In the Darkness there is Truth
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Mooks for Libertas.
Image Credit: Here.
Role: Black Ops. Fighter Pilots.
Permissions: Permission for all subs made by Laira Darkhold's writer here and here.
Links: The Enlightened, Nur Jahan, Eidolon Supplies & Transport, The Resistance.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Unit Name: Wraith Squadron
Affiliation: Darth Libertas.
Classification: Black Ops. Fighter Pilots.
Description: The historical Wraith Squadron was a group of misfits who served the New Republic as a combination of elite fighter pilots and commandos. While Wedge Antilles and his comrades in arms are long dead, the name Wraith Squadron lives on. Various galactic governments and rebel groups committed to the ideals of the Republic and the Alliance had fielded their own version.
Th members of this particular Wraith Squadron claim to fight for freedom and to break chains...but not in the way their supposed forbears did. They also serve a Sith. Darth Libertas is an independent Sith with a somewhat anarchist philosophy. Her beliefs are based on the Sith Code that has formed the bedrock of countless Sith orders and empires, but she has given it a personal touch. Strength must be balanced by reason; power must be balanced with control; ambition must be balanced with pragmatism; emotion must be balanced with realism.
Libertas is a Sith with a philosophy of liberation through self-actualisation. She is almost an anarchist Sith in her methods, though not in a chaotic way. From her point of view, she is the breaker of chains, the bringer of...freedom. Just not freedom in the way some would think. She is not a 'kindly Sith' by any stretch of the imagination. After all, those who do not fit into her 'utopia' must be culled. It is a pretty brutal version of the self-help doctrine of 'the Force helps those who helps themselves'. She respects those who have endured hardship and thrived. For this reason, she prefers recruits who have experienced great hardship and become unfettered by it.
Naming a group of minions after a famous Rebel Alliance unit is one of the many ironies she appreciates. All in all, the squadron has twelve members. Fittingly, the commander of this squadron is a career insurgent. Tis Tiekkyrs is a Sullustan who used to serve in the Sullustan Home Guard. However, after the Battle of Kaeshana, he enlisted in the Galactic Alliance's navy to fight against the First Order. He proved a good pilot and capable squadron commander.
However, Imperial atrocities, Jedi betrayals and other events had a radicalising effect on him, making him more and more militant. Tiekkyrs joined the fledgling Resistance after the Sith attack on Coruscant and the defection of a significant portion of the Alliance's military. However, his militancy eventually put him at odds with his superiors. The First Order's annexation of Sullust further radicalised him. Tiekkyrs was booted out of the Resistance after committing atrocities, for he judged large loss of civilian life to be acceptable while destroying industrial assets so that the Imperial Bloc could not use them.
Now he is in the cockpit again and leads a squadron, but he serves Libertas. Tiekkyrs does not care much for the Sith anarchist's peculiar ideology. However, strangely enough, she shares his antipathy for Imperial groups such as the Sith Empire, albeit for different reasons. It is very much a pragmatic arrangement. He carries out missions for her and trains her pilots, and she provides him with resources for his own private crusade. Tiekkyrs is an able, but ruthless and headstrong officer. He feels strong disdain for Jedi, believing they cost the Alliance the war.
Tiekkyrs is Force-Sensitive, but in a minor way. Libertas possesses a rare power called Enhance Force-Sensitivity, which allows her to boost someone's connection to the Force. She used it on the Sullustan as part of the Faustian bargain he struck with her. The process has not allowed him to shoot bolts of lightning from his fingertips, move boulders with his mind or create illusionary legions. But it has significantly boosted his reflexes, and piloting skills. This allows him to pull off almost impossible and daring manoeuvres in his craft. He also has precognitive abilities and can use the Force to influence the minds of others, which could say result in them losing concentration.
Nawara Daru is the second-in-command of the squadron. He is a Twi'lek. In contrast to the Sullustan commander, he does not have a background as a career rebel. Instead he used to fly for the One Sith. He has history with Darth Libertas and followed her into the underground after the collapse of the One Sith Empire. Unsurprisingly, this has been the cause of tension between him and Tiekkyrs. Nawara regards the Sullustan as a hypocrite, though he is no less ruthless. Nawara still apes the mannerisms of an Imperial officer, which is a bit ironic given the company he keeps. Nawara is minorly Force-Sensitive. His connection was not strong enough to merit training as a Sith, but boost his piloting and marksmanship. This caused him to be passed over by the Sith and denied admission to their academies, but Libertas took notice of his talent.
Zinat Mahal is a comrade of Tiekkyrs and also a radical, though a Mon Calamari rather than a Sullustan. Zinat feels strong hatred for the Sith Empire ever since it occupied Dac and poisoned its oceans. She was one of the Mon Calamari who managed to flee the desolation of their natural habitat. Zinat also dislikes Jedi, as the Silver Jedi Order had retreated from its former territory, including Dac at the time, leaving it open to Sith expansion. Zinat comes from a merchant family that opposed Dac's membership in the coalition, and sees recent events as validation of her beliefs. Unlike Tiekkyrs, Zinat has not made a deal with Libertas to grant her access to preternatural powers. She prefers to rely on her natural piloting skills and training. She is a bit of a Mon Calamari nationalist, which puts her in good standing with Libertas' Mon Calamari apprentice Nur Jahana. It was Zinat who put Tiekkyrs in contact with the Sith Lord.
Interestingly, every member of the group is a non-human. This is intentional on Libertas' part, who is a bit of a Twi'lek nationalist and opposed to Human High Culture. They are trained to operate independently and without micromanagement from their superiors, which means they are given a degree of latitude to complete their missions. Like the Wraith Squadron of yore, the members of this group carry out commando operations on the ground as well as traditional starfighter missions in space. Libertas only has a limited amount of resources. The Galactic Empire of old might have had a nigh-unlimited number of stormtroopers and starfighter pilots, but she cannot afford to be cavalier with her minions. This has had the effect of making them more loyal, as she has to offer them incentives to stay instead of ruling through fear.
COMBAT INFORMATION:
Unit Size: Small
Unit Availability: Unique
Unit Experience: Elite.
Equipment:
Starfighters:
Armour:
Rifles:
- Dart Gun (variable chemical payload)
- VT-Needle Disruptor
- Verpine Shatter Rifle
- Model MGL-1
- 8-Gauge Scattergun
Misc:
Melee Weapons:
Attached Weapons:
Combat Function: Like the ancient squadron they derive their name from, the Wraiths are a unit of pilots and special operatives trained to carry out commando missions. Thus they can carry out more varied tasks than starfighter missions. Secondary skill sets of the squadron's members include infiltration, slicing, breaching, demolitions, communications and so on. Sometimes they will spend an extended period of time on deployment to a city or planet and have to complete their objectives with minimal external support and not much of a supply train. As a result, initiative and self-reliance are key qualities. Naturally, they are also very good pilots who are able to fly a variety of craft. They are well-equipped for espionage, raids, escort missions, sudden strikes and ambushes, though they suffer in pitched front-line combat.
It is just one squadron, so they cannot overwhelm an enemy through sheer force of numbers. Sometimes they will work together with the Enlightened, a group of Libertas' apprentices, or the Freedom Guard, her unit of elite Stormtroopers, but they will often work alone. Some of the Wraiths are Force-Sensitive. They lack the hard-hitting powers commonly associated with Force-Users, but their Force affinity augments their piloting skills, marksmanship, senses and reflexes and grants them precognitive abilities.
Strengths:
- Veteran pilots and commandos.
- Some members of the squadron are Force-Sensitive. They lack the hard-hitting powers commonly associated with Force-Users, but their Force affinity augments their piloting skills, senses and reflexes and grants them precognitive abilities.
- Extremely small unit. It is just one squadron.
- Equipped for commando operations, rapid strikes and the like. They suffer in prolonged combat without support.
Centuries ago, the Rebel Alliance war hero and ace pilot Wedge Antilles founded Wraith Squadron, a mixed unit of pilots and commandos. Composed of a rag-tag band of misfits and never-do-wells, they made themselves a name fighting the villains of the galaxy. Using ingenious and often unorthodox tactics, they conducted a series of daring operations against Imperial Warlords and Yuuzhan Vong alike. The original members are long dead, as is the government they served.
However, given their fame it is no surprise that there have been countless copycats. Just like there is a Galactic or Sith Empire, Confederacy of Independent Systems, Galactic Republic or Alliance every year or so. Darth Libertas, an independent Sith Lord with anarchist leanings, decided she wanted her own Wraith Squadron. The Twi'lek cyborg has a strong sense of irony. In her own twisted view, she is fighting for freedom and breaking the chains of the shackled...just not in the way most people would expect. Libertas fought for the One Sith, but went underground after the fall of Coruscant. She opposed the Rogue Sith during the Omega Crisis because she regarded blowing up the galaxy out of spite as wasteful.
In the aftermath of the Empire's collapse, she was left with few resources. Unwilling to join any of the Imperialist factions that formed in the wake of the One Sith's fall, she had to be careful with her assets and use them wisely. Ironically, this put her in a similar position to the historical Rebel Alliance. The core of her troops were composed of her fellow Twi'leks, who embraced her ideology of self-actualisation as a way to break the chains humans often forced on them.
Her Wraith Squadron was founded by a Sullustan pilot and terrorist called Tis Tiekkyrs. Formerly a member of the Sullustan Home Guard and then the Galactic Alliance navy, he was radicalised by the Alliance's collapse and the occupation of his homeworld. As first he found a home with a pan-galactic insurgency called the Resistance, but his extremism, anti-Jedi paranoia and indifference to collateral damage alienated him from them.
He was a skilled starfighter commander who distinguished himself in many skirmishes against First Imperial Warlords and Sith, but then he went. Operating on a world at the edge of Sith space, he targeted medical supplies, industrial installations and civilian centres with non-conventional warfare. Imperial-sympathetic elements were gaining influence, so his logic was that since the rebels coudl not defend the world, they would 'deny the enemy its resources'. Rebellions may be built on hope, but are fought with viciousness, but even so targeting civilians usually does fall under the category of doing what needs to be done. So he was kicked out. Some of his extremist comrades followed him.
Tiekkyrs sought the resources to prosecute his own private crusade. To this achieve this end, he also craved the power that Force-Users wielded, for it allowed them to trample upon the so-called Force-blind, who were denied the inherent advantages of the space mages due to what amounted to a genetic fluke. He found both with a Sith Lord who shared his disdain for the great powers of the galaxy, albeit for different reasons. The two made a Faustian bargain. Under Libertas' watchful eye, the Sullustan gathered like-minded radicals and mercenaries to fill the ranks of the squadron.
As part of their trial by fire, they were deployed against a First Imperial Warlord in the Unknown Regions who was interfering with Libertas' operations. Libertas specifically chose him because he had brutally persecuted Sullustans, which gave the squadron commander particular incentive to pursue him. Given carte blanche by the Sith Lord, the Wraiths carried out a campaign of insurrectionary terrorism. It was effective, but characterised by great ruthlessness. Tiekkyrs paid little heed to civilian casualties. Indeed, he operated on the basis of the principle 'the worse, the better', which meant that the worse social conditions got for the people, the more inclined they would be to rise up. Thus he considered it to the cause's benefit when the warlord clamped down hard on the population in retaliation for terrorist attacks. Terror bombings, assassinations and executions of supposed collaborators were part and parcel of their operations.
As part of the operation, they also helped Nur Jahan undermine the Independent Mining Guild's hold on one of its colonies, sponsoring a rebellion against the corporatist regime. Libertas spent a long while directing the Wraiths against 'deserving targets', while ensuring that the terrorist methods used by them against their foes would make it difficult for them to return to more 'legitimate' rebels who abhorred Imperials and Sith, but believed that there were certain lines that should not be crossed.
Then she directed them against a fellow rebel cell that was too 'moderate' in its pursuit of the struggle for freedom and led by a rogue Jedi. Indeed, when Libertas partly arranged them to clash in order to ensure that Tiekkyrs would not be able to get cold feet. At the time the Wraiths' association with her was still secret, but she ensured that this intelligence was leaked. With their bridges burnt, the Wraiths became part of her power structure.
