Sara Roche
Meteor One
Sara grew up in a military family on Carida, with most of her relatives having served in the planet’s militia or taken their skills at the Academy to serve in various factions across the Galaxy. However, the planet itself lay neutral, and in this age of Chaos that meant constant raids and skirmishes by outside powers, despite, or perhaps because of, the constant churn of graduates from the planet’s famed Academy. For their service, the family was repaid with tragedy: by the time Sara was a teen, most of her family had died in the line of service defending the world from bandits, warlords, and Sith, or had long since shipped out to a distant corner of the Galaxy. Roche grew up a cadet of the Academy, and when the Alliance was founded, it expanded quickly, taking over governance of Carida. With it brought stability and freedom, a true dedication to ideals. Roche, already instilled with values of duty and honour, transferred those desires to the Alliance. As soon as she was able to, Roche joined the GADF and enlisted in the Marines, entering as a commissioned Lieutenant after a short period of GADF training due to her Academy training. From there, Roche was thrown into action almost as soon as training was complete, spending years on GADF expeditionary fleets pacifying minor worlds on the border and taking part in major operations against Sith holdouts and the Maw. In these operations, Roche’s unit, the 121st Marine Battalion, would be tasked with not just combat but taking on peacekeeping and outreach duties. While Roche was not the most charismatic soldier, her earnest and open demeanour and fair treatment of civilians under the Battalion’s protection went some way toward winning the hearts and minds of the populations liberated by the battalion.
After years of combat Roche was promoted up the ranks, but her finest hour was on a minor world safe inside the GA, several years into the Second Great Hyperspace War. The 121st and the flotilla it was attached to were assigned to a world deep inside the GA for reserve duty, with most of its members on leave during the period. Roche remained on station doing routine patrols during this period, taking command of the Battalion’s skeleton crew. While Battalion command expected the world to be safe so far behind lines, the Maw conducted a sudden raid on the world. Ever since the drive into the deep core, the Maw’s warbands had shown remarkable capability for deep raids into the hidden flank of the Alliance, and this world was no exception. On a quiet day, the skies darkened as a Maw flotilla emerged from hyperspace to raid the planet by extorting credits, raw materials and slaves from its cities while the fleet waited in orbit, its guns pointed at the cities. The Maw also sent hunting patrols to cordon the cities from the GADF bases situated away from the cities to ensure compliance.
The planetary government relented and decided to send the supplies, unwilling to see its cities glassed. Unwilling to let the Maw get away with their actions, and knowing the GADF were soon to send a response force, Roche, as one of the few groundside GADF commanders within the city in contact with the government, came up with a plan: to sneak her and other Marines aboard the Maw flotilla with explosives and weapons within the ransom shipments. Despite the risks, the government agreed. Roche and a small team were thus crammed into cargo containers and sent up to the Maw flotilla. Once inside, they broke free and proceeded to destroy the ships from the inside, hijacking the flagship to fire at the other Maw ships. In the confusion, the cities’ militia rose up and forced the Maw forces to scatter, destroyed when caught between the isolated GADF garrisons. Realising their raid was a loss, the leader of the flotilla ordered a withdrawal.
This stunning victory, while a minor skirmish in the grand scale of things, caught the eye of GADF command, who sent Roche and her squad for specialised training and assignments in preparation for assisting in special operations in the future. While she and her squad did do so and served well, she preferred to remain with the battalion, and over time it was decided that Roche was better off with the 121st to provide her expertise to this unit. In the next few years, she continued to fight with the battalion in conventional operations against the Maw.
The Battalion took grievous losses as time went on, and with the recent restructuring of GADF units after Tython, the 121st was one of the Battalions chosen to be disbanded, merged with the 222nd Nova Corps in preparation for further campaigns against the Maw and possible combat against the Imperials.
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