Kyriaki
Dark Phoenix
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand on Tephrike
Image Credit: Here.
Role: Drone warfare unit, 'poor man's air force'.
Permissions: N/A
Links: Into Darkness, After Darkness, Elpsis, Dominion of Light, Disciples of the Vader, Republican Guard, Communion, Phoebe, Firemane Industries, The Unchained, Mace Windu Thought, Windian Jedi Order, Tephrike.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Unit Name: Wings of Freedom
Affiliation: Tephrike, Republican Guard.
Classification: Drone Warfare Unit
Description: Rebellions may be built on hope, but they are fought with viciousness. The Republican Guard, a vanguard revolutionary movement that fights to free Tephrike from the tyrannical grip of the Jedi-led Dominion of Light and the human supremacist, Vader-worshipping 'Greater Sith Imperium', realised this long ago. Unfortunately, it only has limited access to high-tech weaponry and heavy munitions. Necessity is the mother of invention though.
The deployment of improvised drones to drop munitions on the enemy is a low-cost tactic that allows the partisans to cause carnage. The Wings of Freedom is the name of special formations of Republican Guard partisans who deploy civilian drones retrofitted to drop explosives on enemy assets. In essence, it is a poor man's air force, both cost-effective and deadly.
Initially, the partisan forces started using homemade landmines to target their enemy's convoys, then eventually added drones to their arsenal. The Retaliator Sky Strike Drone is particularly popular, as it is safe, accurate and requires little manpower to operate. As these repurposed commercial drones lack a droid brain, they require trained operators. That is where the Wings come in. The training of a single drone pilot operator takes between two weeks and a month. To be a Wing requires patience, calculation, a gift for improvisation and sneakiness. Mechanical talent is also pertinent when a drone needs to be repaired or technical issues arise that require a work-around. Lightly armed and armoured, they must keep themselves mobile and rely on subterfuge.
Vehicle convoys are preferred targets for drone strikes, as are infantry patrols. But the partisans also use them to strike at military checkpoints and logistical targets, wreaking havoc behind enemy lines. Hitting logistics is especially valuable. That is always a key target for a guerilla force trying to grind someone down. Naturally, they are also employed for targeted assassinations and plain terror strikes. Moreover, their drones can be outfitted with surveillance equipment. Drone operators thus also act as navigators for partisans. In certain areas, the drone fleets have allowed the Republican Guard to achieve a degree of localised air superiority, even though its aerial forces remain inferior to those of the Dominion and the Vaderites. However, training operators takes time, and the drones are still susceptible to being shot out of the sky, since they only have basic armour, and lack shields.
The Republican Guard maintains its own in-house weapons' programme to retrofit and produce drones and munitions. Their workshops often lie in forests, and dimly lit caves. 3D printers are at the heart of their operations. Veterans from the Wings consult on the process to make sure that the design is actually workable and manufactured with the needs of the frontlines in mind. Testing the drones is conducted at various secret, remote locations to minimise the risk of spies. The same applies to the training locations for drone operators. Both the Dominion and the Vaderites carry out collective punishments against their families, so protecting their identities is important.
A Wings of Freedom unit does not have operate in a vacuum. Rather it is assigned to a partisan or militia unit. In that capacity they perform reconnaissance and carry out strikes against enemy targets, giving the rebels some much-needed firepower. It is a way for the partisans to unleash some of the same terror they experience upon the enemy, repaying them in kind for their brutal bombings and drone strikes that often target civilian population centres alleged to have been 'terrorist nests'. Drones force the enemy to feel a fraction of the trauma the rebels feel when they are being bombed with aircraft, and heavy artillery. For a people who have endured heinous atrocities such as genocide, torture, ethnic cleansings, and murder of children, this is a considerable morale boost.
Thok Krallo is a prominent Neimoidian member of the Wings. He specialises in designing and retrofitting drones and transforming grenades originally designed for grenade launchers into bombs to be dropped from said drones. He manages the tools of the trade for his section, which also does robootics for kamikaze drones. With his rimmed glasses he looks the total opposite of martial, but the Neimodian is is adept at creating homemade explosives. He has written a manual on how to weaponize and build drones. He inscribes personalised messages for the enemy on the miniature bombs, including 'Victory - and happy birthday!' and 'People who live without freedom have bad taste'. A skilled improviser, he can patch up drones using salvaged parts. Some of his comrades joke that one of his ancestors was a robber baron who got bombs dropped on him, and now Thok is helping them drop bombs on even worse robber barons. It is very unlikely that he has a TradeFed executives among his ancestors, but he takes the joke in good humour. Drones built by him participated in an assault that destroyed half of around two hundred and fifty cargo trucks.
A Bith called Roul Archel serves the overall commander. He used to be an engineer who designed gadgets and tinkered with drones. However, his technical skills operating them saw him brought in to oversee that side of the unit. Nonetheless, over time he developed leadership and command skills, and when the last commander was killed by the Vaderites, he was put in charge. He runs the units in a very organised way, very efficient, but some complain he is too inflexible and places too much faith in planning. However, they have been very useful so far. One of his innovations has been improved grips on drones for ordinance.
COMBAT INFORMATION:
Unit Size: Small
Unit Availability: Uncommon
Unit Experience: Trained
Equipment:
Armour:
- Kinetic Armour, blast vest, and a basic helmet to protect against chemicals and shrapnel. On certain operations, the drone operators may just don civilian clothes with a blast vest beneath them.
- Submachine Gun
- Slugthrower Pistol
- Vibrodaggers and conventional daggers
- Grenades (smoke, frag, stun, flash)
Combat Function: The Wings of Freedom are drone operators, utilising simplistic, but effective drones for ambushes and raids. Their targets include, among others, police stations, military checkpoints, convoys, enemy vehicles, patrols, military headquarters and logistical targets. The Wings' drone operation units have expanded their operational scope from uncoordinated attacks on isolated enemy outposts to tactical ground support for more extensive operations against the Vaderites or the Dominion.
They can also be utilised for reconnaissance, serving as navigators and spotters for allied forces. In doing so the Wings provide the comrades with real-time intelligence, acquiring aerial imagery and video feeds that enables them to monitor enemy movements. This is a good deal safer than ground-based reconnaissance by organic assets, though it can obviously not replace it. This helps the Republican Guard plan and carry out ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, offensives, and retreats.
Since the Republican Guard does not have much of an air force, the Wings provide it with some much-needed firepower that enables them to strike beyond enemy lines. Wherever possible, Republican Guard forces prefer to bait enemy forces into pre-prepared kill zones. Long range raiders and partisans already behind enemy lines strike at logistics units and cut off their prey. The Wings deploy their drones as part of such an operation. The drones can be both used to bait an enemy into overreacting, and to help isolate them and take out enemy vehicles and logistic targets. The drones may loiter from above to provide air support against a cornered enemy while ground units close in and tighten the noose.
In certain situations, the Wings utilise drones in kamikaze fashion. They have also been utilised for targeted assassinations and terror attacks. An example would be assassinating a Vaderite officer and his family, or dropping bombs on a congregation of Ashlanite believers during a religious procession.
Force Abilities (Force User Units Only): N/A
Strengths:
- Death from above. With their drones, the Wings can unleash lethal firepower in a compact package. Essentially, their drones are ground attack gunships on a shoestring budget. They can strike isolated enemy outposts, patrols, convoys and logistical targets, but also provide tactical ground support.
- They can also support their allies through reconnaissance, providing real-time intelligence on enemy positions, movements etc.
- The Wings are lightly armed and armoured. Likewise, their drones only have basic armour.
- Advanced e-war systems can also be a problem for their drones. Moreover, their operational range is limited. Lacking a proper droid brain, they require an organic operator.
The Republican Guard considers itself the armed vanguard of the downtrodden, the common citizens who fight against the tyranny of Force-Users. For centuries they have waged a relentless insurgent campaign against the Dominion of Light and the Disciples of the Vader. Rebellions may be built on hope, but they are fought with viciousness. The odds the Republican Guard partisans face are daunting. For one, both of its foes have the advantage of highly technical air forces and firepower superiority. They can rain down destruction and annihilate entire cities and settlements - and have the ruthlessness to do so. Use of chemical weapons is common place.
However, the partisans are not without assets of their own. Their own aircraft are limited and expensive to maintain, but use of drones has given them a relatively cost-effective 'air force' of their own. Remote controlled drones are cheaply and expertly utilised by the rebel armies.
Many 'Wings' claim that in the early days when the Republican Guard was young, the first Wing was a Gungan insurgent called Bross Trazues who served as a drone operator. His family had been aquafarmers and he had used primitive drones to monitor aquatic stock and keep an eye out for dangers before being conscripted into the rebel army. Now he was in the field, using a repurposed commercial drone to observe a Dominion fuel stockpile. He called his drone back, and since no one else was near he tied some explosives to it and sent it in. Before the enemy knew what hit them, the drone had completed its suicide run and detonated its explosives. The resulting explosion was not terribly impressive, but did some damage.
In the chaos, Trazues made it back to partisan headquarters. His superiors saw the usefulness of his methods and commended him for improvising. Over time, the Republican Guard created a dedicated drone department, where footsoldiers were trained how to operate the technology through several months of operational practice and video tutorials. Owing to the nature of their tasks, 'flights' of Wings were organised in a decentralised fashion and embedded in partisan formations. Many of the recruits were former engineering students or hobbyists who had taught themselves about drones on the side. Initially, many mistakes were made.
Being mostly modified commercial machines, the drones were often poorly designed and had significant drawbacks in terms of payload capacity, range, and accuracy. Moreover, the quality of the training was poor. Thus at first they largely used them for surveillance purposes. Weaponisation was mostly limited to deploying unmanned aerial vehicles that flew directly into the targets and exploded on impact. However, they soon gained the capacity to drop explosives from drones in a targeted fashion.
An early terrorist attack that targeted a prayer service in an Ashlanite temple in the town of Krakostad killed two people and injured dozens more. Dominion forces shot down a number of unmanned aerial vehicles flying over the town, but the rebels were able to launch two drones equipped with cameras and explosives that directly targeted the religious gathering.
In the days leading up to the Battle of Synorostad, a Sith KEC general was 'inspecting the front' to raise morale of the Vaderite troops. However, he was well-protected. A drone was therefore smuggled in by the rebels and used to drop a time delayed charge near the procession path. When detonated, it maimed the general, and killed some of his bodyguards. The general was brought to a hospital, but went into shock a few days later and died of his wounds. In response, the Vaderites rounded up hundreds of 'suspect' civilians, mostly Twi'leks, from nearby villages, and shot them. Most of the Twi'lek men of fighting age from these settlements had already been murdered or conscripted for forced labour, so most of the victims were women, children and the elderly.
Another attack by the Wings struck a packed graduating ceremony for Dominion police officers, killing about eighty people including civilians and military personnel and wounding dozens of others. Drones laden with explosives targeted the ceremony as it came to an end. Women and children who had been watching the ceremony were among the casualties. However, a Dominion general who was the target of the attack had already left by the time it began. A Republican Guard propaganda outlet claimed the attack was retaliation for the shelling of a village in rebel territory, which had killed civilians, activists and emergency workers.
It was a merciless tit-for-tat. Drone warfare gave the partisans the ability to somewhat bridge the asymmetry between them and their foes, who could launch barrages of missiles against infrastructure, military installations and civilian settlements. During the Chios uprising, Wings were deployed to aid Gungan and Togruta rebels against the Vaderites' genocidal campaign. Targeted strikes against Vaderite patrols and civilians, oil facilities and military outposts became the norm.
Directed by operators hidden a few hundred metres away in the dense forest, a fleet of drones managed to hover above a Vaderite fort, near a settler colony, and deploy their bombs. Gungan rebels stormed the fort, and sacked the nearby settlement, butchering the colonists. During the subsequent retreat from the Vaderite counterattack, rebel sappers blew up the bridge over the river Krios. The Vaderites conscripted Gungan forced labourers to conduct repairs. While Vaderite engineers were conducting an inspection with their commander, the Wings dropped bombs by drone. The casualties were light, but for several days the Wings harrassed the repair crews to buy time for their allies until they were finally driven off. However, an attempt to assassinate Darth Lachesis with drones failed.
Moreover, captured Wings were routinely crucified, as were civilians suspected of aiding them. In the end, the uprising was crushed, and Chios' indigenous population was exterminated by the Vaderite forces in order to turn the island into a 'model settler colony'. A Wing unit that used its drones to screen a refugee convoy that included two hundred women and children was decimated. The refugees were forced to hide in a forest while they were pounded by relentless artillery shelling. An attempt by the rebels to use drones to create a pathway failed. When the few surviving refugees left their hopeless hideout after being promised to be spared, they were shot by the Vaderites.
Despite the heavy casualties inflicted by attrition and the rapture, the Wings played a prominent role during the Netherworld War. When General Aruunzeb was forced to stage a retreat after the disastrous First Battle of Fortress Purity, a surprise Dominion attack meant to cut off the rebel troops was spotted by a drone operator. They were then able to drop some explosives on the path, causing delay, and allowing Republican Guard troops to get into position.
More recently, the Wings have been involved resumption of open warfare with the Dominion with the Second Battle of Fortress Purity. In the days the battle and amidst an internal power struggle in the Dominion, a convoy of two hundred and fifty cargo trucks who had been stranded by fighting with the rebels were destroyed in a fire caused by bombs dropped by the Wings. To this day, Dominion and Republican Guard bombard each other from the skies of the divided city of Vortanstad, much of which has by now been devastated.
