours."- Darth Marr 62 BNO

The curse of hindsight is one of the greatest hindrances to learning history. When hindsight is warped with cultural biases and historical narrative it makes the average being look at history with prejudice, scoffing at the obvious actions that should have been taken and never allowing themselves to fully immerse with their subjects and understand from their point of view why such an action was taken. While there are many beings and nations who have undoubtedly taken decisions which for the worst, hindsight makes a being merely scoff at their stupidity and never try to understand the forces behind a decision. Unless someone is truly tainted by insanity, then there is always a method in the madness, a reason for why the road of time has taken shape as it has.

The Great Galactic War is a conflict which is plagued by the curse of hindsight as armchair admirals like to lecture long-dead leaders on their inherent stupidity. While the Republic of the era is usually hounded by its share of critics who lambaste how it could have fallen socially, how it could have neglected the military, or why the Jedi choose to erase millennia of culture in favor of newborn dogma, the Sith Empire is criticized for two choices, taking too long in their advance through the galaxy, and not choosing to continue the fight than signing the Treaty of Coruscant. Both of these paths by the common being are given one simple explanation, it was Revan's manipulation of Vitiate that prevented the Sith from a full victory. While one could make an argument of Revan's role in the Treaty of Coruscant (a great debate that still continues to this day), it is my analysis that Revan had little, if any influence on the Sith's slow and methodical conquest. While I am not a Jedi or Sith and as such lack their intimate knowledge of the force, Revan at that point had been fighting a losing three century battle to contain the Sith advance with the Sith marching to war no matter what, 300 years after Vitiate manipulated Mandalore the Ultimate. If one is to say that Revan held back Vitiate, then why did so many of the Sith's atrocities take place and why where the Sith seemingly unstoppable for half of the war if Revan truly hindered Vitiate? Why did Revan not influence Vitiate to take more action against the Dark Council's leadership? If Revan "slowed the Sith", how could he have possibly have had enough power to force Vitiate to advance the Treaty of Coruscant? My conclusion is that the Sith advance had little of Revan's imprint, rather it was a natural choice of Sith history and the Empire's observance over the Old Sith Wars.

The main issue of the pre-GGW Sith was their lack of foundation or roots on which they could bounce back from defeat. Pre-GGW Sith, including those of the Old Sith, tended to concentrate all power and political organization into the hands of an elite few, and when this ruling elite was eliminated there was no method to form a replacement or successor and thus the Sith would quickly die out. This haphazard method of organization dates all the way back to the first Sith King Adas. Since Adas was an autocrat who formed no dynasty or system of devolved power, his death would make the end of the First Sith Empire with no Sith being able to rise as his successor and the long-oppressed lower classes breaking out in a power vacuum that fragmented Sith Space into dozens of states for 20,000 years.

The Second Sith Empire's sole concentration of Sith space and lack of reserves or defensive fleets to protect the Empire was a prime factor leading to the Sith Holocaust as Naga Sadow's March to Coruscant brought with him most of the Sith fleet and Lords of the Sith. With the Sith Navy obliterated and the vast majority of the ruling class killed in combat, the Sith were left leaderless, defenseless, and concentrated into a single dense region of space from which they could be obliterated. Exar Kun's Sith was solely concentrated among his brotherhood with no attempts to create a true nation-state and the Brotherhood leaching off of the Krath and Mandalorians. When their two puppet nations were defeated, the Brotherhood became nothing more than mystic pirates and were marked for quick elimination by the Jedi. While Revan's Sith managed to conquer a third of the galaxy, his offensive was far too quick with Revan's plans of consolidation barely able to take place before Malak betrayed him and ended the creation of the Empire's civilian administration. Under Malak the Sith were an army with a state, one that slavishly relied on the Star Forge as its entire strategy for war. With the destruction of the Star Forge and Malak dying with no method of succession, the majority of the Empire's military surrendered while the Sith fought among themselves. The Triumvirate is perhaps the biggest offender of the lack of foundational development. While the three Dark Lords were some of the strongest force users in history, they never did anything with this power besides satisfy their vices. With the Sith only dedicated to hunting the Jedi rather than recreating the Empire and the remnants of Revan's Fleet taking on the role of support for these assassins, the Triumvirate was always destined for failure. With Meetra Surik cutting off the three headed hydra, the breakaway Sith were no more.

From observing the heretics of Exar Kun and Revan's line, and looking back on their own follies with the Great Hyperspace War, the Sith Empire as a whole came to a conclusion, if they were to engage in war with the Republic and Jedi, under no circumstances could they rush for a quick galactic conquest. Their advance into the civilized galaxy had to be a slow and methodical one where every system that laid in their path would be carefully integrated into the Empire with no blind jumps into the core. If Coruscant was to fall then it would have to be the final victory where the Core would be isolated as a near corpse. The Sith of the age may have been proud and arrogant, but they were not so blinded by their power that they would dare to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.

Alongside the scars of the Sith Holocaust pushing the Dark Council, Imperial Intelligence, and highest echelons of the Imperial Navy and Army into a cautious march across the galaxy, there was also an unspoken unease that tormented the Sith. As it has been shown through the journals of many prominent Dark Lords and flag officers, they believed that while the Sith should fight with the goal of conquering the Republic and exterminating the Jedi, that they must be prepared for a limited victory where they would advance into the galaxy yet have to contend with an existing Republic and Jedi. While their victory would not be final, the Empire would expand greatly and with new resources and people they could prepare for a second and final apocalyptic war which would truly decide the fate of the galaxy. It is from these journals that we can understand how the Sith were able to accept the Treaty of Coruscant despite widespread and vocal protestation within the Sith Order and Imperial society. No matter what path they took, from the start the Sith would claim a victory, a strategy that was proven to be the right one since unlike the heretics of the Old Sith Wars, the Sith have remained to this day, and the Fourth Empire shows no signs of leaving anytime soon.

"First" Contact

When planning for the opening stages of the war the Empire had two primary goals in mind, seizing Korriban and the greater Sith Space as soon as possible, and protecting the true secret of the Empire's identity, size, and location. No matter what form of victory that the Sith were hoping to achieve, any settlement that didn't include the reclamation of the Sith homeworld and the ancestral colonies of the True Sith would be considered to be a defeat. As such the Sith had to sieze the region as soon as possible and under the Sphere of Imperial Defense, turn each planet into a fortress world so that they could never fall into the hands of the Jedi. At the same time, the Dark Council wished for the empire to stay as an anonymous foe to the Republic for as long as possible so that the Republic could not launch a swift invasion and genocide like in the Great Hyperspace War. While it is doubtful that a more militant version of the Republic could have repeated the Sith Holocaust due to the Empire's practice of the Eternal War economy and their territories being spread across the Unknown Regions, it was a fear that was highly present within the Sith of the time. As such, under the machinations of Darth Sera, head of the Sphere of Military Strategy, the Empire choose perform their opening blows in a manner that would present them as an unknown species invading from outside the galaxy.

On 8.1.21378, the Empire began their proper entrance into the galaxy by launching a fleet of 800 warships in an invasion of the distant Apporo sector. While the Apporo sector was at the time a backwater of the galaxy, it had more importance than most sectors of the Outer Rim thanks to it being the starting/end point of the northern branch of the recently charted Hydian Way. This made the Apporo sector the perfect target for the Sith's first strike as it would allow them to begin their advance to the core. The Sith fleet would jump across the Apporo sector with the heavily outnumbered and mismatched local fleets being annihilated within minutes. The first Republic casualties of the war would be the Cadomai squadron with all 20 ships being destroyed by the Imperial Navy who had sent 100 ships against the Republic defenders. By the end of the day the Sith fleet had gained complete space supremacy over the sector with only 5 warships lost for their first victory. Thanks to the infiltration of Imperial Intelligence, the holonet across the Apporo sector would be cut off within moments of the Operation beginning, making the rest of the greater galaxy completely unaware that the greatest war to ever take place (though not the greatest since) was about to take place.

When word reached Coruscant of the Apporo sector being cut off from the Holonet, panic spread throughout the SIS and GSOC, though for Coruscant and the greater Republic, they were completely unaware of what had taken place. While some news agencies did report on the disturbance, it was severely lacking in importance with records showing news holosites placing the blackout at the bottom of the front page, and what little articles that were written lacked a sense of care and urgency. The only beings concerned were those working within Republic espionage, who had no idea how such a disaster could have occurred when they had the Apporo sector as a level 1 threat, i.e. no unrest. There were no nations or armed organizations within hundreds of light years who could make an entire sector go once, so then how could it have possibly happened.

Imperial moles within GSOC began planting ideas that perhaps this was some sort of new species that were making a violent first contact, or in even the wildest scenario an extragalactic invasion. Over the following days the idea began to gain some traction but a majority of GSOC went with the former idea than the latter. Since a crisis of this magnitude was not one that the military could deal with quietly, GSOC and SIS presented the crisis before the Senate Committee of Foreign Affairs, seeking approval for a reconnaissance fleet to reveal the true nature of the situation. Unfortunately for both parties, the Committee had little interest in mobilizing a proper fleet as they were worried it would cause unnecessary panic that could shake the galactic economy or cause the Outer Rim states to begin plotting against the Republic in a time of weakness. Instead, the Committee requested that a diplomatic vessel make "First Contact" with this new race and that should the worst happen then the 77th Fleet would mobilize and aid the 66th Fleet with the situation.

The diplomatic convoy would reach the Cadomai system on 8.14. What the convoy found themselves with was dozens of Imperial warships, most of them being Harrower dreadnoughts. Since the Imperial design was completely alien to old Sith ship builds and had no correlation to any known species in the civilized galaxy. To the diplomatic envoy the sight must have confirmed their worst fears of an extragalactic invasion, though the truth would be far worse for the Republic. The Imperial Fleet held their fire long enough for the convoy to transmit signals back to the 66th Fleet where it would be transmitted back to Coruscant, an intentional act in accordance with Darth Sera's wishes of keeping the illusion of the Sith as mysterious invaders from the great void. Once a transmission was confirmed to be sent, the Imperial fleet fired on the convoy with no communications being attempted, wiping out all life and leaving the convoy as nothing but stardust. Thus began the Great Galactic War.

Conquest of the Tingel Arm

Shortly after the start of hostilities came the Tingel Arm Campaign, though to call it a campaign is a bit of a stretch rather then the massacre that it played out as. In order to secure the eastern frontier of the Empire so that no Republic forces could attack the Imperial hearth during their advance, while at the same time drawing hoping to eliminate elements of the 66th Fleet that guarded Korriban within its jurisdiction, the Empire deployed 1100 ships to the Tingel Arm. The Tingel Arm at the time was one of the least densely populated regions in the galaxy with no known native species achieving spaceflight and only the barest of colonization by private interests. 150 systems with a combined total of 88 million settlers inhabiting them made up the extent of civilized space within the Tingel Arm, all of which had only 73 Republic vessels to guard against the coming Sith attack. With knowledge of the ship positions from Imperial Intelligence, the Imperial Navy decimated the entirety of the Tingel Fleet from 8.14-8.16. All Republic ships would be destroyed with no survivors while the Empire in return took 11 ships destroyed and 8 suffering varying amounts of damage. The next two weeks would see the Imperial Army deploy 150 brigades to the region who eliminated any local resistance with extreme prejudice. With orbital support and superior mechanized firepower the Empire would declare victory over the region on 8.29. The fighting saw the Empire take on 23,000 casualties in return for 410,000 from the natives. The Tingel Arm would be the first victims of Sith atrocities in the greater galaxy with the regions 60 million non-humans becoming enslaved (along with any humans who were active in resistance to the Empire). Most of these slaves either perform harsh labor on their own worlds or taken into the heart of the Empire, with most having died by the end of the war. The Tingel Arm campaign would set the standard for many Sith victories throughout the war, brutal decisiveness.

The First Betrayal

With the first shots having been fired, the Sith then began to enact the next stage of their masquerade against the Republic. In the previous decades Imperial Intelligence had subverted the puppet governments of Belkadan, Helska, and Serpindal, ruling the distant colonies on the galactic fringe as puppets. Hours after the Cadomai Massacre, the three systems sent please of distress to the Republic, saying that they were being raided by aliens of unknown origin who were coming to their planets and abducting their citizens and resources. Holo footage was sent to Coruscant with stock footage of the Imperial fleet, giving the impression that the unknowns were launching an attack across the Outer Rim.

By 8.15, the upper echelons of the Republic Navy were being sent in a panic with many of the Republic's leading admirals now believing they were caught in a war with a hostile extragalactic species. Still not wanting to create a panic, the Navy with the approval of the Senate instituted a strict information blackout on the activities of the Apporo sector and the fringe colonies, hoping that the fleet was both small and not too advanced enough to be dealt with quickly. Orders were given for the 77th Fleet to mobilize in aid of the Northern Outer Rim with the 76th Fleet being redirected in support. The 64th, 65th, and 66th fleet were to mobilize and protect their respective regions with the 65th fleet dealing with the situation on the fringe. On 8.18, the 65th sent 90 vessels, 30 for each colony, to handle the fringe situation and assess if the enemy could be dealt with by local assets or if a galactic mobilization had to be ordered. The three fleets would arrive at their respective targets within the week. The fleets were shown environments on the colony where the "Raids" had taken place, though in reality they were created artificially by the puppet states with the help of the Imperial Army to give an illusion that attacks had taken place, where in reality the colonies proper were completely untouched. The fleets were shown footage showing the "Aliens" to only be about a dozen ships per sighting, an image portrayed in order to prevent a true galactic mobilization from occurring. For the next few days the fleets stayed in guard over the planets while the 77th deployed its ships across the Northern Rim in order to track any future sightings.

For five days the response fleets were kept in orbit above the colonies, with thousands of troops deployed to the surface in order to help defend their supposed allies. On 8.25 the Empire sprung its trap when a fleet of 127 ships was deployed to the region to catch the Republic vessels by surprise. Unfortunately for the fleet, saboteurs from the colonies had come aboard their ships and had sliced through their computer networks to disable all systems with the exception of communications. With shields, engines, and weaponry powered down, the Republic vessels could do nothing but scream for help as the Empire slaughtered them like lambs. Once the fleets were deal with, shuttles were sent down to the surface where the regiments of Republic troopers were hunted down with the aid of local security forces. Just as it was with the Apporo sector, the Empire allowed for word to spread about their attack on the Outer Rim. The purpose of this action was to spread doubt throughout the Republic, that the unknown invaders had control of any and every system in the Outer Rim and that all of their allies were traitors in disguise. The betrayal of Belkadan, Helska, and Serpindal to the Sith was the first stab in the back against the Republic, and it wouldn't be the last for decades to come.

The One Week Raid

When word of the Great Betrayal spread, panic erupted among Naval Command with SIS desperately trying to craft a timeline in which the fringe colonies could have created an alliance with the aliens while using all resources available to see if any of their allies or Rim members were also traitors. With more ships having been destroyed in less than a month then in the pas decade, Supreme Chancellor Taf Munli of Cato Nemodia declared a state of emergency with the 64th-70th fleet put on a war footing while the system fleets of the 71st-77th were rapidly deployed to the Outer Rim with the Mid Rim fleets put on alert. The Outer Rim reserves were called onto active duty and a bill was in the works to order 1,000 ships for the Navy, but for now the Republic didn't transition itself to a war footing just yet for a lack of information. In a press conference, Munli announced to the Republic that elements of the 65th and 66th fleet had been attacked without provocation by a species presumably from the unknown regions and that the Navy was mobilizing in response to contain the enemy and determine their origins. What Munli hid from the public was the heavy loss of ships, the complete loss of the Apporo sector, or the betrayal of three of the Republic's allies on the Northern fringe, and the much believed extragalactic nature of the enemy; this lack of information was done to present Munli as a strong leader acting decisively in crisis than a Nemodian caught with their pants down. While some concern arose over the holonet, the majority of the galaxy went on with their lives, believing that this new threat would never reach their homes and that it would be over within months.

Having successfully caused the Republic to believe they were under attack by forces from beyond the galaxy and spreading panic and paranoia among their leaders, the Empire began the next stage of its plan as the final prelude to the reclamation of Sith Space. From 8.26 to 9.2, Operation Wildfire, more commonly known to the greater galaxy as the One Week Raid, commenced. Operation Wildfire was a plan by the Sith Empire to deploy hundreds of vessels across the Northern Outer-Rim from the Coruscant-Dantooine Hyperlane to the Tion Cluster. Wildfire would consist of raider flotillas launching attacks on any and all isolated Republic vessels that they could find, destroying any civilian shipping vessels, and launching limited orbital bombardments and bombing runs on Republic planets. These attacks would be quick and scathing in damage to disrupt spacetravel in the galactic north, yet not damage the region too harshly so that it's systems could be exploited in the coming Sith conquest. While the plan may have seemed like another case of Sith cruelty such as the atrocities of the Old Sith Wars, there was a method to the madness.

The heavy destruction was devised as the brainchild of Darth Sera as a means of confusing the Republic and spreading their forces thin across the Outer Rim, leaving Korriban and the greater Sith Space open for attack while in the following days the Republic and Jedi would be unable to effectively mobilize the regions forces to reclaim it. With hundreds of planets falling under bombardment and thousands of military and civilian vessels being destroyed, the Republic would have no idea where the Sith would be targeting, where their forces were concentrated, or what portion of the galaxy they hailed from. The damage against worlds was limited not only for the sake of later exploitation, but to prevent a greater sense of alarm from being created on Coruscant so that the situation could be manageable. The raiders would be in groups of no more than 4 while they were all Harrower dreadnoughts so that the Republic would have no idea if they were facing against hundreds of ships, or a small collection of the same vessels who seemed to operate with a lack of need for supply. During the One Week Raid, 4 million casualties on hundreds of worlds would be created through bombardment while 834 civilian vessels would be destroyed. The Republic Navy's losses were relatively slim in the context of the greater theater with only 26 ships destroyed and 59 suffering medium to heavy damage. These ships were mostly frigates and corvettes caught off guard and either destroyed or damaged in rapid and overwhelming fire from the dreadnoughts. The Imperial Navy suffered no ships destroyed, not from their superior quality or any faults on the Republic Navy, but due to the raiders quickly jumping into hyperspace as soon as there was any chance of a serious fight in order to prevent a ship's destruction and thus the Republic learning of the true nature of their enemies through scavaging. As such there were 231 Dreadnoughts that took on various amounts of light damage while hundreds of Republic vessels fought the mysterious invaders and lived to tell the tale, but were still completely unaware of who they were facing due to a lack of communications.

By 9.3, the 64th, 65th, 66th, 71st, 76th, and 77th fleets were exhausted. While the six fleets now present within the Outer Rim were hypothetically at full capacity, they were on constant wild porg chases with a lack of rest and no victories against the enemy to avenge their fallen comrades. They still had no idea of who they were fighting against or what they wanted, with any system at risk of attack due to the enemy's seemingly intimate knowledge with the hyperspace routes of the North. The fleets were spread thin in order to cover the widest area to finally capture or destroy an enemy vessel. The hardest hit area was that of Sith Space within the 66th Fleet's domain. While the situation was bad enough with the loss of so many assets in the Apporo sector and the Tingel Arm, the region had half of its ships be drawn away since it was where the fewest raids had taken place. No thought was given to the possibility of an invasion of Sith Space since the worlds were desolate with little settlement or precious resources to be taken. The only beings who these worlds mattered to were long dead with no possibility of return, surely the Jedi could take care of them?

Thus the Sith Space fleet was reduced from 332 vessels to 143 with a majority of them being stationed in the Korriban system. While the Jedi Order petitioned the Navy and Chancellor Munli that the fleet remain, or that additional resources could be spared as many across the Order sensed a Dark Side growing stronger, their words were ignored as mystic alarmism. The original Sith had died and since the Old Sith Wars the Jedi had kept a strict watch on all of their members with any fallen members being swiftly dealt with while missing knights were extensively investigated until they were either found or confirmed to have no possible fall to the Dark Side, there couldn't be any possibility of this war being a Sith return. The Jedi could stand guard over desolate tombs and irrelevant death worlds as much as they liked, the Republic had a war to win and the Jedi needed to give their contribution.

In the first month of the Great Galactic War, the Great Plan that the Sith had spent centuries crafting had gone with complete perfection. Damage had been inflicted upon the enemy fleet, the Republic Navy was stretched thin while their leaders were swept in a sea of panic and paranoia, no one had any idea the Sith had truly returned, and Sith Space was ripe for the taking. Thus on 9.3., nearly 1300 years since the Great Exodus saw the Sith Remnants under Vitiate land on Dromund Kaas, the Sith would return to their homeworld with the First Battle of Korriban.

A/N: While this chapter can be considered to mostly follow canon in SWTOR Timeline 6, I did my best to add original elements such as the One Week Raid and try to explain why the Republic after the loss of the Apporo Sector and Tingel Arm, along with its betrayal on the galactic fringe, still did not mobilize their forces along with the Korriban fleet being stripped and its defenders unaware as seen in the Return Trailer. Here Imperial Intellegence did a damn good job and the Republic was essentially running with a blindfold in search of an enemy who they essentially believed to be the Yuuzhan Vong 3700 years early. Their forces in the Outer Rim were sparse in comparison to the Rim and covered a lot of territory, and the Republic's been out of practice since they had not fought a large war in three centuries, which leads to its politicians trying to handle this to save face rather than treat it as a real crisis.

On some other notes, the reason the Republic didn't immediately send a fleet to the Apporo sector is because it would have taken days or weeks and they didn't want to rush in blindly without knowing who they're facing, how much, and what kind of tech they're using. They also couldn't use the nearest forces since they would have to call upon forces in Sith Space and the Tion Cluster. For the former the Jedi tried to stand their ground as they were uneasy with some suspicions of the Sith, or at least a dark side using species intruding, while the Tion Cluster forces had to stay in place to keep an eye on the Hutts. I also replaced Ruuria with Helska as a Sith puppet as Ruuria is on the eastern side of the galaxy instead of the North like Belkadan and Serpindal and its native species are insectoids which the racist Sith would not ally with. The usage of Helska also ties into Vector Prime which was my first foray into the EU and a book that I deeply love.

Next chapter shall take a look into the First Battle of Korriban and the greater Reclamation of Sith Space by the Empire which is far more intense than canon. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more!