Major Faction O'reen Overthrown

Detailed Description

As the date of the Brotherhood of the Maw's push into Chiss space grew closer and closer, a new threat to their campaign of plunder and conquest was growing stronger. Some of the very earliest Brotherhood raids had caught the attention of the New Jedi Order, particularly the raid on Jakku, where Jedi from Romi Jade's newly-established Jakku Jedi Enclave had been involved in the fighting. Members of the Order had subsequently opposed the Brotherhood during the conquests of Crakull and Mar'Zambul, among other battles. Thus far they had done so without official military support from the Galactic Alliance, but with the political climate shifting, all that was about to change.

When Chancellor Adhira Chandra announced her initiative to expand Alliance space northward, settling new worlds and bringing isolated colonies under Alliance protection, the Heathen Priests were immediately concerned. Although they had always planned to push into the Core Worlds, burning and pillaging the Alliance heartland, they had not expected their enemies to move toward them. The result might well be a clash in the middle, where a thin strip of Mid Rim met the Unknown Regions... or even within the Unknown Regions themselves. If the Alliance settlement initiative moved fast enough, settlers and their military protectors might shield worlds the Maw planned to exploit.

The Dark Voice had no intention of allowing the Alliance to reach his isolated haven's borders before the Brotherhood was ready. He had also made a promise - that Derix Tirall and his Final Dawn would be granted the fortress world of O'reen, a perfect defensive position for the militarist neo-Imperials to build their fleets and prepare their sinister armies. Once hidden from the wider galaxy, O'reen had been fought over by countless regimes in the decades since the end of the 400-year Darkness, including the now-fallen Republic that had predated the Galactic Alliance. Its location was not secret any longer, and if the Brotherhood wanted to claim it ahead of their enemies, they would need to move swiftly.

They would also need a distraction, something to occupy the eyes of the Alliance while they expanded their borders.

The result was the Namaadi Campaign. Small battle groups of Brotherhood pirates, supported by the vast Hand of Purification fleet secretly striking out of the Deep Core, began to interdict freighters and small Alliance military patrols along the Namaadi Corridor. These raids brought the Brotherhood much-needed supplies and slaves. They also sowed chaos and disruption along the hyperlane, leaving the Alliance wondering what was happening within its borders rather than without. Soon, larger Alliance patrols were sent out to investigate, culminating in clashes between the two powers. At first, the Maw welcomed these clashes, trying to use them to disable and capture enemy military vessels.

In the largest such battle, however, the Brotherhood discovered that they had finally woken the dragon. While they had conclusively outnumbered the Alliance at the beginning of the confrontation, Vice Chancellor Aerarii Tithe soon arrived with a huge relief force, scattering the pirates and driving them back into hyperspace. This conclusive showdown largely brought an end to the brief Namaadi Campaign, as the Maw could not risk losing too many ships before the all-important attack on Csilla. As a long-term consequence, the raids spread awareness of the Brotherhood and its capabilities among the Alliance military, starting rumors that would be brutally confirmed during the battle in Chiss space.

Although the New Jedi Order was not involved in the cat and mouse game of the Namaadi Campaign, they were far from idle. Using information recovered by Dagon Kaze and Illian Kastle, who had ventured to the dungeons of the Brotherhood's holy city and survived, the Order assembled a new strike team. The team once again infiltrated Gehinnom, working to free the tortured prisoners that Kaze and Kastle had seen there. Although they faced many grueling and terrifying encounters with the Holy City's dark inhabitants, the strike team was able to both infiltrate and exfiltrate successfully, adding to the short list of those who had willingly gone to Gehinnom... and of those who had survived being there.

Meanwhile, a group of SIA agents was dispatched to learn more about the emerging threat of the Brotherhood, and infiltrated Goshen War Camp on Lao-mon. At the same time as their infiltration, a local Shi'ido resistance cell attacked the camp, but was ultimately repelled - and mostly slain or captured - by the local marauder tribes and their warlords. The SIA team managed to escape in the chaos of the battle, having observed much about the operations and organization of the Brotherhood. Their report would also shape the Alliance's future strategy in approaching the Unknown Regions, ensuring that they were not caught off-guard by the Brotherhood attack on Outlander Station.

None of these successes, however, could save O'reen. The planet had undergone conquest after conquest as the galaxy reemerged from the darkness of the Gulag Plague. It had been the site of perhaps the Republic's most humiliating defeat, when the Lords of the Fringe had repelled their surprise attack. It had been targeted for annexation by a new would-be Galactic Empire, the Directorate, and the Risen Empire, though none had held it for long. It had seen a Jedi-backed civilian rebellion briefly overthrow the ruling Magnus, establishing an ill-fated democracy. It had collapsed into crime and piracy. Each time, the traditional system of military dictatorship under the Magnus had reasserted itself.

When the fleets of the Final Dawn arrived, their movements hidden from the Galactic Alliance's eyes until it was too late, they made a statement in blood and fire. Orbital bombardment cleared away all resistance. Neo-Imperial legions marched through the streets, brutally suppressing all resistance. The ruling Magnus was publicly executed, his death broadcast across the entire planet. Soon, the battered fortress world was fully under the control of Derix Tirall, just as the Dark Voice had promised. Reconstruction of its defenses began immediately, so that the next attempted conquest - one likely aimed at displacing the Brotherhood's allies - would not be so easily accomplished.

And so another world fell into darkness, becoming a forge for the Maw's dark crusade...