Cedric Grayson
Ashlan Kaiser
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
CONTENT INFORMATION
This holobook is rather long and tedious, despite its title, and recounts the history of Ession and the people that have called it home for the past few thousand years. It goes into great detail about the minutia of Essonian politics, as well as their colored history with the rest of the galaxy. The most prominent historical events have been marked for the reader's enjoyment, but the majority of the book is a simple, biased account of history by an Essonian bishop.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Colonization
Ten thousand years ago, Ession was little more than an uninhabited ball of untamed oceans, and cold mountain continents infested with maneating predators. The first colonists hailed from the upper city of Coruscant, and with funding from the galactic core and a strategic position at the crossroads between several prominent trade routes, Ession quickly prospered. Over time, hundreds of thousands of Coruscanti relocated to the jewel of the Tingel Arm in hopes of making their fortune, and avoiding the strict trade controls instituted by the Republic.
The Corporate Sector was established shortly thereafter, with Ession playing a vital role in the sector’s autonomy. The Essonians grew to be a wealthy and largely nationalist people, united by their shared heritage, and their near-constant warfare against space pirates and other ne'er do wells that preyed upon the Corporate Sector. However it was not until the rise of Exar Kun that Ession experienced true war.
Sith Enslavement
Ession has both suffered and gained from its position in the Tingel Arm. Trade brought it wealth and prominence, but ancient claims from the Sith Empires of old would put a target on the planet’s back for centuries to come. The first conflict to result from this was the Jedi Civil War. Ession had kept well out of the Mandalorian Wars, seeing the Republic as incapable of defending itself without its Jedi allies. That neutrality brought in more trade than Ession had ever been blessed with before, and much of the planet was slowly consumed by the ecunemopolis that stretched from Ession’s capital, Essonia.
Unfortunately for the Essonians, the national committee was blind to the true danger. Rather than shore up the planet’s defenses or form a proper military, the Essonians reveled in their newfound wealth, and ignored the threats on their very doorstep. When Revan fell to the Dark Side and claimed the mantle of Sith Lord, it was all Ession could do to bow and beg for some semblance of autonomy whilst the Sith subjugated its people, and absconded with its wealth to fund their war machine.
Ession spent the majority of the war as a Sith tributary state, suffering the forced conscription of its fighting aged adults, and taxes that bankrupted most of the planet’s businesses. By the time Revan’s forces were defeated, Ession was a shadow of its former self.
The Galactic Dark Ages
As with most other worlds in the outer rim, Ession was utterly ignored by the Galactic Republic during its war against the Brotherhood of Darkness. Once again, Ession was enslaved by the will of an eccentric dark lord, and once again, its people were exploited. It was only the arrival of Vikarion Grayson and his army of loyalists that saw Ession freed. Recognizing the strategic importance of the world, Jedi Master Vikarion saw to it that the forces of the Sith were driven out. For the next century, Vikarion and later his daughter would serve as the Lord and Lady of Ession respectively, keeping the planet autonomous and repelling any Sith that dared to come close.
Ession would be free for another thousand years. The Graysons were recognized as the Jedi Lords of the planet, and granted a position of kingship over the world. When the Ruusan Accords were signed to reduce the power of the Jedi, the people of Ession simply elected to ignore it. They had little desire to see their protectors drawn back to the core, and the Graysons obliged, with one of the family always remaining on Ession whilst the rest would go on to join the Jedi Order proper.
The Interregnum
As with most Jedi, the Graysons were virtually wiped out during the infamous Order 66. Only a sole member of the family survived, and was unable to rule Ession as the Galactic Empire was actively hunting the dynasty. Ession went through dozens of hard shifts in its political system, siding with the empire as much as they did with rebel elements.
The Graysons returned shortly after the rise of the Galactic Triumvirate, though they only served as military leaders subservient to the national assembly. Democracy reigned over Ession, and for a time, prosperity returned.
The Gulag Plague
Just as most of the galaxy was set back to the dark ages by the Gulag Plague, so too was Ession. Interplanetary trade came to a sudden halt, and the economy of the planet collapsed overnight. Absolute anarchy ruled Ession, with warlords rising to challenge one another any time a moment of weakness was noted. The people suffered in the midst of their planet-wide conflicts.
The Graysons took this opportunity to raise the banner of old, forging a king’s army to defend Ession’s people. They had the advantage of being the only force sensitives on the planet, and with their Jedi training combined with their supremacy of arms, the Graysons put down every warlord plaguing their planet’s people. The Essonian Kaiserreich was established, and would exist until the beginning of the new galactic golden age, which was nothing but a time of suffering for the Essonians
The Galactic Golden Age
With the Gulag Plague dying down and trade opening across the galaxy, the Essonians took their place as the premier power in the Tingel Arm. Their dominance was short lived, however, as the reformed Sith Order set their sights on regaining lost territories. Ession was one of the first targets, and though it fought valiantly, was no match for the Sith and their Mandalorian allies. Once again Ession was under the imperial yoke.
The head of House Grayson was killed, and his child forced to serve the will of the Dark Lord of the Sith to be trained as an apprentice. The boy was a capable fighter, and just as capable a leader, quickly proving himself to the Sith hierarchy. When he came of age, he learned of the history of his people, and the subjugation they had suffered at the hands of his teachers. Disgusted, the boy left the Sith Order, fleeing to Republic space to study under the Jedi Order of the Galactic Republic.
There the boy became a man, and soon after a Jedi Knight. Together with his Republic allies, young Cyril Grayson fought to free Ession, eventually doing so as the Sith’s first empire in centuries collapsed.
The Ession Reformation
Free once more, Cyril returned to reestablish Ession as a galactic power. They laid claim to many of the systems around them, established an interplanetary parliament, and would serve as the first line of defense should the Sith return. Cyril would go on to infiltrate the successor state of the empire, the One Sith, and slay the new Dark Lord under the guise of usurping the title, though in truth he only sought the dissolution of the Sith nation. This gamble was a success, and Ession grew fat with the spoils of war.
Unfortunately, Cyril’s methods used in destroying the emperor had corrupted his very soul. Damned as he was, Cyril absconded from Ession to the world of Atrisia, where he would make his final stand sacrificing several of his Sith allies, further weakening their order, and utilizing their sacrifice to forge a force storm that saw the fleet of the Galactic Alliance, a traitorous imperial power in the eyes of the Essonians, torn to ribbons. Cyril Grayson died on Atrisia, and his nine year old son Cedric was crowned King of Ession shortly thereafter.
The Betrayal
Cedric was an idealist. As an early youth, he had been granted visions of ill portent, seeing the galaxy burn and its peoples enslaved by a power from beyond the realm of death itself. With preventing this being his guiding force for action, Cedric decreed that Ession would allow practitioners of the Light and Dark sides of the Force to work together in hopes of achieving enlightenment, and learning how to halt this apocalyptic end.
For a time, things went well. Ession was reformed into the Dominion of Ession, as the Kaiserreich was dismantled in favor of more democratic leadership. That prosperity was not to last. The Sith Empire was preparing for another return, and established ties with students of the Dark Side within the Dominion.
The Sith declared war, and the Dominion held them without issue. That was until the order came down from Sith intelligence to put their sleeper agents into action. Ession was rendered defenseless and in a state of anarchy, and the government was stuck playing politics instead of reacting properly. It was a simple thing for the Sith to push through the now spread-thin Dominion military and take the capital. What followed was genocide on an industrial scale.
Not keen on the Essonians’ defiance, the Sith bombarded the planet for a week, rendering its surface as little more than a glassed ball of rubble and dirt. After that, their armies landed to slaughter anyone still living that they could find. Before the genocide, Ession was home to three trillion souls, now only around ten billion ethnic Essonians remain in the galaxy.
The Imperium
It took eight years for the Essonians to find their feet after the fall, but when they did, they started sprinting. The Essonians forged alliances with other governments-in-exile, and consolidated their vast military in the core, utilizing special loans from the Essonian bank and other institutions to industrialize their remaining holdings that would be paid at the end of their grand venture.
In one last effort to maintain a place in the galactic stage, the Essonians and their allies invaded Coruscant, unseated the imperial warlords that held it hostage, and proclaimed their king Lord-Imperator. The Grayson Imperium was born, and quickly issued reforms to end the oppression of the people. A House of Lords was established to maintain an element of representative rule, with the Lord-Imperator retaining de facto vetoes and control over the military.
For a time, the Imperium prospered. It slowly grew to control much of the core, and began to seed the dogma of its core religion, the Followers of the Ashla, into the populace. The Imperium was, however, not to last. Galactic powers that they thought would be their allies showed their hostile intent toward the regime, and much of the galaxy closed themselves off to the ‘fascist zealots’ that they saw the Essonians to be. This issue reached a boiling point when the Lord-Imperator was injured and put into a coma after a conflict with beings from beyond the Netherworld. Elements within the House of Lords that sought a more traditional democracy and quickly silenced those loyal to the monarchy. They forced through legislation to see the Imperium reformed into the Galactic Alliance, along with reaching out to previously hostile elements in hopes of forming a more powerful democratic bloc.
The Essonians were in the minority, as were the other more militaristic and aristocratic people within the Imperium. When the time came for change, their lack of numbers meant they had little influence on the outcome. By the time the Imperator awoke, the Imperium as he knew it was gone, replaced by a foreign and wholly different government.
The change meant that the Essonians could not pay back their debts to the banks, and suddenly the most prominent people in the core became some of the poorest. The government-in-exile almost ceased to exist, and millions were forced to move from the upper tiers of Coruscant, to the slums below.
Holy Land
The shift has stirred a quiet disdain for the senate in the eyes of many Essonians; the people they had uplifted had betrayed them, and cast them into the dirt as far as they were concerned. Poverty became the natural state of the Essonians. Even still, the churches they established across the territories of the former Imperium remain, as does much of their influence. The old pastors speak of faith and the compassion of the Light, but the younger and more radical elements speak of war and reclamation.
A patriotic people by nature, the jobless, tired masses that attend the churches have found some sense of meaning in this talk of a crusade. There is word of men and women meeting in the shadows of the tingel arm to wage war, and of possible links with these men and the government-in-exile. Essonian artists have begun to commission works that portray pride in the people and of the nation. The literature has shifted from its defeatist tones to optimism, and even certainty in a prosperous future. The music has shifted from simple tales of daily life to calls of duty, to lamentations for those lost and sacrifices made, and ballads regaling the deeds of heroes of old.
Whether they will remain as they are, and rise through the echelons of the Galactic Alliance as the others peoples must, or choose a different path remains to be seen. For my part, I only hope we can have peace, and cease sending our sons and daughters to die for those that do not believe as we do.
- Intent: To catalog the history of the planet/people I've been developing for a few years now
- Image Credit: Me
- Canon: N/A
- Links: N/A
- Media Name: A Brief History of Ession And Its People
- Format: Holo-Book
- Distribution: Common
- Length: Long
- Description: This holobook was written for the uninitiated to have a base understanding of Ession's history and that of its people, written by Decius Amaren, a prominent Bishop within the Followers of The Ashla.
- Author: Bishop Decius Amaren
- Publisher: The Essonian-Government-In-Exile, Ashlan Crusade
- Reception: Relatively lukewarm, this holobook is only relevant to those interested in Essonian history and its ramifications for the greater galaxy
CONTENT INFORMATION
This holobook is rather long and tedious, despite its title, and recounts the history of Ession and the people that have called it home for the past few thousand years. It goes into great detail about the minutia of Essonian politics, as well as their colored history with the rest of the galaxy. The most prominent historical events have been marked for the reader's enjoyment, but the majority of the book is a simple, biased account of history by an Essonian bishop.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Colonization
Ten thousand years ago, Ession was little more than an uninhabited ball of untamed oceans, and cold mountain continents infested with maneating predators. The first colonists hailed from the upper city of Coruscant, and with funding from the galactic core and a strategic position at the crossroads between several prominent trade routes, Ession quickly prospered. Over time, hundreds of thousands of Coruscanti relocated to the jewel of the Tingel Arm in hopes of making their fortune, and avoiding the strict trade controls instituted by the Republic.
The Corporate Sector was established shortly thereafter, with Ession playing a vital role in the sector’s autonomy. The Essonians grew to be a wealthy and largely nationalist people, united by their shared heritage, and their near-constant warfare against space pirates and other ne'er do wells that preyed upon the Corporate Sector. However it was not until the rise of Exar Kun that Ession experienced true war.
Sith Enslavement
Ession has both suffered and gained from its position in the Tingel Arm. Trade brought it wealth and prominence, but ancient claims from the Sith Empires of old would put a target on the planet’s back for centuries to come. The first conflict to result from this was the Jedi Civil War. Ession had kept well out of the Mandalorian Wars, seeing the Republic as incapable of defending itself without its Jedi allies. That neutrality brought in more trade than Ession had ever been blessed with before, and much of the planet was slowly consumed by the ecunemopolis that stretched from Ession’s capital, Essonia.
Unfortunately for the Essonians, the national committee was blind to the true danger. Rather than shore up the planet’s defenses or form a proper military, the Essonians reveled in their newfound wealth, and ignored the threats on their very doorstep. When Revan fell to the Dark Side and claimed the mantle of Sith Lord, it was all Ession could do to bow and beg for some semblance of autonomy whilst the Sith subjugated its people, and absconded with its wealth to fund their war machine.
Ession spent the majority of the war as a Sith tributary state, suffering the forced conscription of its fighting aged adults, and taxes that bankrupted most of the planet’s businesses. By the time Revan’s forces were defeated, Ession was a shadow of its former self.
The Galactic Dark Ages
As with most other worlds in the outer rim, Ession was utterly ignored by the Galactic Republic during its war against the Brotherhood of Darkness. Once again, Ession was enslaved by the will of an eccentric dark lord, and once again, its people were exploited. It was only the arrival of Vikarion Grayson and his army of loyalists that saw Ession freed. Recognizing the strategic importance of the world, Jedi Master Vikarion saw to it that the forces of the Sith were driven out. For the next century, Vikarion and later his daughter would serve as the Lord and Lady of Ession respectively, keeping the planet autonomous and repelling any Sith that dared to come close.
Ession would be free for another thousand years. The Graysons were recognized as the Jedi Lords of the planet, and granted a position of kingship over the world. When the Ruusan Accords were signed to reduce the power of the Jedi, the people of Ession simply elected to ignore it. They had little desire to see their protectors drawn back to the core, and the Graysons obliged, with one of the family always remaining on Ession whilst the rest would go on to join the Jedi Order proper.
The Interregnum
As with most Jedi, the Graysons were virtually wiped out during the infamous Order 66. Only a sole member of the family survived, and was unable to rule Ession as the Galactic Empire was actively hunting the dynasty. Ession went through dozens of hard shifts in its political system, siding with the empire as much as they did with rebel elements.
The Graysons returned shortly after the rise of the Galactic Triumvirate, though they only served as military leaders subservient to the national assembly. Democracy reigned over Ession, and for a time, prosperity returned.
The Gulag Plague
Just as most of the galaxy was set back to the dark ages by the Gulag Plague, so too was Ession. Interplanetary trade came to a sudden halt, and the economy of the planet collapsed overnight. Absolute anarchy ruled Ession, with warlords rising to challenge one another any time a moment of weakness was noted. The people suffered in the midst of their planet-wide conflicts.
The Graysons took this opportunity to raise the banner of old, forging a king’s army to defend Ession’s people. They had the advantage of being the only force sensitives on the planet, and with their Jedi training combined with their supremacy of arms, the Graysons put down every warlord plaguing their planet’s people. The Essonian Kaiserreich was established, and would exist until the beginning of the new galactic golden age, which was nothing but a time of suffering for the Essonians
The Galactic Golden Age
With the Gulag Plague dying down and trade opening across the galaxy, the Essonians took their place as the premier power in the Tingel Arm. Their dominance was short lived, however, as the reformed Sith Order set their sights on regaining lost territories. Ession was one of the first targets, and though it fought valiantly, was no match for the Sith and their Mandalorian allies. Once again Ession was under the imperial yoke.
The head of House Grayson was killed, and his child forced to serve the will of the Dark Lord of the Sith to be trained as an apprentice. The boy was a capable fighter, and just as capable a leader, quickly proving himself to the Sith hierarchy. When he came of age, he learned of the history of his people, and the subjugation they had suffered at the hands of his teachers. Disgusted, the boy left the Sith Order, fleeing to Republic space to study under the Jedi Order of the Galactic Republic.
There the boy became a man, and soon after a Jedi Knight. Together with his Republic allies, young Cyril Grayson fought to free Ession, eventually doing so as the Sith’s first empire in centuries collapsed.
The Ession Reformation
Free once more, Cyril returned to reestablish Ession as a galactic power. They laid claim to many of the systems around them, established an interplanetary parliament, and would serve as the first line of defense should the Sith return. Cyril would go on to infiltrate the successor state of the empire, the One Sith, and slay the new Dark Lord under the guise of usurping the title, though in truth he only sought the dissolution of the Sith nation. This gamble was a success, and Ession grew fat with the spoils of war.
Unfortunately, Cyril’s methods used in destroying the emperor had corrupted his very soul. Damned as he was, Cyril absconded from Ession to the world of Atrisia, where he would make his final stand sacrificing several of his Sith allies, further weakening their order, and utilizing their sacrifice to forge a force storm that saw the fleet of the Galactic Alliance, a traitorous imperial power in the eyes of the Essonians, torn to ribbons. Cyril Grayson died on Atrisia, and his nine year old son Cedric was crowned King of Ession shortly thereafter.
The Betrayal
Cedric was an idealist. As an early youth, he had been granted visions of ill portent, seeing the galaxy burn and its peoples enslaved by a power from beyond the realm of death itself. With preventing this being his guiding force for action, Cedric decreed that Ession would allow practitioners of the Light and Dark sides of the Force to work together in hopes of achieving enlightenment, and learning how to halt this apocalyptic end.
For a time, things went well. Ession was reformed into the Dominion of Ession, as the Kaiserreich was dismantled in favor of more democratic leadership. That prosperity was not to last. The Sith Empire was preparing for another return, and established ties with students of the Dark Side within the Dominion.
The Sith declared war, and the Dominion held them without issue. That was until the order came down from Sith intelligence to put their sleeper agents into action. Ession was rendered defenseless and in a state of anarchy, and the government was stuck playing politics instead of reacting properly. It was a simple thing for the Sith to push through the now spread-thin Dominion military and take the capital. What followed was genocide on an industrial scale.
Not keen on the Essonians’ defiance, the Sith bombarded the planet for a week, rendering its surface as little more than a glassed ball of rubble and dirt. After that, their armies landed to slaughter anyone still living that they could find. Before the genocide, Ession was home to three trillion souls, now only around ten billion ethnic Essonians remain in the galaxy.
The Imperium
It took eight years for the Essonians to find their feet after the fall, but when they did, they started sprinting. The Essonians forged alliances with other governments-in-exile, and consolidated their vast military in the core, utilizing special loans from the Essonian bank and other institutions to industrialize their remaining holdings that would be paid at the end of their grand venture.
In one last effort to maintain a place in the galactic stage, the Essonians and their allies invaded Coruscant, unseated the imperial warlords that held it hostage, and proclaimed their king Lord-Imperator. The Grayson Imperium was born, and quickly issued reforms to end the oppression of the people. A House of Lords was established to maintain an element of representative rule, with the Lord-Imperator retaining de facto vetoes and control over the military.
For a time, the Imperium prospered. It slowly grew to control much of the core, and began to seed the dogma of its core religion, the Followers of the Ashla, into the populace. The Imperium was, however, not to last. Galactic powers that they thought would be their allies showed their hostile intent toward the regime, and much of the galaxy closed themselves off to the ‘fascist zealots’ that they saw the Essonians to be. This issue reached a boiling point when the Lord-Imperator was injured and put into a coma after a conflict with beings from beyond the Netherworld. Elements within the House of Lords that sought a more traditional democracy and quickly silenced those loyal to the monarchy. They forced through legislation to see the Imperium reformed into the Galactic Alliance, along with reaching out to previously hostile elements in hopes of forming a more powerful democratic bloc.
The Essonians were in the minority, as were the other more militaristic and aristocratic people within the Imperium. When the time came for change, their lack of numbers meant they had little influence on the outcome. By the time the Imperator awoke, the Imperium as he knew it was gone, replaced by a foreign and wholly different government.
The change meant that the Essonians could not pay back their debts to the banks, and suddenly the most prominent people in the core became some of the poorest. The government-in-exile almost ceased to exist, and millions were forced to move from the upper tiers of Coruscant, to the slums below.
Holy Land
The shift has stirred a quiet disdain for the senate in the eyes of many Essonians; the people they had uplifted had betrayed them, and cast them into the dirt as far as they were concerned. Poverty became the natural state of the Essonians. Even still, the churches they established across the territories of the former Imperium remain, as does much of their influence. The old pastors speak of faith and the compassion of the Light, but the younger and more radical elements speak of war and reclamation.
A patriotic people by nature, the jobless, tired masses that attend the churches have found some sense of meaning in this talk of a crusade. There is word of men and women meeting in the shadows of the tingel arm to wage war, and of possible links with these men and the government-in-exile. Essonian artists have begun to commission works that portray pride in the people and of the nation. The literature has shifted from its defeatist tones to optimism, and even certainty in a prosperous future. The music has shifted from simple tales of daily life to calls of duty, to lamentations for those lost and sacrifices made, and ballads regaling the deeds of heroes of old.
Whether they will remain as they are, and rise through the echelons of the Galactic Alliance as the others peoples must, or choose a different path remains to be seen. For my part, I only hope we can have peace, and cease sending our sons and daughters to die for those that do not believe as we do.
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