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History
Excerpts from A History of the Rebellion Against The Empire by Tarn Inwell
[Note: The following establishes the tone and setting for the campaign, but contains information that would be not be considered common knowledge.]
... The seeds of the Rebellion were planted even as Chancellor Palpatine declared himself Emperor. The war he had orchestrated to cement his power was ending, and yet a new war – a civil war in earnest – was beginning. A small group of Senators, led by Bail Organa and Mon Mothma, began organizing what would eventually become the Rebel Alliance. What most histories do not record – because they chose to write themselves out of history – is that these early conspirators were joined by Jedi long believed dead: Obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda. Given what we now know about the Emperor’s powers, the early Rebellion would almost certainly have been discovered before it could flourish, had it not been for the efforts of Masters Yoda and Kenobi. Others may disagree about their participation, but a detailed investigation into the archives that survived the destruction …
... yet the Rebel Alliance didn’t became a major force until the signing of the Treaty of Corellia and the release of the Declaration of Rebellion, uniting the powers of Corellia, Alderaan, and Chandrila under the rule of Mon Mothma and securing resources for the Rebellion for years to come…
... and with great effort, the Rebels obtained detailed plans for the Death Star scant days before it finished final construction. A new hope had dawned—if the plans could be analyzed, they might provide a means of removing the Death Star before it even became a threat. Given the vast resources the Empire had put into the Death Star, its destruction could mark a turning point for the Rebellion, a chance to finally gain the upper hand. The Empire, aware of this danger, hounded the Rebels across the galaxy. The Rebellion, in turn, scrambled to put all of its pieces in place. One of the final pieces was Obi-wan Kenobi and it fell to Princess Leia Organa, current custodian of the plans hidden inside the droid R2D2, to move it. Unfortunately, her ship Tantive IV fell under attack over Kenobi’s hiding place of Tatooine. Realizing she could not avoid capture, Leia sent R2D2 down to the planet in an escape pod in a last effort to save the plans and the Rebellion. Ultimately, the effort failed; the escape pod was shot down by the Devastator and burned up as it entered the planet’s atmosphere. The plans, bought by the lives of so many brave Rebels, were destroyed. The new hope was shattered…
... The destruction of the escape pod over Tatooine provides an interesting example of the dynamic nature of power and command in the Empire. Darth Vader, having searched Tantive IV for the plans, learned that an escape pod without life forms aboard had been destroyed during the attack. Scanning the debris, he found a partially destroyed datapad whose remaining memory circuits contained portions of the Death Star plans. Realizing his search was over and wishing to reward the Gunner responsible for destroying the last hope of the Rebellion, Vader was surprised to find him in the Devestator’s detention block. Vader personally entered the cell block of Gunner Bain Obanti and demanded an account of the destruction of the escape pod. The following was his reply:
Another escape pod launched from the Tantive, but Chief Swanson scanned it and ordered us not to fire because there were no life forms aboard. I don’t know exactly why, but something compelled me to fire anyway. I do not deny the charge, my lord, I disobeyed a direct order—I simply do not know why.
My shot hit the engine block, which exploded, and the remains of the pod dropped to the planet below. I saw another explosion as the pod hit the atmosphere. Scans indicated enough debris for total destruction.
Vader immediately released Gunner Obanti and promoted him to Lieutenant. Prior to this promotion, Lt. Obanti had served without distinction for three years aboard the Devestator. The promotion would be the first in a meteoric rise to power for Obanti; he would see the rank of Admiral within two years. By contrast, Chief Gunner Swanson did not survive Vader’s wrath.
Stories of this type surround Darth Vader, who frequently…
... With her capture, Organa became the closest link the Empire had to the Rebel’s secret base, and their interrogation techniques were not gentle. Despite her failure to save the Death Star plans, Organa showed considerable resisitance to interrogation and initially the Empire was unable to obtain any information from her. Hoping to circumvent the process, Grand Moff Tarkin, second only to the Emperor, pointed the Death Star at Organa’s home planet of Alderaan and offered her a choice: reveal the location of the Rebel base or suffer the destruction of billions of Alderaanians.
Unwilling to betray the Rebellion yet desperate to save her home, Princess Leia named Dantooine, a remote planet that had once served as the Rebellion’s base but had long been abandoned. Governor Tarkin, having known for some time that the chief conspirators of the Rebellion were Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, chose to fire anyway. Organa watched, helplessly, as her adopted father and closest friends were killed in a brief flash of light
Upon learning that his ruse to obtain the Rebellion’s location had failed, Governor Tarkin ordered Organa executed. Surprisingly, Darth Vader objected, and convinced Tarkin to continue interrogation. Surviving personal records indicate that Vader was troubled, having felt a disturbance in the Force shortly before the destruction of Alderaan that was at once both familiar and foreign. It was gone almost as soon as it had appeared, drowned out in the flood of energy from the exploding planet, and Vader almost doubted he had felt it at all.
Suspicious the disturbance had come from the Princess yet unable sense it further, Vader was curious enough to argue against her termination. He then took a more focused hand with her interrogation, arranging a sequence of tortures that would have destroyed the strongest of minds. Surprisingly, Organa prevailed, and Grand Moff Tarkin again had her brought to the command room of the Death Star. On the screen this time was Chandrila, the homeworld of Mon Mothma, leader of the Rebellion. A battle between the Rebellion and the Empire was being fought, but the Rebellion was clearly outmatched even without the Death Star. With a cold smirk, Tarkin again offered his choice to Leia: reveal the true location of the Rebellion, and Chandrila would be spared. Refuse, and the residents of Chandrila would suffer the consequences. Unable to think of anything to do, Leia merely bowed her head. Moments later, Chandrila was no more.
His attention focused, Vader again felt the tremor in the Force. Now certain that Leia was the source, Vader ordered a halt to the torture and, through a series of carefully constructed manipulations, began to instruct Leia in the use of the Dark Side of the Force. What psychological torture Leia endured so quickly after her interrogations can only be guessed at, but eventually the good person that was Leia Organa was stripped away by Darth Vader. In her place, Darth Fury was born….
...History has shown time and again that evil will eventually turn upon itself, and the Empire was no exception. There are those who argue that Darth Vader had noble reasons for his coup, that he believed his new apprentice Darth Fury to be his long lost daughter and that he feared for her life should the Emperor ever discover her, but his chosen method could hardly be considered “good” by any interpretation of the word. In what can only be considered the single bloodiest moment in the history of the galaxy, Darth Vader turned the Death Star on Coruscant itself, snuffing out the lives the Emperor and hundreds of trillions of sentient beings.
Surprisingly, relatively little chaos arose from the destruction of Coruscant. Darth Vader quickly named himself Emperor, and made a habit of visiting key worlds with his new infinitely more mobile capital, the Death Star itself.