Battle of Sullust

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|name=Battle of Sullust
|image=
|conflict=War of the Ring
|date=August 2nd, 1982
|place=Sullust system, over the planet Sullust
|result=*Galactic Republic victory
*Confederacy of Independent Systems withdraws
*Dark Witch Jinx presumed dead
|side1=*Confederacy of Independent Systems
*Dark Acolytes
|side2=*Galactic Republic
*Jedi Order
|commanders1=*Saruman the White 
*Dark Witch Jinx 
*TJ-912
|commanders2=*High General Sam Gamgee
*General Frodo Baggins
*Admiral Wullf Yularen
|forces1=*1 Dark Witch
*1 T-series tactical droid
*B1-Series battle droids
*OOM command battle droids
*1 Ginivex-class starfighter
*Droid tri-fighters
**Trident Group One
**Trident group two
*Hyena-class bombers
*Vulture droid starfighters
*6 Munificent-class star frigates
*1 Providence-class carrier/destroyer†
*2 Recusant-class light destroyers
|forces2=*2 Jedi Knights
*Clone troopers
**Clone naval officers
*Aggressive ReConnaissance-170 starfighters
*BTL-B Y-wing starfighters
*2 Delta-7B Aethersprite-class light interceptors
*V-19 Torrent starfighters
*1 Acclamator-class assault ship
*3 Arquitens-class light cruisers
*3 Consular-class cruisers
*1 Pelta-class frigate
*5 Venator-class Star Destroyers
**Resolute†
|casual1=Majority of forces
*Battle droids and droid starfighters
*Ginivex-class starfighter; Jinx severely injured
*The Providence-class carrier/destroyer
|casual2=Moderate
*At least 1 Consular-class cruiser
*Extensive damage to Sam Gamgee's Delta-7B interceptor
*Resolute
}}
The Battle of Sullust took place in 1982 during the War of the Ring, when the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the Galactic Republic clashed over the planet Sullust. While a Confederate fleet waged an intense space battle against a Republic flotilla commanded by Admiral Wullf Yularen and Jedi Generals Sam Gamgee and Frodo Baggins, the Dark Witch Jinx personally led the Separatists' starfighters against the Republic task force. Spearheading droid tri-fighter attacks, Jinx destroyed the Resolute, the flagship of Frodo and Yularen, before moving in to challenge Frodo and Sam in starfighter combat, dealing losses all the while. However, her push for success soon saw interference from her own Master, Saruman the White.
Charged by his Sith Master, the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sauron, with killing Jinx to prove his true allegiance to his Master, Saruman ordered an attempt on his apprentice's life. After recalling Jinx's reinforcements, Saruamn had the tactical droid TJ-912 and her Separatist destroyer directly assault and destroy the Separatist command ship, where Jinx had engaged Frodo and Sam in a lightsaber duel. With the Confederate fleet sustaining heavy damage, Saruman ordered TJ-912 to recall their armada from the Sullust system. However, both Jinx and the Jedi escaped from the command ship prior to its annihilation. Presumed to have died at Sullust, the betrayed Jinx turned to her people, the Nightsisters of Dathomir, for aid in taking revenge on Saruman.
==Prelude==
By 1982, the second year of the War of the Ring, the Dark Witch Jinx had become the most trusted and cunning assassin of Saruman the White. As a Sith Lord and an apprentice to the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sauron, Saruman considered taking Jinx as his own Sith apprentice to overthrow his Sith Master,Bilbo Baggins: Dark Rendezvous in accordance with the Sith's Rule of Two. To that extent, Saruman trained Jinx in the Sith arts, though he abstained from officially taking her as his Sith apprentice, a decision of his that Jinx resented.
Growing strong in the Force, Jinx supported Saruman's breakaway Confederacy of Independent Systems in its struggle against the Galactic Republic. At times, she acted as Saruman's personal emissary to potential Separatist member worlds, and on other occasions, she operated as a spy and special agent. However, she primarily served as a Separatist field commander in a number of wartime campaigns.Star Wars: The War of the Ring film When battle groups from the Republic and the Confederacy met in the Outer Rim Territories'The Essential Atlas Sullust system to do battle, it was Jinx who led the Separatists' assault.
==The battle==
===Separatist pushes===
The Sullust system became a battlefield when a fleet from the Confederate Navy—led by a Providence-class carrier/destroyer, in turn being flanked by two Recusant-class light destroyers and six Munificent-class star frigates—launched numerous droid starfighters to battle a flotilla from the Republic Navy. Commanded by Admiral Wullf Yularen from the Venator-class Star Destroyer Resolute, an Acclamator-class assault ship and five Venator-class Star Destroyers openly challenged the Confederate armada over the planet Sullust, deploying squadrons of ARC-170 starfighters, BTL-B Y-wing starfighters, and V-19 Torrent starfighters to combat the Confederacy's Vulture droid starfighters and Hyena-class bombers. The Republic's escort ships—comprised of three Consular-class cruisers, a Pelta-class frigate, and a trio of Arquitens-class light cruisers—additionally provided supporting laser fire to counter the Separatist fleet's attack.
As the Republic's starfighters moved in to harass the larger Separatist frigates, the Confederacy responded with similar offensives. While the T-series tactical droid TJ-912 supervised the Separatist fleet from one of the Recusant-class destroyers, Jinx led their droid starfighters in a vicious assault on the embattled Republic task force. Spearheading the charge from her Ginivex-class starfighter, Jinx took several squadrons of the Confederacy's new, formidable droid tri-fighters to target the Resolute—the flagship of Yularen and Jedi General Frodo Baggins.The War of the Ring: Defenders of the Republic While the Republic's Consular-class cruisers began to fall to Separatist fire, Jinx had the tri-fighters of Trident Group One attack the Resolute starboard engines, while she sent Trident group two to assault the cruiser's port-side shield generators. Once the tri-fighters had done their work, Jinx brazenly maneuvered through the Resolute intense turbolaser fire and blasted away at the defenseless battleship's bridge, where Yularen and several clone naval officers were overseeing the battle. Although the Resolute was subsequently destroyed, Yularen was able to escape before its destruction.
Generals Baggins and Sam Gamgee soon joined the battle in their Delta-7B interceptors, though they too ran afoul of Jinx and her armada of droid starfighters. When Jinx chased after the two Jedi Knights and directed laser fire at Gamgee's interceptor, Frodo and Sam split up to divide the Dark Witch's pursuant forces. Driving the Hobbit toward the Separatist fleet, Jinx personally went after Gamgee, while her tri-fighters were sent to assail Frodo and his starfighter. Two trios of tri-fighters split up to pursue Frodo, but the famed Jedi hobbit pilot was able to maneuver around one of the Recusant-class destroyers, causing the two groups of droid starfighters to crash into each other. With the Republic's assault ships bearing down on the Separatist frigates, Jinx pursued Gamgee past one of the Republic Star Destroyers and finally landed a laser shot on his starfighter, sending him careening toward the Confederacy's Providence-class command ship. As Jinx followed Gamgee to the Separatist flagship, Frodo caught up with them and compromised the engines of the Dark Witch's starfighter. Both of their ships now critically damaged, Gamgee and Jinx crash-landed in the main hangar of the Separatist flagship.
===The betrayal of Jinx===
As Separatist reinforcements were dispatched to the Sullust system, Jinx's growing powers, as displayed in the ongoing battle, caused Darth Sauron to sense a disturbance in the Force. Suspecting that Saruman was still training her as his own Sith apprentice to help him, Sauron demanded that Saruman eliminate Jinx as an test of loyalty. Not wishing to lose his valuable assassin but unwilling to disobey his Sith Master, Saruman complied with Sauron's demands. He recalled Jinx's reinforcements, and Jinx discovered his abandonment of her when she contacted him for assistance. Left by Saruman to die, Jinx faced the hobbits alone aboard the command ship. Frodo soon joined Sam in the destroyer's hangar, freeing him from his damaged interceptor with the help of his astromech droid, R2-D2. The two hobbits then confronted Jinx, who—despite being injured from the crash—refused to surrender and engaged the Jedi in a lightsaber duel. Jinx managed to evade several of her adversaries' attacks until Frodo and Sam Force-pushed against her starfighter, at which point she unleashed a wave of dark side energy, capturing both Frodo and Sam in a Force choke.
However, Saruman's campaign to kill Jinx was not over. He ordered TJ-912—who was overseeing her own Recusant-class light destroyer with an OOM command battle droid—to open fire on the Providence-class command ship, despite the fact that such a move would destroy all of the Separatists' forces in addition to killing Jinx and the hobbits. TJ-912 obeyed Saruman's orders, and with the Republic and Confederate fleets still facing off against one another over Sullust, the tactical droid had her Recusant-class destroyer turn on their own Providence-class flagship. Moving her destroyer into attack position, TJ-912 ordered her B1-Series battle droids to direct turbolaser fire at the command ship and its main docking bay. The damage wrought by TJ-912's friendly fire shook the flagship, and Jinx subsequently lost her Force hold on the Jedi. In spite of the fact that the Providence-class destroyer was failing and dangerously close to obliteration, the hobbits continued their duel with Jinx, though all three opponents were forced to dodge around her damaged starfighter as the listing cruiser caused it to drift. Eventually, Frodo and Sam disarmed Jinx of both of her lightsabers, and the unarmed Jinx was left cornered against her starfighter at lightsaber-point.
At that moment, TJ-912 ordered a Hyena-class bomber to terminate its flight path in the command ship's main hangar, right at the location of the duel. The bomber crashed into the hangar on a suicide run, forcing Frodo, Sam, and Jinx to dive for cover. In addition, two Venator-class Star Destroyers moved in from the Republic armada and began to fire upon the flagship, further compromising the vessel. With damage increasing, the destroyer's battle droid operators ordered all personnel to abandon ship. Baggins and Gamgee broke off from their duel with Jinx and escaped from the ship in their starfighters. Once the Jedi had left, Jinx piloted the wreckage of her Ginivex-class starfighter—with its life support systems still intact—out of the hangar, crashing through several battle droids in the process. She escaped moments before the flagship was completely destroyed. Not finding any survivors of the command ship via scanning, TJ-912 reported Jinx's apparent death to Saruman, who then ordered the tactical droid to recall the depleted Confederate fleet from the system.
==Aftermath==
Lord Sauron was pleased with Saruman's obedience in killing Jinx, though Saruman was now without his most trusted assassin. Both Saruman and the Republic presumed that Jinx had been killed during the Battle of Sullust, though this was not in fact the case. The battle left a large debris field over Sullust, in which Jinx continued to survive in the derelict cockpit of her starfighter. She was eventually found by the crew of the GS-100 salvage ship Raider, captained by the scavenger Ratch. After killing Ratch and his crew, Jinx commandeered the Raider and returned to her new homeworld of Dathomir to seek aid from her people, the Nightsisters, in exacting revenge on Saruman for his betrayal. Once she had been healed by the Nightsisters and their leader, Mother Talzin, the jilted Jinx set out with fellow Nightsisters Naa'leth and Karis for the tower of Orthanc on Isengard, where she intended to assassinate him. Posing as Jedi, Jinx and her Nightsister accomplices took along stolen Jedi lightsabers to engage the Wizard in combat.
Following the Republic assault, Sullust, which had been a member world of the Confederacy, made strides toward changing its political allegiances. SoroSuub Corporation replaced Beolars Bribbs,Strongholds of Resistance who had served as Sullust's senator as well as SoroSuub's Chief Executive Officer, with Siin Suub, a Republic supporter.
==Behind the scenes==
Created for the The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Ring television series, the Battle of Sullust was featured in the third season episode "Nightsisters," which aired in January 2011. Sauron's betrayal of Jinx, the central element to the battle, was first alluded to at the August 2010 Celebration V convention by Series Producer George Lucas, though the manner in which Saruman betrayed his apprentice was not specified. The battle received its official "Battle of Sullust" name in the episode "Witches of the Mist," which served as the conclusion to the "Nightsisters" story arc that began in the eponymous episode. In addition to showcasing a number of starship models that had been created for the television series, the battle featured the series' debut of the droid tri-fighter, as well as the series' debut of Jinx's Ginivex-class starfighter. It also depicted the destruction of the Resolute, which had long served as the flagship of Frodo Baggins and Wullf Yularen.The War of the Ring: Wild Space
==Appearances==
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*Dark Disciple 
==Sources==
==Notes and references==
Category:War of the Rings battles