Chelloan affair

The Chelloan affair was a campaign of the New Sith Wars and Second Charge Matrica that was fought on the planet Chelloa in 1032 BBY. It was a three-way campaign involving the two rival Sith Lords Daiman, Odion and the Jedi Order and Chelloan resistance represented by Vannar Treece, Kerra Holt, and Gorlan Palladane. Chelloa was part of Daiman's princedom known as the Daimanate, a remnant of the Chagras Hegemony led by Lord Chagras whose demise led to anarchy within the Grumani sector. Each party had their own vested interest in the planet.
Daiman had exploited Chelloa as a source of baradium, an important component into the manufacture of munitions in his war effort. In contrast, Odion had sought to destroy Chelloa since its surplus of baradium upset the balance of the Force according to his nihilistic philosophy. Meanwhile, the Jedi Order through Vannar and Gorlan had sought to destroy Daiman's military holdings on Chelloa during Operation Influx in a lightning raid. However, this Jedi taskforce was destroyed during a raid by Odion. The sole survivor was novice Jedi Knight Kerra Holt who linked up with the Chelloan underground led by Gorlan Palladane.
As part of a scorched earth campaign, Daiman sought to strategically deny Chelloa and its baradium deposits to Odion. He managed to infiltrate several Kinetic corruptors disguised as mobile munitions complexes onto Chelloa. Daiman then tricked Kerra into luring Odion and his Lightning Guard onto Chelloa with false intelligence that he was going to expand his baradium operations. Odion attempted to secure control of these for his war effort but was caught in a trap when the disguised Kinetic corruptors ignited large areas of Chelloa's surface; killing much of Odion's army. Meanwhile, Kerra and Gorlan succeeded in evacuating much of Chelloa's civilian population in a hastily-assembled fleet of transports and cargo liners which became known as the Freedom Fleet.
==History==
===Background===
During the the Republic Dark Age, the weakened Galactic Republic was forced to retreat to a security cordon around the Core Worlds, Colonies, and the Inner Rim; effectively abandoning large swaths of the galaxy including the Outer Rim Territories to various Sith warlords. By 1040 BBY, the Sith warlord Chagras had carved up an empire in the Grumani sector known as the Chagras Hegemony. Following his death that year, the sector descended into chaos as various Sith warlords fought for control over his former domain. Chagras' mother Vilia Calimondra, the matriarch of the Calimondra family encouraged this fighting in order to safeguard her own extensive holdings. By 1032 BBY, the planet Chelloa had come under the domination of the Sith Lord Daiman, a narcissistic Sith who believed himself to be the creator of the universe.
That year, Lord Daiman began extracting baradium, a highly volatile substance used in the manufacture of munitions, from Chelloa's surface. The baradium was shipped offworld to Daiman's war forges on the front line. Daiman's baradium production operations caused extensively damaged to the formerly pleasant agrarian world. Daiman's baradium production operations attracted the operation of Gorlan Palladane, a former Jedi–turned–spy who relayed this intelligence to his old friend Jedi Master Vannar Treece in Coruscant. In response, Treece devised a hit–and–run military operation called Operation Influx to knock out a portion of the Chelloan baradium production before it could alter the balance of power within the Grumani sector. Master Treece's Operation Influx was a three–stage military operation which firstly involved insertion into the Daimanate via Oranessan, a key transport hub; secondly the raid on Chelloa itself; and thirdly extraction via a direct hyperspace lane to neutral space.
Unknown to Palladane and his Rodian friend Skodo, their communications were being intercepted by Daiman's estranged brother, the Sith Lord Odion who saw himself as the destroyer of the universe. Viewing the abundance of baradium on Chelloa as a source of imbalance in the Force, Odion decided to destroy the planet with kinetic corruptors, large machines capable of igniting baradium and generating molten activity. Meanwhile, the first stage of Operation Influx proceeded smoothly. Vannar's Jedi team succeeded in infiltrating Oranessan and stealing a Daimanate Heavy-Lift Starcrosser with minimal difficulties. They then traveled to Chelloa under the pretext of picking up a new shipment of Chelloan baradium.
===Tragedy at Jenith===
Master Treece's Starcrosser freighter landed at the spaceport of Jenith while Daiman's slaves were loading crates of baradium onto freighters destined for the front lines. Their freighter rammed into several Daimanate cargo liners and ignited several of the baradium crates, causing chaos among the Sith ranks. After overwhelming Daimanate Sith troopers, the Jedi tended to the wounded and made preparations to escape into hyperspace. Treece also made contact with his old friend Gorlan, the leader of the slave miners in Jenith and the Chelloan resistance. Before they could proceed with the third phase of Operation Influx, Lord Odion's forces arrived above Squatter's Hill and launched an attack on Treece's Jedi team.
Amidst the fighting, Master Treece gave orders for his former apprentice the Jedi Knight Kerra Holt to evacuate the Jenith slaver miners. Kerra reluctantly complied with her mentor's orders. During the battle, Odion deployed a kinetic corruptor, which caused a massive explosion that destroyed much of the spaceport and killed or wounded many of the workers and combatants including most of Treece's Jedi team with the exception of Kerra. Odion also killed Treece following a prolonged lightsaber duel. Kerra and Gorlan managed to survive the inferno since they managed to evacuate aboard their cargo freighter. Kerra Holt was the sole surviving member of Vannar Treece's Jedi mission.
While the survivors began attending to the wounded, Lord Daiman arrived on a repulsorcraft. Unconcerned at the loss of life and the wounded, Daiman demanded to know how the Jedi and his rival Odion discovered his baradium operation on Chelloa. When Gorla expressed ignorance, Daiman used Force choke to strangle the former. However, Kerra intervened and tried to force Daiman to stop tormenting Palladane at gunpoint. Admiring her courage, Daiman spared Gorlan's life and mockingly told Kerra to embrace her anger. Showing little concern for the well-being of his subjects, Daiman ordered them to erect up one of his statues in the village square before dismissing the crowd. Kerra's anger at Daiman's apathy towards his subjects led her to embark on an assassination attempt against the Sith Lord.
===Confronting the creator===
Since the baradium operations on Chelloa were secret, Daiman sought to investigate how intelligence was leaked to nhis rival Odion. He apprehended the Rodian mechanic Skodo, a member of the Chelloan resistance, and had him tortured to death with Force lightning at his alpine compound above the mining colony of Jenith. Hijacking the shuttle used to deliver one of Daiman's statues, Kerra Holt flew to Daiman's compound and landed in the hangar bay. Preoccupied with tormenting Skodo, Daiman did not sense Holt infiltrating the compound, quietly eliminating the guards outside his chamber. She sneaked a room and hid on top of one of Daiman's statues. After Daiman had finished with torturing Skodo to death with Force lightning, he ordered his guards to remove the deceased Rodian from his chamber. However, he noticed that one of his statues had been beheaded. While Daiman was taken by surprised, Holt launched her attack, destroying the statue and pushing Daiman to the ground.
Amidst the scuffle, Holt trapped Daiman in a suspension field. She attended to Skodo but sensing no pulse, realized he was dead. She confronted Daiman verbally, attacking his destruction of Chelloa's environment and the use of slaves to operate his mobile munitions complexes. Daiman defended his actions by affirming his belief in the Sith tenet of self-glorification and reiterating his philosophy that reality was an illusion. While using his Force abilities to free himself from the suspension field, he distracted Holt by revealing that Odion was planning a second attack and had a mobile space station—The Spike—capable of producing more of the deadly world-destroying kinetic corruptors.
Breaking free, he managed to reactivate his lightsaber and turned to confront Holt. However, Holt had fled and hijacked one of Daiman's starfighters, knocking out the pilot. Daiman had dispatched a flight of starfighters to attack Odion's space station. Rather than aborting the mission, Daiman viewed Holt as a tool against his main rival Odion. In reality, Daiman planned to use Kerra to dissuade his rival Odion from carrying out his plan to destroy Chelloa; Odion believed that the abundance of baradium on Chelloa caused an imbalance in the Force. Daiman had misled Kerra with disinformation that Chelloa was rich in baradium and the Sith Lord hoped to lure his estranged brother into a trap on Chelloa. Rather than risk having to defend his beleaguered holding, Daiman preferred to destroy Chelloa in order to deny its resources to rival Sith Lords like Odion. Unwilling to waste anymore resources in defending Chelloa, Daiman had only dispatched a token force of starfighters to harry Odion's fleet.
===Confronting the destroyer===
As planned, Daiman's token starfighter force assailed Lord Odion's mobile space station/foundry the Spike and his fleet. However, they were easily wiped out by Odion's gunships, which included his flagship the Sword of Ieldis. In the midst of the attack, Holt bailed out from her starfighter into space and infiltrated The Spike by entering through an open hatch. Discarding her spacesuit, she disabled a service droid and then made her way to the Pod Seventeen in the vast assembly area. There, Holt overpowered a labor droid known as GAD-3 and reset his motivation center. Gad-3 revealed that The Spike was dedicated to the production of kinetic corruptors.
Kerra then made her way to Pod Seventeen where she witnessed Lord Odion and his Givin second-in-command Jelcho inspecting the factory. Kerra hid under a catwalk and eavesdropped on Odion and Jelcho's conversation. Jelcho informed his liege that an informant, later revealed to be Gorlan Palladane, had supplied intelligence on the existence of Daiman's baradium operations. From a recorded transmission, the informant claimed that all of Daiman's mining operations were permanently offline in an attempt to draw Sith attention away from Chelloa. However, Odion dismissed the informant's latest reports as an attempt by Daiman or other parties to undermine his planned baradium operations. Odion was aware that the extraction of baradium, a volatile material, would cause extensive devastation to Chelloa's surface.
Odion then concluded the meeting by ordering all his kinetic corruptors to be prepared for landing on Chelloa to harvest all the baradium. At that point, Odion sensed an intruder's presence in the Force and ripped apart the catwalk, exposing Kerra Holt. The young Jedi Knight led Odion and his minions on a cat-and-mouse chase throughout the Spike, causing some damage to the foundry's facilities. During a verbal confrontation, Kerra revealed that Daiman was shipping in thousands of slaves in mobile munitions factories each day.
Kerra escaped Odion by using Gad-3 to open all containment fields, exposing the station to Zero-G space. This triggered an explosion that wrecked large areas of The Spike, destroying many labor droids and killing many workers. Further destruction was averted only by Jelcho reactivating the emergency shielding. Taking advantage of the ensuing chaos, Kerra escaped on a stolen shuttle. Lord Odion pursued her in his gunship Sword of Ieldis and prepared to fire on her. However, their confrontation was interrupted by an incoming transmission from Daiman, who informed Odion that he had seized his informant, Gorlan.
As a reprisal for the leakage, Daiman had ordered a military crackdown on all mining settlements on Chelloa with his troops razing and pillaging the homes of the masses. Witnessing the plight of her friend, Holt aborted her plan to ram Odion's gunship and did a quick jump into hyperspace. Due to Kerra's information, Odion abandoned his plan to destroy Chelloa and mustered his elite Lightning Guard for a ground invasion of Chelloa. Odion intended to annex the planet to his fiefdom, the Odionate. However, this information about Daiman's planned expansion of baradium operations on Chelloa was actually disinformation planted by Daiman to lure Odion into a trap.
===Saving the people===
Meanwhile on Chelloa, Lord Daiman ordered his troops to massacre the inhabitants of the town of Jenith as a reprisal for Gorlan's leakage of his baradium operations to Odion and the Jedi. Under Daiman's orders, his troops razed much of the town and slaughtered its people. The operation also sought to hunt down other members of the Chelloan resistance and their families. Two Sith troopers also invaded the Palladane family household but were repelled by Kerra, who had returned to Jenith. Kerra then hitched a ride aboard a Daimanate transport to Daiman's compound on the hills above Jenith. This shuttle was carrying the leaders of ten Chelloan mining towns for an audience with Lord Daiman.
Upon landing, Kerra emerged from her hiding place and killed the guards. After freeing the prisoners, she instructed them to move the transport to the outer wall. If Daiman returned, she instructed to leave without her and Palladane and to make for a safehouse in the town of Arboth. Kerra then made her way to Daiman's dungeons where she free Gorlan, who admitted to contacting Odion. He explained that he and Skodo had used a transmitter to reactivated a single interstellar routing station. However, he was unaware that Odion had been tapping into the signals. Gorlan explained that he had contacted Odion in order to dissuade him from attack Chelloa. Seeing the good motives behind his actions, Holt comforted Palladane by telling him that he had done his best to protect his people.
Kerra and Gorlan then returned to their transport and headed for Arboth with the mining town leaders. By that stage, Kerra came to the realization that her mission was not to destroy the two Sith Lords but rather to "save" the Chelloan people. As a final gesture of defiance, Kerra beheaded all of Daiman's statues. After arriving at Arboth, Kerra explored the fleet of transports that had supposedly been transporting workers for the mobile munitions factories. She quickly discovered that the transports had been empty all that time. Deducing that Daiman did not intend to expand his mining presence on Chelloa, she suggested that the Chelloan resistance used these ships to evacuate Chelloa's entire population of 60,000 sentients, scattered across ten mining towns. Gorlan agreed to assist Kerra in this effort and renewed his Jedi vows.
===Escaping the apocalypse===
As Daiman had planned, his older brother Odion took the bait and launched a full-scale planetary invasion of Chelloa. Odion landed a large assault force of gunships, Lightning Guard soldiers, and tanks at Arboth and wiped out the token Daimanate resistance. Before Odion's men could seize the mobile munitions factories, the vast vehicles unsheathed their pyramid exteriors to reveal that they were actually kinetic corruptors. Soon, it became clear to everyone that Daiman intended to destroy Chelloa's surface rather than allow his enemies to seize the resource-rich world. The kinetic corruptors unleashed a series of magma explosions that consumed Odion's forces. Stranded, Odion and his surviving fled to a fleet of nearby freighters only to be rebuffed by Kerra Holt and Gorlan Palladane, who had requisitioned the ships for the purpose of evacuating Chelloa's population. By that stage, the two Jedi had organized the Chelloan resistance into teams which seized control of the freighters, which were formed into the "Freedom Fleet."
Daiman learnt too late that the Jedi had gotten to his decoy transports first. Daiman attempted to shoot down the "Freedom Fleet" but was unable to do so since he had ordered his fleet away from Chelloa. Meanwhile, Lord Odion, who was equipped with a jetpack, pursued the Jedi Knight Kerra to the upper atmosphere of Chelloa. Kerra managed to hitchhike on one of the ascending freighters but Odion caught up with her and attempted to finish her off. However, Gorlan resurfaced and attacked Odion, driving him into the engine thrusters. Odion was badly burned during the attack and Gorlan later died of his wounds. Despite Gorlan's death, they succeeded in evacuating Chelloa's population to Republic space.
===Aftermath===
The Chelloan Affair had some significant repercussions for Kerra Holt and the Grumani sector. As a result, Kerra attracted the attention of the Sith Lords Odion, Daiman, and their grandmother Vilia Calimondra. Following their evacuation from Chelloa, the Freedom Fleet raided the Daimanate world of Nilash III. There, they attacked a Daimanate factory and freed the local slaves. As a final gesture of defiance, Kerra beheaded Daiman's statue which forced the Sith Lord to realize that she "existed." Kerra Holt would continue her campaign of resistance and sabotage against the Daimanate, which led her to destroy a factory on the Daimanate capital of Darkknell.
==Participants==
===Daimanate===
*Daiman
===Odionate===
*Odion
*Jelcho
*GAD-3
===Jedi Order/Chelloan resistance===
*Operation Influx
**Vannar Treece
**Berluk
**Kerra Holt
**Mrssk
**Dorvin Eltrom
**Unidentified Koorivar Jedi
**Unidentified Twi'lek Jedi
**Unidentified Anomid Jedi
*Chelloan resistance
**Gorlan Palladane
**Skodo
==Battles==
*Operation Influx
**Raid on Chelloa
*Duel on Chelloa
*Raid on The Spike
*Massacre of Jenith
*Second Raid on Daiman's compound
*Destruction of Chelloa
==Behind the scenes==
The Chelloan affair serves as the main conflict for Star Wars: Knight Errant: Aflame, the first five–issue story arc of John Jackson Miller's Star Wars: Knight Errant series, which ran from October 13, 2010 to February 16, 2011. It introduced the comic series' main protagonist Kerra Holt and the two major antagonists, the Sith Lords Odion and Daiman. The conflict was officially named in Knight Errant, a tie–in paperback novel that was released on January 25, 2011.
==Appearances==
* Star Wars: Knight Errant: Aflame 
*Knight Errant 
==Sources==
*
==Notes and references==
Category:New Sith Wars campaigns