Major Faction The Csillan Cataclysm

Summary by The Mongrel

On the ground, the Brotherhood’s main objective was to distract enemy attention from the Mercy by forcing them to commit some of their troops to defending Csilla’s cities. Plundering those cities and inflicting heavy casualties on the Maw’s enemies were secondary, but highly desirable. Heavily outnumbered by the enemy forces, who had assembled from all corners of the galaxy, the Brotherhood had only one chance at victory: to break the defenders’ lines in a single mighty thrust, preventing a grinding trench stalemate and a long-range contest that would not favor the marauders (whose greatest strength lay in close combat). Attrition would mean defeat; if one marauder died for each defending soldier they killed, the Brotherhood would run out first.

The Mongrel coordinated the initial charge, sending in countless Moon Children as shock troops to cover the main Brotherhood thrust against the defenders’ trenches and allow them to advance. In addition to traditional Brotherhood marauders, insane clones, warbeasts, and scavenged walkers, Lirka Ka brought a force of hulking EVS Construction Droids, massive machines reprogrammed for violent insanity. She led the titanic robots in just behind the shockwave of Moon Children, attacking the front left section of the NIO trenches in an effort to collapse that flank. The red-armored soldiers of the Kainate, such as UX-0626, also arrived to support the main charge, deploying skilled snipers and swarms of flying Vorn-Strunga sithspawn to provide additional cover to the sweeping advance.

Still, it was a handful of champions against one of the greatest assembled armies in the galaxy.

The Maw troops were charging into a killing field, forced to be the ones to advance across No Man’s Land while the entrenched NIO forces peppered them with volley fire and artillery. The only hope was to distract these powerful elements long enough for the marauders to reach the enemy; until they did, they were taking casualties they could not afford without being able to inflict them in return. In an effort to distract the artillery striking the main force, The Mongrel and his Bloodsworn raiders took up a position on a ridge near the NIO’s right flank.. “Branchlurker” warbeasts climbed the cliffs toward the NIO lines and swarmed through a hidden crevasse leading to the NIO supply trench, forcing the defenders to turn their artillery and redeploy some of their forces to fight them back.

They paid a heavy price in lives for this distraction.

In a desperate effort to further disrupt the deadly crossfire bearing down on the main host, the Brotherhood deployed its Warlords to infiltrate enemy lines and hunt down key targets. A lone Kyrel Ren came from one direction, slaughtering enemy troops in their bunkers and stalking them across the snowy fields. The Warlord Maestus, landing with her Chosen, was more selective: she had arrived to hunt the Galactic Alliance’s Vice-Chancellor, Aerarii Tithe. Chimera, of the Warlords of the Sith, used his potent pyrokinetic abilities to melt the wall of the glacier overlooking the NIO left flank, slowing down their armored column’s counterattack.

These tactics allowed the Brotherhood’s main force to reach and begin to overwhelm the NIO front trench, but they did not get the beachhead they desired. The NIO pulled back, detonating the front trench to deny the marauders anywhere to take cover. When pressed again, they did the same with their reserve trench, leaving the Maw and their allies stranded in No Man’s Land for as long as possible. The fighting quickly became chaotic as sections of the attacking line buckled or bulged, becoming a long series of isolated individual battles rather than a unified struggle.

UX-626 engaged Chiss special forces units under Ziroka in a long-range commando duel. Kyrel Ren continued his slaughter through the rear trenches and bunkers, facing off against several elite Chess commandos. Lirka Ka was brought down in her charge by concentrated blaster fire… but rose again, regenerated, to resume the butchery, pursuing the retreating defenders and assailing Maple Harte. Maestus continued to shadow the Vice-Chancellor through the trenches, fighting her way through heavy resistance. Chimera, noticing the important and value of Enedia Tal, closed in on her. He was able to defeat her troops and take her prisoner, an effort to distract the deadly Galidraani forces.

Meanwhile, the Jedi Kaleleon had noticed The Mongrel’s attempt to outflank the NIO and destroy their artillery, and decided to intervene. For his part, The Mongrel used his tricks and traps to take on the Jedi alone, trying to shield his raiders so that they could continue to fight. A brutal close-quarters fight ensued as both men tumbled into a hilltop trench, and each took serious wounds in the struggle. The Mongrel ultimately killed the Jedi’s mount and companion, Narma, and covered his troops’ withdrawal from the ridge. But when Chiss commandos arrived to assist Kale, the marauder was forced to flee, making a desperate escape across the swirling snows.

Having inflicted horrific casualties on the Brotherhood forces, the NIO began an orderly withdrawal to their transports, denying the marauders the opportunity to conclusively rout them. Although Maestus was able to intercept the transports sent to whisk Aerarii Tithe to safety, killing many of his bodyguards, the Vice-Chancellor was ultimately able to escape when heavy NIO fire held the Warlord back. Meanwhile, many of the Galidraani forces (noticing Chimera’s capture of Enedia Tal) refused to evacuate until one of their own was rescued, and became the bulk of the opposition for the final Brotherhood push. For his part, Chimera used Enedia as bait, trying to draw out the Galidraani commanders in a last-ditch attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of stalemate.

Elsewhere, at Thrawn’s Rest, another battle was underway. The Dread Crusaders of the Holy Sith Order, commanded by Kascalion Giedfield of the Warlords of the Sith, fell back to a favorable position on the ridge. There they were engaged by Irveric Tavlar’s 501st Stormtrooper Legion. Guided by the words of their Force Oracle, they were aware of every enemy movement, and were swift to counterattack. Bracing themselves for a tank charge, the Dread Crusaders used Sithspawn warbeasts to hunt down and attack Tavlar’s huge siege weapons and deny him the long-range advantage.

As Tavlar’s advance collided with Giedfield’s lines, the Sith Warlord fired his artillery at point blank, willing to strike his own forces in order to stall the Imperial advance. Heavily engaged at both flanks and the center, the Dread Crusaders fought brutally to hold, and to reach the enemy artillery before it could do them further harm. As that effort stalled, an artillery duel broke out as the long-range weapons traded fire, and the situation in the trenches devolved into a close-range bloodbath of soldiers and sithspawn pressed together. The commanders themselves were no exception, with Giedfield and Tavlar soon locked in a deadly duel to decide the battle’s outcome.

While these battles raged, Khaostra Devoid deployed her own secret scheme in an isolated corner of the conflict. Using a powerful mining rig and a team of droids, she began to tunnel a kilometer into Csilla’s surface, searching for the Chiss Expeditionary Library. With the defenders occupied elsewhere, her drilling efforts went unnoticed, and bit by bit she drew closer to breaching the hidden repository of knowledge. Eventually, the drill breached the library.

Reinforced by the retreating Bloodsworn Raiders, Khaostra and her droids plundered and destroyed the library, gradually pushing back its heroic defenders. Khaostra was able to steal copies of Chiss military and exploratory records, key for planning the Brotherhood’s continuing campaign against the Ascendancy. The Brotherhood forces then captured the library’s supply tram and rode it into the Chiss capital at Cspalar. Only by seizing the city’s resources - and quickly, before they were driven off by enemy reinforcements - could they hope to even begin to recoup their terrible losses.

Moving quickly, Khaostra’s troops worked to disable the city’s defenses. In a bitter irony for the Chiss, the local Expeditionary Defense Force detachment had just decided that they had to leave Cspalar and join the main battle; had they not, they would have easily routed the relatively small marauder force. The Bloodsworn opened the gates to the small remnant of Brotherhood forces that had been able to survive and withdraw from the main conflict, and they worked quickly to seize what they could from Cspalar before fleeing into space.

Summary by The Mongrel

In space, the Brotherhood’s primary objective was to protect the Mercy until it could fire. This proved to be an incredibly difficult task. Mighty fleets from the Galactic Alliance, First Order, and New Imperial Order, along with representatives of other major factions, all joined the Chiss Ascendancy and various independents in trying to destroy the battle station. Although the Maw Fleet was mighty, it was heavily, heavily outnumbered. It could not possibly win, only hold out long enough for the superweapon to fire.


Subject 54 Havoc and his engineers were in charge of powering up the superlaser, and did their dark work as swiftly as they could. In command aboard the Maw flagship Fatalis, Tu’teggacha formed the Brotherhood fleet into a defensive screen around the Mercy, trying to intercept any and all fire that would strike the station - to the point of ramming incoming diamond-boron missiles with one of his own star destroyers to prevent their impacting Mercy. Meanwhile, Admiral Aldo Garrick attempted an orbital bombardment against the enemy ground forces, trying to even the odds for the equally-desperate situation on the surface of Csilla.

A few allies stood with the Brotherhood: the pirate king Talon Kyber’s flotilla, Marlon Sularen’s secret Hand of Purification fleet, and Derix Tirall’s New Imperial Remnant forces. None of these, however, significantly evened the tremendous odds. The GA and NIO fleets circled like vultures at first, making attacks at long range, trying to draw out the Brotherhood forces. The strategy worked, leading to the destruction of two Crucifix Is, but it was working too slowly… and nearly led to severe damage to the mobile Jedi praxeum Prosperity when those two Crucifix Is tried to ram it as they died. So the enemy changed tactics. Small starfighters, evading the massive weapons of the Maw fleet, slipped through the defensive screen and began making attack runs.

Up until that point, with these fleets bearing down on them, the Brotherhood might have been able to hold out for just long enough… but then the First Order arrived, and in force. At the same time, the NIO force under Captain Herlock was revealed to have been nothing more than a vanguard when a large battle group under Gallius Orcana arrived in the system. To make matters worse, the Alliance One jumped in soon after, meaning that two heads of state and their flagships now opposed the Maw. If they all pushed forward in a coordinated assault, the outnumbered Brotherhood would stand no chance.

A desperate delaying action was the only option. Tu’teggacha contacted Darth Solipsis aboard the Mercy and made a fateful request: to have the battle station fire early, directing its superlaser against the assembling fleets. With so many ships present and spread out across the system, it could not come close to evening the odds, but it might make the enemy more hesitant to charge. Darth Solipsis granted this request, and added an ambitious plan of his own: to board the Alliance One and capture the Chancellor, giving the Maw a hostage that would delay their foes. Both decisions would have far-reaching consequences.

As the Hand of Purification joined the defensive screen, trying to hold back the swarms of enemy fighters that were closing in, Talon Kyber and his flotilla boldly engaged the First Order at close range. Fire ships streaked at the enemy dreadnought, trying to damage it and slow it down, while the rest of the small fleet closed in behind them. Derix Tirall came to his aid, dividing his forces to pressure the Galactic Alliance and attack the First Order carriers. Neither of them, however, was able to hold back the enemy for long, with the First Order commander Roudac Gannan soon brushing off their attacks and closing in toward the Mercy.

At the order of Darth Solipsis, Admiral Garrick pulled what forces he could spare out of the defensive perimeter and prepared an attack force. Supported by Tu’teggacha and the Fatalis, these ships moved out of position and launched a direct, close-range attack on the Alliance One, launching a ramming action and subsequent boarding party to infiltrate the ship. Their goal was simple, but ambitious: to storm the massive ship’s command deck and capture Chancellor Adhira Chandra, holding her prisoner to force back the Alliance fleet.

In order to cover the ambitious advance, Subject 54 Havoc heeded the Dark Voice’s orders… and opened fire with Mercy’s superlaser. The blast annihilated a number of Alliance ships, along with an entire civilian evacuation convoy. Though the weapon could not fire again until it built up a considerable charge, fear of its power briefly held back the enemy fleets, and allowed the Fatalis and the boarding mission to reach the Alliance One. Once there, Sith Warlord Kuric Taumin led the boarding party, slaughtering their way to the bridge of the ship.

They would have to hurry; now isolated from the rest of the defensive screen, the Fatalis immediately came under heavy fire from all sides. Commodore Orcana of the NIO made it his mission to see the Maw flagship destroyed, ideally punching a hole in the defensive screen that would allow his ships easy access to the Mercy. His concentrated fire quickly disabled several of the Fatalis’s larger weapons, and it soon became clear that even the mighty dreadnought could not hold its position for long without suffering irreparable damage.

Ultimately, the Chancellor did surrender to Taumin… but the extraction proved more complicated. Losing several escorts, and wary of the arrival of more First Order battle groups under Vice Admiral Rhammon Barkai, Captain Charlotte Reed, and Captain Thorne , the Fatalis was forced to begin to withdraw without the boarding party. Only covering fire from Mercy’s countless turbolaser batteries, directed by Subject 54 Havoc, kept it covered in its retreat. Rogue Squadron and the flotilla of the Alliance’s Admiral Liedran Kathause kept up the pressure.

As more and more enemy fleets continued to pour into the system, the Fatalis grew desperate in its flight. The Hand of Purification’s Maw Irregular Fleet had moved to aid Derix Tirall against a First Order carrier group, so there was no help coming unless they could reach the defensive screen. Even then, there was no guarantee they could survive. The Maw forces were now outnumbered easily eight to one, and more and more enemy fire was getting through to the Mercy as the defenders thinned.

In a last ditch effort to save the Fatalis and preserve the screen, Taskmaster Tu’teggacha linked the minds of all the Heathen Priests aboard the ship, coordinating them in a massive Force scheme. The Fatalis drew in battle debris with its tractor beams, and the Priests held the debris in place, using it as armor to block the fire of Orcana’s battle group. Although the strain of this huge undertaking gradually rendered them all unconscious, and nearly killed Tu’teggacha, it bought enough time for the Maw flagship to fall back and hold the line.

It was a temporary reprieve at best. Captain Herlock and Commander Richtofen of the NIO soon moved up to assist Orcana in trying to destroy or push past the Fatalis, and the massive fleet under Allegiant General Roudac Gannan was not far behind, pushing through the Maw’s allies. Still, it put the Fatalis in position to rescue Darth Solipsis, who had ejected his throne room into the void of space in a bid to kill Cedric Grayson. The Maw flagship captured him with a tractor beam and reeled him in to safety, all the while still fighting just to survive. Only cover from Aldo Garrick, wielding his star destroyer’s proton beam cannon with ruthless efficiency, kept the flagship from being annihilated.

As his enemies multiplied, some of them slipping behind the Fatalis to attack the Mercy directly, Tu’teggacha used the last of the Heathen Priests to launch the shielding debris at Orcana’s fleet in a final attack. He had been determined to go down fighting to protect the Mercy… but it was too little, too late. The battle station, wracked by internal sabotage and heavy fire by the enemy fleets, began to break apart. It would be unable to fire its superlaser in time, so the only hope was for its debris to fall upon Csilla and still annihilate the planet. With nothing more to be done, Tu’teggacha gave the Maw fleet the order to retreat, aided in marshalling their remaining forces by Darth Solipsis’s battle meditation.

Whether the Mercy would destroy Csilla was in the Force’s hands.

Summary by Darth Solipsis

Onboard the Mercy the objective was clear, protect the superweapon from sabotage and oversee the two battles as they progressed. It was here in the heart of darkness that the respective heads of the Brotherhood and their allies gathered. Overseeing the battle from his throne within the Chamber of War, Darth Solipsis fed alongside the former Sith Emperor Carnifex on the negative energy and deaths from the ground level to the space battle above. The Worm Emperor and the newly minted Sith Saint Darth Vulcanus joined the two as the battle raged on. It was from here that Darth Solipsis gave the order to fire a single reactor burst to aid the struggling MAW fleet under Tu’tegaccha who held the line at the helm of the mighty Fatalis Star Dreadnought.

It wasn’t until the intervention of the several independents such as Empress Ingrid of the Eternal Empire and the sudden arrival of the New Jedi Order that the station found itself under siege. Attackers slipped past the defensive screen in small craft and infiltrated the station. The Brotherhood’s defenders immediately sprung into action to intercept the attackers as they moved to sabotage the weapon. The powerful warlord of the MAW tribe of ‘Bloodsworn’ Zachariel Steelblood engaged in a fierce duel with Dimitri Voltura, Sith Lord and member of the CIS. Tegan Starfall intercepted and combated two different opponents in together in the form of Starlin Rand and Syd Celsius. The cyborg Jedi Hunter Jayda Vanator and the marauder lieutenant Kryll both collided against the Battlemaster of the NJO, Aaran Tafo who engaged in both a bout of blades and hand to hand combat. The two fought valiantly against the Jedi but were little match for the fully trained Jedi Knight as they attempted to use their wits and skill to match him. The humiliation suffered at the hands of Tafo and pent up emotion led to the Force ‘awakening’ of Kryll who for the first time utilized the Force to save his own life after nearly being telekinetically tossed into the flurry of saber swings from his own ally at the non-corporeal motion of his Jedi enemy.

The arrival of the NJO spurred the Knight of Ren, Sinh into leaving his allies led by the Ren known as Bendak Crail. Sinh who felt he had a score to settle with the Jedi, sensed the presence of Dagon Kaze as he approached with Yula Perl as his pilot in a starfighter heading straight for the superweapon. Sinh took the opportunity immediately and seized the chance to strike, taking two marauders as his crewmates the Knight of Ren moved to the hangar. Taking control over the Knights of Ren’s Vornskr-class Rapid Deployment Stealth Transport, Sinh entered the space battle and fired upon the Jedi in a chase toward Mercy which led to the Jedi crashing their vessel inside. A savage chase and battle occurred throughout the hallway as the pair of Galactic Alliance force-users fought the Rage induced Knight of Ren, ensnaring him or slowing him with debris with every chance provided. The scene was filled with tension and was well played out as it led into the reactor bay where Yula Perl attempted to sabotage the interior systems while Dagon Kaze and the Knight of Ren dueled.

Inside the throne room, Darth Solipsis received the previously captured Cedric Grayson who was brought before the Sith Lord cuffed. There the two engaged in dialogue detailing the true purpose of the MAW’s crusade and the Dark Voice’s plans for the future. Solipsis revealed himself as the godfather of Cedric, former padawan of the Jedi’s father Cyril Grayson back in the days of the Republic and Ession Reformation, former Jedi Knight Kaigann Fossk. With the mention of Carnifex who now toiled in ritual in an adjoining chamber, focused on draining the living force from Csilla, Cedric called for his weapon breaking his shackles. The Sith Lord Solipsis attempted to sway the Jedi Master to the Dark Side of the Force, in true to form Death Star II style. He offered to bring back the ones Cedric loved and help him slay Carnifex, on the singular condition that he give himself over to the Dark Side of the Force. The gambit failed after nearly considering the offer, Cedric engaged Darth Solipsis seeking to end the MAW leadership by cutting off the head of the snake. A fierce display of Sith Lighting came, followed by a fateful duel that tore apart the throne room and led to the pair’s ejection into the vacuum of space.

Both parties survived, but the consequences of their fight was long reaching as individuals like Carnifex and his cultists to Tu’teggacha felt what had transpired.

Not long after the fateful conflict within the throne room, Carnifex himself engaged in a duel with his former student now Jedi Elle Mors. The battle was steady and precise, their blows timed as they engaged in a battle of wills. The former Dark Lord attempted to put doubt in her mind as she engaged him to the very end up until the station began to suffer from the weight of the enemy forces aligned against it. As the station’s targeting systems and reactor began to fail, despite being at full power, a fateful decision was made by technician Havoc who maintained control over the station’s weapon. Setting a course for Csilla, all engines were primed and the Path Engines ready to go. A supercharged collision course was planned with Csilla in a final desperate gamble to destroy the Chiss world. Evacuations were called and everyone began fighting to escape the station.

The superweapon was soon engaged in a shoving match against the First Order dreadnought that attempted to block and divert the priming superweapon as it was yanked down alongside their enemy into the planet’s gravity well. As the Path Engines prepared to launch the falling station into a hyperspace jump through Csilla, the First Order activated an experimental shield, leaving the fate of Csilla in the hands of the Force.