Massacre of Aquilaris The Massacre of Aquilaris was an attack by the Chagras Hegemony on the Galactic Republic planet of Aquilaris Minor in 1042 BBY during the Republic Dark Age . The Chagras Hegemony was a splinter state of the New Sith Empire which had fought a protracted war with the Republic and the Jedi Order for nearly a millennia since 2000 BBY . Chagras forces under the Sith Lord Odion wiped out much of the defenses , killed many civilians and destroyed much of the cityscape . Two survivors of the battle were the Jedi Knight Vannar Treece and the Human girl Kerra Holt . Due to her experiences , Kerra Holt joined the Jedi Order in an effort to avenge the destruction of her homeworld at the hands of Odion . History . Background . Aquilaris Minor had formerly been a resort world in the Grumani sector . During the Republic Dark Age , it accepted refugees from Sith - occupied Space until it drew the attention of the Chagras Hegemony , a Sith empire that was ruled by Sith Lord Chagras . Chagras was the sole survivor of the " Charge Matrica " , a succession conflict that had been instigated by his mother Vilia Calimondra , the matriarch of the Calimondra family , a powerful Sith clan operating in the region . Throughout the New Sith Wars , Vilia had married several different husbands and acquired a sizeable interstellar empire within the Grumani sector . Through these marriages , she produced seven children including Chagras and a daughter named Xelian . Each of her children vied for the right to inherit her empire . To resolve this dispute , Vilia proposed a contest known as the " Charge Matrica " where the successor who conquered the most territory would win the right to be her sole heir . This conflict began in 1066 BBY and devastated much of the Grumani sector and the surrounding space . Eventually , this contest degenerated into a family feud among Vilia ' s children after Xelian declared war on Chagras when her bid began to fail . Vilia did nothing to stop this family feud since she wanted to eliminate any potential threats to her rule . By circa 1050 BBY , Chagras won the " Charge Matrica " and became Vilia ' s designated heir . His victory brought a period of stability to the Grumani sector and guaranteed Chagras the assistance of his nieces and nephews , so he tasked them with repairing the damage that the war had caused his holdings . One of these nephews was the Sith Lord Odion , the eldest son of Xelian , who became one of his military commanders . By 1042 BBY , the Chagras Hegemony had recovered from the war and was ready to challenge the Galactic Republic . Aquilaris was one of those worlds targeted during this brief exapnsionist campaign . During a raid on the University of Sanbra , the Sith Lord Odion learnt that a team of academic researchers were cooperating with the Jedi Order on a research project to locate the Helm of Ieldis , an ancient Sith artifact created by Lord Ieldis prior to the Great Hyperspace War . Following the invasion , the university researchers had scattered with both the Jedi and Sith looking for them . Odion regarded the Helm as a potential game changer in the internecine Sith family feud which had destabilized much of the Grumani sector . Odion also obtained intelligence that some Jedi were planning to meet twelve of these researchers on Aquilaris Minor . Since Odion was still a junior Sith Lord within the Chagras Hegemony , he needed to get authorization from his superiors to launch the attack on Aquilaris . Odion was able to gain authorization from his grandmother Vilia Calimondra , by claiming that the purpose of the raid was to capture the Jedi Knight Vannar Treece , whose hit - and - run raids on Sith Space was undermining Sith rule . However , Odion ' s true purpose was to acquire the Helm for himself . He did not inform his fellow Sith family about the Helm since he wanted to gain an advantage over them in any future conflict . Due to his troubled childhood , Odion had developed a deeply nihilistic worldview which advocated destroying all life in the galaxy in order to find peace . Details . A Chagras military fleet led by Odion invaded Aquilaris . The Galactic Republic defense of the planet was led by Vannar Treece himself and included a fleet of " Hammerhead " - class cruisers . While little details are known about the battle , what is known is that the Republic forces were overwhelmed by the invading Chagras forces led by Lord Odion . Sith forces led by a lightsaber - wielding Odion landed at the port city of Capital Cay and proceeded to slaughter the civilians including throwing them into the water . However , he ordered his troops to avoid the block where the researchers were located since he intended to capture them alive . Future Jedi Knight Kerra Holt ' s parents Aron and Mercia Holt told her to flee for he life from the marauding Sith . She fled to the docks where she met met up with her friend Joad Kreel , a young teenaged boy whose father was a member of the Seacroppers ' Guild and operated a submersible . Joad told Kerra that he would wait for her while she brought her family back so that they could escape underwater into the oceans of Aquilaris . However , he got frightened and he left without her and his father who disappeared during the fighting . He managed to escape the harbor prior to a bombarded by Odion ' s forces . Joad subsequently returned to Capital Cay due to a lack of supplies and endured the Sith occupation . He remained with the Seacroppers ' Guild but experience poverty and starvation due to economic hardship and the Sith occupiers seizing the supplies of the local people . Meanwhile , the Holts and the other researchers were captured by Odion ' s troops and forcibly enlisted in Project Pandemonium , to locate the Sith artifact the Helm of Ieldis . To cover up his secret mission , Odion ordered his forces to obliterate the residential block , destroying much evidence . Kerra made her way back to her home where she encountered Vannar whom she initially mistook for an intruder . However , she quickly recognized him as a Jedi and related to him how her family had to flee , but she did not know where else to go . Taking pity on here , Vannar informed Kerra that he had a starfighter hidden nearby and offered to help escape offworld . He promised Kerra that they would return to Aquilaris when it was safe and that they would make it safe as Jedi . Aftermath . The Sith occupation . During the subsequent Sith occupation of Aquilaris , the Sith enslaved the surviving population including Joad Kreel , who was forced to return back to port since he had nowhere else to go . Odion massacred most of the world ' s inhabitants , and Chagras eventually intervened and prevented his nephew from killing all of the planet ' s population , so that some of the people could be used as slaves , to operate Aquilaris ' s fleek eel traps . Suspecting that Odion had an ulterior motive for invading Aquilaris , Chagras had Odion sent away from Aquilaris Minor . The Sith occupiers also requisitioned the populace ' s homes and food , reducing the Aquilarians to a state of poverty and misery . Kreel would spent much of his adolescence growing up in the Seacroppers ' barracks , enduring squalid and unhealthy conditions . To cope with the harsh Sith occupation , Kreel and many other Aquilarians became addicted to the spice Deluge , a narcotic that had been deliberately distributed by the pro - Republic Grace Command on Alderaan under Operation Deluge . Operation Deluge was a secret black operation initiated by the Alderaanian Baron Lemayne , an influential Republic intelligence official , to weaken the Sith war effort without diverting substantial Republic military resources from defending the Colonies and Core Worlds from further Sith incursions . Despite its successes , many of the civilian populations in Sith - occupied Space became addicted to the drug but Grace Command merely regarded them as necessary collateral damage in the Republic ' s war effort against the Sith . Following the events on Aquilaris , Holt subsequently became a Padawan under Treece ' s tutelage . By 1032 BBY , she had passed her Jedi Trials and become a novice Jedi Knight . She subsequently served with distinction during the Chelloan affair where she helped fellow Jedi Gorlan Palladane evacuated around sixty thousand civilians from Chelloa prior to the destruction of its surface . Due to his experiences on Aquilaris and other worlds , Vannar also authored the holotract " Those Who Drown " which highlighted the plight of civilians in Sith - occupied Space . He also decried the general tendency within the Republic to blame the victims of Sith domination for not rising up to challenge their oppressors , citing they lacked the will and the strength to defend and free themselves from the Sith warlords . However , he still argued that they could be led to overcome their condition if the " way was lit by those who fight for good . " The Deluge campaign . In late 1032 BBY , Kerra would subsequently return to Aquilaris Minor during the Aquilaris campaign following a distress call from the Seacroppers ' Guild . In reality , this was a coded signal requesting more Deluge spice which had inundated the Grumani sector due to Operation Deluge . Following the death of Lord Chagras and the collapse of his empire , the planet had come under the Sith Lord Daiman , Odion ' s estranged younger brother and had declined economically due to the collapse of trade and the dictatorial tendencies of Daiman . Aquilaris attracted the attention of three rival parties with vested interests during a three campaign involving Daiman ' s princedom , Hutt crimelord Zodoh ' s empire , and the Galactic Republic and Jedi Order represented by Grace Command ' s Captain Jenn Devaad and Kerra Holt respectively . The Sith Lord Daiman had recently acquired the planet in the ensuing power vacuum following the collapse of the Chagras Hegemony . Zodoh had wanted to expand into traditional Sith Space by using his new Stormdriver superweapons to intimidate his Sith rivals . First , he intended to test them on Aquilaris Minor by using their weaponized vaporators to submerge the planet in water . Meanwhile , Grace Command had intended to drive out the Sith while secretly inundating the population with Deluge as part of Operation Deluge . In contrast , the Kerra Holt had planned to liberate the planet from Sith occupation and rescue the Aquilarians from the machinations of both Zodoh and the Sith . Zodoh and Grace Command wiped out Daiman ' s meager garrison , with the latter taking control of the planet . Zodoh ' s forces retreated into the far reaches of the Aquilaris system but lured Devil Squadron into a trap . The entire squadron with the exception of Captain Jenn were killed . Zodoh then proceeded to test his fleet of Stormdrivers on Aquilaris , creating a global flood which inundated much of the surface in water . Subsequently , Jenn managed to escape and disrupted the coordination of the Stromdrivers in the process . Despite this minor setback and the destruction of stocks of Deluge spice during the escape , Zodoh regarded this as a victory since it had proven the effectiveness of his superweapons . He then dispatched his fleet to Darkknell , capital of Daiman ' s princedom . He was ultimately defeated and slain during the battle . Meanwhile , thousands of lives on Aquilaris were saved through the efforts of Kerra with the assistance of local Seacroppers Joad and Padgett , who managed to evacuate many civilians in submersibles to underwater harvester station s . After the events of the Aquilaris campaign , Devaad and Holt came up with a strategy to sabotage Operation Deluge . Devaad would return to Grace Command and claim that she had gotten a contract for distributing the Deluge on Aquilaris . This ensured that Grace Command would continue to send transport ships which Devaad would personally fly to and from Sith occupied words . En route , she would dump the Deluge into hyperspace while returning to the Republic with civilian refugees . With the hidden undersea facilities on Aquilaris , the world could even become a important hub for ferrying refugees from Sith occupied space to safety in the Republic . Behind the scenes . The Massacre of Aquilaris first appeared as a plot device in " " which debuted on November 10 , 2010 . Its main function was to explain the motives and sentiments influencing the main protagonist Kerra Holt . It also introduced the planet Aquilaris Minor whose backstory was expanded in the second comic arc " " which ran from August 17 through to December 21 , 2011 .