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.

7. Call to Action

"Everywhere I go I am called a hero for the act of running away in defeat and leaving my master to die at the hands of the Sith. Even within the Jedi Temple the Knights, padawans, and younglings look to me as if I am the second coming of my ancestor. If being worshiped for failure is what it means to be a hero then I fear what it would be like to be treated as a villain." The memoirs of Satele Shan, published posthumously 21,454 AGC
"I swear to you that when I am elected that by the end of my second term all traces of the Sith's existence shall be wiped out from the galaxy." -Supreme Chancellor Taf Munli 21,373 AGC
"I understand that many of you are frustrated at the lack of progress despite our overwhelming power over the Republic and nonstop victories since the reclamation of Korriban. The Dark Council asks for your patience since it is a matter of when, not if the galaxy shall be ours. We've waited 1300 years for vengance, surely you can wait a few years."- Darth Sera 21,375 AGC

Galactic Republic

It is a common historical viewpoint that the Galactic Republic during the first decade of the war was an incompetent mess that was purely reactionary against the Sith conquest with no sense of leadership, strategy, or direction until the First Bothan Campaign lit the fires of hope for the Republic and allowed them to, if not defeat the Sith, then at least stall them and protect as much of the galaxy they could while making the Sith bleed for every system conquered. Little thought is given to the internal politics of the Republic besides its most obvious and dramatic failings such as the Secession Crisis of 21,375 while any military narratives are usually summed up as the Republic getting misled and ahnnilated by the Sith with the few victories the Republic did achieve being overlooked or misinterpreted as only occuring because the Empire allowed them to have said victories as inconsequential to the greater strategy of the war. Such discussions are a great disservice to the early war Republic who while heavily flawed, was not exactly an incompetent moronic caricature that so many have remembered it as only due to its eventual defeat and the harshness of the Treaty of Coruscant. While there are many sensible criticisms against the Republic and paths that should have been taken for a lesser defeat, were it not for many of the Republic's actions in the early period of the war then defeat would have been total and for at least a period of time the galaxy could have been under complete Sith rule.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the Republic was hard at work responding to the incursion of what was believed to be a dangerous and unknown species from either the Unknown Regions or outside of the galaxy. Ten of the Republic's fleets were either deployed or were in the process of deployment to the Galactic North where the first month of fighting occurred. This gave the Republic a total of 6200 ships within the region alongside the 90 million Troopers assigned in garrison duty for the Northern Rim. Such a sizable contingent should have in any other circumstances be able to deal with a regional power or any of the now known non-Sith states of the Unknown Regions who were the closest to launch an invasion. Unfortunately the Empire with their seemingly infinite numbers and ability to strike anywhere at anytime could not allow for a logical military strategy to be conducted until further reinforcement of the Northern Rim.

For the first two months a plan was being crafted for an expansion of the Army and Navy, but due to the lack of hard information on the enemy or a sense of urgency with the systems conquered in the early days being backwater ones on the galactic fringe, Republic military leaders believed that time was on their side and that the crisis could be dealt with in a efficient manner without upending the galactic economy over a threat that could be dealt with quickly if the might of the Republic was brought to bare. Under the recommendations of Supreme Commander Charem Pakora, the Senate passed a bill to create 5,000 more ships and send out a call of recruitment for 500 million beings across the galaxy to enlist in the Army. In the meantime Pakora gave out orders for all of the Army's reserves along with 40 million beings from various active units across the galaxy to be deployed to the North with a provisional 78th, 79th, and 80th fleet to be made up of 2300 vessels of the Expansion Region and Inner Rim to be deployed to the North and aid in the ongoing raids.

In keeping with the narrative of the Republic being a weak and incompetent superpower, heavy blame is placed on the Senate and Army and Navy Command for not taking the threat seriously and unleashing the entirety of the Republic's might on the Sith, preventing their foothold and thus saving the galaxy from their presence (a narrative that in the Empire is presented as a sign of their superiority and a blessing for their continued existence). What novice historians tend to forget is how blame for this inaction rested not on the Coruscant, but on the local systems, particuarly those of the Core. Despite having suffered the least physically from the Old Sith Wars, the Core was psychologically traumatized from just how close the Republic as a whole came to near collapse four times in half a century. The brutality of the Krath Crusade and Mandalorian Triumph in particular caused many to believe that were it not for the actions of a few Jedi then the conquest of the Core would have been inevitable. With anti-Jedi sentiments riding high for the next three centuries, the political establishment and economic center of the Republic did not want their salvation to come from a small number of elite beings who have the potential to just as easily be corrupted into darkness. Thus the Zyckas doctrine saw the majority of the Navy and Army's assets be directed Coreward despite the lack of threat to their safety with the biggest independent powers being only a few systems large. This selfishness caused several sectors and systems within the Core to meddle within Pakora's attempts for an immediate and total mobilization as much as possible in a paradox where they didn't treat the growing crisis in the North as a serious threat yet at the same time didn't want to be careless enough as to leave them exposed to attack.

It seems that the only group who took the war seriously from the beginning were the Jedi. While the Order was unsure of how to directly proceed in the first month, the lack of communication from Sith space prompted the Order into action with all Jedi across the galaxy to be recalled to Coruscant and prepare for organization into the contingency "Jedi Legions", a system proposed by Grand Master Mical where units containing thousands of Jedi would be deployed for war as an elite vanguard for the Republic. Such a system was created to prepare for the rise of a nation in similar strength and threat to the Mandalorians so that the Jedi could immediately get involved in the Republic's defense and not have its inaction lead to corruption such as Revan's fall. However, such a system never came into action before the war due to a rigid set of requirements by the Jedi High Council for its need so that way the Order could not be militarized and more Revans could rise to power. One of these conditions for mobilization was the loss of Sith Space, for even if the Sith were truly extinct, the ability of an enemy nation to gain the knowledge and power of the Sith could give them weapons which would cause an end to the Republic and bathe the galaxy in darkness. The instant loss of contact with Sith Space demanded the Legion Contingency to be implemented, with the Jedi further being called into action by an order-wide feeling of a disturbance in the force around the First Battle of Korriban. For days the Jedi Council would plead to the Senate for action, but most of the Senate ignored the Order as alarmists, for the Sith were forever extinct and Sith Space being lost was simply the consequence of the unknown enemy's targeting, not a sign of the Sith's return. These naysayers would be proven deadly wrong when Satele Shan and Jace Malcom arrived on Coruscant.

For 40 days the Jedi Apprentice and Trooper would take refuge in Nico Okarr's ship with the smuggler carefully carrying them through dozens of jumps in hyperspace to prevent any possibility of the Sith following them, before traveling to the Northern frontier of Hutt space and then riding the Perlemian Trade Route to Coruscant. Such an oddysey was undertaken as Shan believed that with the great numbers of the Sith and their ability to manipulate the conflict until Korriban and Sith Space were left barely defended was a sign that the Sith had agents spread across the Republic and that they couldn't risk stopping on a friendly world for aid, a heavily warranted belief as Sith Intelligence had called for Shan's head with one of the galaxy's greatest manhunts underway for her and her companions before they could warn the Republic. Fortunately for the trio they were not caught and on 10.13 they had finally arrived at Coruscant, with Shan sending a transmission to the Jedi Temple requesting for an immediate clandestine escort to the Senate where she had key intelligence on who the enemy was. The escort was given and within hours Shan and Malcolm (with Okarr staying at his ship, uncomfortable with appearing before the Senate and likewise distrusted by the Jedi) traveled before the Senate with Chancellor Munli giving the pair the floor after heavy pressure from the Jedi. Declassified Imperial documents show that the Coruscant branch of Republic Intelligence was immediately leaked to the arrival's presence. Some within the branch advocated for a quick assassination on the pair to cover the Sith's arrival, however this was overruled by the planet's Watcher due to a belief that they had already shared information with the Jedi and that such an operation would blow the secrecy that the Sith were on Coruscant and damage the war effort in the long run, a belief proven true by the war's later espionage efforts.

Adressing the Senate, and by extension Trillions of the Republic's citizens due to the rapid spread on holonews networks of Shan's words, Satele Shan gave her legendary "Return of the Sith" speech. In it she described in vivid detail the Sith attack on Korriban, of their numbers, their brutality, their power in the dark side, and how the Republic was powerless to stop them. Footage from Okarr's ship gave physical evidence of not only the might of the Imperial Fleet, but the undeniable return of the Sith, with Vindican and Malgus overnight becoming the greatest villains for the Republic since the Triumvirate, their display of raw power in the force and ability to stand against two of the Jedi's most skilled duelists being a testament to the gravity of the situation. For the first two years Malgus, being one of the few Sith who the Republic had visual imagery of, would be the face of the Sith onslaught, it's a rather ironic treatment considering Malgus' then lowly rank as a warrior, though in many regards it's a rather foreboding treatment due to Malgus' later rise as a Dark Lord of the Sith.

Augmented by Malcom's testimony, Shan called for the entirety of the Republic to unite and wipe out this evil once and for all just as they had done at Yavin, Rakata Prime, and Malachor. Shan warned of a feeling that this new Sith was a far greater danger than all of the previous Old Sith orders combined, and that if they were able to take Korriban so quickly with such overwhelming strength, then they could reach the Core within the year if the Republic did not act quickly and rise to the challenge. Shan's speech was met with an overwhelming ovation from the Senate and the support of most of the Republic. Overnight she and Malcom would become the poster figures for the Republic to rally behind as survivors of the Sith invasion. Shan in particular was likened to her great ancestor Bastila Shan, the order's finest who would become the Sword of the Jedi and slay the darkness, ignoring how Shan's strength at this time was nowhere near her prime or how Bastila defeated the Sith through love instead of strength. In the end, Satele Shan managed to rally the Republic and recognize the war as a proper threat that they would need to meet head on, lest the suffering of the Old Sith Wars be repeated.

Within the next week a bill proposed by Senator Kelsi Beringer of Fondor was passed which extended the construction of new ships for the Republic Navy to 30,000 in 30 new fleets. 4,000 more ships would be directed to the Outer Rim while Munli would put out a call for 35 billion beings from across the Republic to enlist in the Army. Corporate and income taxes were raised significantly while a war bond drive was institituded which managed to raise 564 billion credits within two months. When word spread of the Battle of Sluis Van, enlistment increased greatly with the Army reaching 42 billion beings by the end of the year, well above their expected hopes. Despite the fact that this was the largest mobilization of the Republic since the Jedi Civil War, many will often overlook this as a measure of incompetence since the Republic fleet alongside its new construction will still be less than half of the Imperial Navy while the Republic is typically lambasted for its inability to truly wage its titanic demographic supremacy where they could have drowned the Sith in pure numbers before they could have reached the Core. What these detractors tend to forget is how this massive mobilization placed a major financial strain on the Republic with it accelerating a recession that began in 2.21,373. Had the Republic gone for the hundreds of thousands of warships and over a trillion Troopers as many armchair generals like to advocate, then it would have gone bankrupt before the Sith reached the Mid Rim. With the galactic economy full in a peacetime state, time was needed to transition the Republic to a total war economy that would be necessary to contain the Third Sith Empire. Further preventing the Republic from unleashing its full might was a strategic misinterpretation of the war. Since Shan was unable to find out about the existence of Sith Purebloods, the common belief for the first year of the war was that this was not a return of the ancient Sith, but a war of revenge by remnants of Revan's Sith who hid in the Unknown Regions and built up their forces to reclaim their Empire. After the downfall of the Sith Triumvirate there were still thousands of Sith Ships and hundreds of millions of Troopers who were unaccounted for and thus were blamed as the ancestors of the current Sith, a far more believable story than an empire of the exiled Sith species who managed to restrain their vengeance for more than a millennia in the hopes of a future return to the galaxy. Since it was believed that this was Revan's Sith, it was thought that their resources after only 300 years from a foundation of the Empire's remnants could only be a fraction of the Republic military and that their success so far was thanks to the element of surprise and great espionage. Soon the Republic would know that they were dealing with a far more ancient and powerful breed of Sith, one whose might surpassed the Republic and whose empire could not be broken through the actions of a few great Jedi.

Sith Empire

After a week of grand festivities throughout the Empire following the Reclamation of Korriban which would be forever etched into popular memory as the Reclamation Jubilation, a moment of celebration which was made permanent by 9.3 being made into Reclamation Day by the Empire, a day of celebration which is still participated by the Fourth Sith Empire, the Empire began moving its nation into the state of total war which was envisioned by Darth Logos as the culmination of a millennia of planning. While the term total war has been referred to as being used by many nations throughout galactic history, the Sith were the first nation to take it to its logical extreme with the entirety of their society revolving only around the war effort, perfecting the craft until the words Sith and War were one and the same. While the galaxy likes to see the Mandalorians as a race and culture of being the perfect warriors, even before the Mandalorian Union, Mandalorian culture always had a place for non-warriors who wished to tend to the homes on Mandalore and greater Mandalorian space, with the Mandalorian Crusades seeing hundreds of millions of Mandalorians living lives mostly separated from the Neo-Crusaders. Such a state did not exist for the Third Sith Empire during the Great Galactic War, if you were a citizen then your life was solely dedicated to the war effort.

On 9.11 Darth Vowrawn would nationalize all private corporations and small businesses within the Sith Empire, transforming the Empire from a State Capitalist economy to a command economy. While most local services industries were allowed to operate to cater to the homefront, though as subsidiaries of the state and under heavy rationing, the remainder of the private sphere was either reorintated to the war effort or shut down entirely as their existence was a drain on the economy and could not be transformed into service for the war. Vowrawn's control saw such dramatic changes as all non-STEM education fields be shut down, the entertainment industry severely cut down and focused solely on propaganda, starship corporations to cease all civilian production except for the Imperial Merchant Marine, and all consumer factories to be transformed into places for the construction of weaponry and mechanized vehicles. With consumer goods ceasing in production, scarcity became rampant with luxury goods nearly becoming extinct as all walks of Imperial life, even Imperial and Sith nobility, had to heavily ration with their taxes being spiking greatly to feed the war effort.

In addition to the draconian fiscal measures, extreme social laws were put in place to rally the population in total mobilization while any and all forms of discontent were eliminated. The Sphere of Laws and Justice together with the Sphere of Sith Philosophy and Sphere of Mysteries created a trifecta of order which transformed the Empire from an authoritarian state with limited freedoms for its citizens into a complete totalitarian society with any forms of disorder swiftly eliminated through the Sith. All ongoing feudal wars were ordered to be halted within a month or else the remaining participants on all sides would be ruthlessly punished. This mandate pushed many of the feudal wars into rushed and bloody conclusions, though the losers wound up having lucky fates as those who decided to continue in defiance of the Dark Council saw their houses and most of their vassals wiped out. Forms of public assembly and expression which were not in support of the war effort were banned. Calls were made for the enlistment of 5 billion citizens with promises of random drafts of 90 million per year of retired military personnel who hadn't already enlisted. The age of enlistment was lowered to 16 in order to allow for more fresh bodies. Orders were placed for the production of 50,000 ships for the Imperial Navy. The production of hybrid cloned citizens increased tenfold in order to fill a need for feared casualty rates. The Sith Order was also unable to escape the new Total War society with new regulations in place which prohibited the killing of fellow Sith (though subterfuge still remained rampant where hundreds of thousands of Sith would die in plots from fellow Sith with them getting away with it so long as it wasn't out in the open), a new draft system in place for all force sensitives below 12,000 midi-chlorians in replacement of the previous service system, and every Sith who was not assigned to a critical domestic duty would be sent to the front lines to overwhelm and wipe out the Jedi.

In any normal civilization such draconian laws should have lead to an instant collapse of the civilization due to the pure strain of the conversation to a society whose existence revolved around warfare. The reason that the Third Sith Empire did not collapse due to the sudden shift was how within the Empire there was near unanimous support for the measures and the coming war. During their exile the Empire had developed a religious mindset on the promised war against the Republic and Jedi by Vitiate. While isolationist movements varied in their popularity and power since the Sith settled on Dromund Kaas, the overwhelming majority of the Empire's population embraced the war as a holy crusade against the Jedi to avenge the victims of the Sith Holocaust and fulfill their manifest destiny to rule the galaxy. Firsthand accounts from contemporary Imperials and Sith show a zealous devotion to the war effort with an overwhelming aura of exhilaration for the coming conflict and how much death and destruction they would bring the Republic. On many worlds crime rates dropped to zero with the domestic division of Imperial Intelligence having little to no threats to handle thanks to a combination of high patriotism and the work of the Sith. Even for the most critical members of Imperial and Sith society and the fringe Liberals of the Empire, opposition was nonexistent as those who wished to changed the Empire believed that no matter what their stance against the Emperor and Dark Council was, that they would be target for extermination by the Jedi if the Empire lost the war in a Second Sith Holocaust. While the Fourth Sith Empire today is an authoritarian state that revolves around the practice and spread of the New Imperial Order with the Sith as its architects and guides, the Fourth Empire is practically a place of anarchy and chaos in comparison to the rigid and absolute Total War society of the late Third Empire.

While the Empire's Total War Society would be a key factor to aiding the Empire in its victory over the Republic, it would also play a crucial role in its downfall. The draconian lifestyle of the Sith was a stark contrast to that of the civilized galaxy, and when the Imperial Army and Navy conducted its conquest, they looked on at the wealth and prosperity of their annexed worlds in envy, with jealousy towards their conquered subjects that were able to live relatively free lives while they had to dedicate their all to the war. The lack of grand defeats with a seemingly impossible state for the Empire to fall as the Sith had in the Great Hyperspace Wars and Old Sith Wars made the threat of the Republic and Jedi greatly subdued with many Imperials and Sith wanting to move on to other affairs. The usage by the Empire of the Conquest Economy to fuel the war and satisfy the consumer needs of Imperial citizens would create a dangerously unstable system that would plague the Empire leading up to the Second Great Galactic War, forcing the Empire's private sphere to rely on the Hutts which laid the foundations for Imperial Counterculture. While many praise Total War Society as the method through which the Empire achieved victory, it should be noted that were it not for the extremes of Total War that the necessity for the Imperial Revolution would not have been created, for better or worse.

A/N: This chapter is mostly meant as a transitionary one to show the Republic in the first stages of the road to total war and properly responding to the Sith as a serious threat, and for the Sith to begin the next phase of their conquest and to show just how extremely dedicated their society was towards the Great Galactic War and revenge on the Jedi. I know it's not the most exciting chapter but it has necessary groundwork for what I'm to write next. The next two chapters will cover the next year of the war with the beginning of the proper Sith conquest. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!

To respond to Truth's Hierarch thank you for the reviews. In a summary of your major points, you can't place too much blame on Vaner and Organa as they believed that a sort of "End of History" was upon them and that there was no way for the Sith to return outside of a rebirth in the Jedi, which they were strongly on watch to prevent. Plus at least with them they weren't pacifistic idiots who completely got rid of the military like with the Ruusan Reformation. We'll get more hints of the Fourth Empire and Recht's Sith in later updates but for now I ask for patience. On describing Sluis Van as a Doolittle Raid, I mainly meant it in the sense of a nation launching a raid deep into enemy territory with forces that were completely isolated from the homeland, though Pearl Harbor is the greater analogy.