Through Victory My Chains Are Broken
Sluis Van
Sluis Sector
902 ABY
Sluis Sector
902 ABY
A world sits burning. On the frontier of two great powers, its picture once of swirling grays, patterned by white, filled with green, and dotted by blue, now is inflamed by orange as the fires are witnessed from orbit. A picture of a world in crisis, a world which has only so recently been invaded, but far more pressingly, a world whose own side has bombarded to achieve ultimate victory. A world framed by the evidence of acts most unnatural, floating hulks, the scorch marks of turbolaser batteries long since made icy cold, as inert star destroyers, cruisers, frigates, corvettes, and even small abandoned starfighters map along the vacuum of space, of many makes and classes, of two separate allegiances.
Such is the sight that greets the relief fleet, a fleet of a singular purpose only.
To restore order upon Sluis Van.
They are ghostly vessels, the ships that lay cold and still along the orbit of Sluis Van. As questions are quietly asked of what exactly had happened, as rumors abound of what exactly the Emperor had done here, words begin to matter less and less, as orders and commands fly out from various bridges.
The crews of these mighty vessels may have otherwise disappeared, but the ships themselves hold much value, both those of the Sith and the Alliance. If they are to be used as scrap or requisitioned for the building of the Second Legion shall be determined later, but at this moment as the relief fleet’s hulls are filled to the brim with secondary crews, captains order expeditions off to investigate the condition of the vessels. Their tasks are simple, to bring in any survivors of the battle, to secure every part of the ship, and to determine the safety of the vessels for requisition.
It is expected to be an easy mission. Yet, all know no plan survives contact with the enemy, and though the enemy is in retreat or otherwise dead, as the first expeditions reach their targets they will find that they are far from alone.
And that the spectres that remain are hardly happy to see them.
Sluis Van is in flames. Once one of the jewels of the Rimward Trade League, the Sith have made evident their care for such a title or position, much of the population lay dead, if for small mercies the orbital bombardment of the Escobar made their deaths quick. Yet, as is expected for a world, a world of such importance equally much of the population survived, those that survived the apocalypse as their cities burned, those of the periphery out in the fields and nature, spared much of the horrors that their urban cousins had to experience.
Yet, what is left of them is hardly a pretty sight. Anarchy has claimed Sluis Van, and any Sith rule upon the world has been thrown off, as factions battle across the world. Most remember the rule of the Rimward Trade League, and ideas dispense that if the Sith have abandoned the world, then their opportunity has come. All the while, others, joined by small groups of Alliance personnel unable to evacuate the world, press for them to go underground, confident that the Alliance will return for them. While the most fanatical of them, those touched by the Eternalist pantheon, and many others affected by the ritual in orbit, have grown frenzied, crazy, insane, as blood runs rivers down the ruined, burning cities.
And such is the sight that greets the Sith as they make landfall upon the capital.