First Battle of Vontor

The First Battle of Vontor (25,100 BBY) was the first of three battles fought between the expansionist Hutts and the Empire of Xim the Despot at the planet Vontor.
==Background==
The Hutt Empire had been competing with Xim's Empire in the Tion Cluster for control of the Si'Klaata Cluster for some time. The planet Vontor was the focal area of the cluster's conflict for control, As for Xim the planet was a huge source of kiirium that was needed for his War-economy, To produce War-robots, Heavy armour, Starships.
Xim sought to protect his battleships in the same manner of his war-robots. Employing techniques the Hutts had yet to master, his shipwrights forged dreadnaught hulls speckled with a special ore called kiirium that would reflect laser beams. But the ore was a most precious supply at the time, since the Kiirium Reaches had been mined and exhausted of their namesake. So Xim and his men were always looking for more kiirium--until Kossak stupidly challenged Xim to ritual combat at the world of Vontor, deep in the savage Si'Klaata Cluster. Stupid it seemed, at the time, because the Hutts thought Vontor to be a barren rock suitable only as a staging ground for these ritual matches, apparently unaware that its very soil possessed the richest of all kiirium ores.
Just as a Hutt would never turn tail from the scent of a spice mine, Kossak gambled that Xim would unable to resist the lure of a kiirium-laden world. After issuing his combat challenger, he surreptitiously channeled the planetary coordinates to Xim's spies in advance, and weakened its defense to a single Weequay garrison. If he could trick Xim into bringing his fleet to orbit the world, he could hijack the primitive beacon network surrounding it, cut off escape routes, and destroy the Despot for good, even with a much smaller force.
==The battle==
Arriving weeks before Kossak, Xim crushed the Weequay garrison without losing a single soldier. Emboldened, he summoned the rest of his armada to Vontor. He then dispatched scouts to make forays on worlds close-by while his automatons mined the kiirium ore and fastened plates onto every hull he had. It was only when he ordered the fleet to combat readiness did he realize his blunder: the living pilots under his command had difficulty keeping formations due to the intense reflective sheen of this strain of kiirium, and even rigorous training did not do much to overcome the limitations of the organic eye. 
Kossak arrived at the appointed time to find Xim's engineers in a panic, trying to strip off the kiirium plates from the ships So Kossak threw every tarrada cruiser and batil fighter he could muster against the Despot's navy, instructing them to forgo basic targeting and just light-up the stars, Xim's pilots, flying "blind" in this laser show, did the rest of the damage themselves.
==Aftermath==
Xim fled with whatever his engineers salvaged, swearing never to put his faith in living beings again. He rounded up the remaining units of his fleet and is rumored to have jettisoned most of his "dead organic weight," replacing his crews with war-robots. Then, according to the Hutts, he marauded worlds of the Cluster to recoup resources for a vengeful strike on Vontor. And because he wanted Kossak to bear the brunt of the beating he would inflict, Xim dared the Hutt to a second ritual combat.
Although most of Xim's fleet was wiped out by the Hutts, he would continue to press his claim at the Second Battle of Vontor.
==Legacy==
The First Battle of Vontor was mentioned in Xim at Vontor, a holoplay written by Peshosloc at some point between 15,762 BBY and 15,609 BBY.
It was also mentioned in "The Gleam of Kiirium," a poem purportedly written by the Croke poet Asenec in the days before his death in 244 BBY.
==Sources==
*The Essential Chronology 
*Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds
*The New Essential Chronology
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*The Essential Atlas
* 
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*Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: The Expanded Visual Dictionary 
*The Essential Guide to Warfare
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*Lords of Nal Hutta
==Notes and references==
Category:Battles of the Xim Wars
Category:Battles of Vontor