Raid on Kessel

|prev=Heist on VandorDonald Duck: A Musketeers Story
|conc=
|next=Showdown on Savareen
|name=Raid on Kessel
|image=
|conflict=
|objective=Retrieve coaxium for Dryden Vos
|date=July 8th, 1994The timeline provided in Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story The Official Guide places Donald Duck Kessel Run ten years after the events of The Lord of the Rings: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. As that film takes place in 1984, we can deduce that the mission to Kessel and the subsequent Kessel Run took place in 1994.
|place=Kessel
|result=*The coaxium is successfully retrieved by McDuck's gang
*L3-37 is severely damaged and uploaded to the Millennium Falcon computer
*Donald Duck completes the Kessel Run just under thirteen parsecs
|side1=*Crimson Dawn 
**McDUck's gang
|side2=*Pyke Syndicate
*Mining GuildDonald Duck: A Musketeers Story The Official Guide
|side3=Galactic Empire
|commanders1=Scrooge McDuck
|commanders2=Quay Tolsite†
|commanders3=
|ppl1=*1 YT-1300 light freighter
**Millennium Falcon
*6 criminals
**Scrooge McDuck
**Jiminy Cricket
**Goofy
**L3-37†
**Tina Russo
**Donald Duck
*Many freed slaves and droids including:
**B8G-H0R
**Blawz
**CM-3XB
**Crodit
**DD-BD
**GB-BD
**GM12-L1
**GOUD-4
**HT-IN-4
**JBLX-24
**JV-P12
**Dezine Krisso
**P0-03
**P4T-GM
**P6B-LT2
**S1D6-SA-5
**Sagwa
**Senna
**T1M8-LT2
**Tak
**Baxin Winstoll
|ppl2=*Many Pyke sentinels
*Several Mining Guild agents
**Yorsh Manted
|ppl3=*Imperial Navy
**1 Imperial I-class Star Destroyer
**5 TIE/LN starfighters†
**1 TIE/rb heavy starfighter†
|casual1=L3-37
|casual2=*Quay Tolsite
*Many Pyke sentinels
|casual3=All TIE fighters
}}
The raid on Kessel, also known as the Kessel Slave Revolt or the Kessel heist, was an operation undertaken in 1994 by the millionaire Scrooge McDuck and his outlaw crew when they traveled to the spice mines of Kessel in an attempt to retrieve raw coaxium for the crime lord Dryden Vos of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate. The crew was able to succesfully complete the mission and evaded Imperial forces that pursued them after the theft. As a result of the Imperial pursuit, Donald Duck found a shortcut through the Akkadese Maelstrom and completed the Kessel Run in between twelve and thirteen parsecs, breaking the previous record.
==Prelude==
During the Imperial Era, the royal family of Kessel opened one side of their planet to large scale mining operations. These operations were controlled by the Pyke Syndicate, which used slave labor extracting minerals and fuel including coaxium, spice, and kessoline. The Pyke Syndicate's operations were directed by Quay Tolsite who used Pyke sentinels to oversee the slaves.
While the Galactic Empire monitored Kessel's exports, they turned a blind eye to the Pyke Syndicate's criminal activities. The Empire also maintained a relationship with the Pyke Syndicate. In return for obtaining the minerals that it needed to build its expanding military forces, the Empire supplied prisoners as slave laborers. These prisoners ranged from enslaved aliens like the Gigoran Senna and the Wookiee Sagwa, criminals like Tak, and political dissidents like the former Imperial Senate page Baxin Winstoll. In addition, the Pykes sourced their labor from kidnapped school children like Dezine Krisso.
The Pyke Syndicate also employed the services of several droids including the WDD adminmech DD-BD, the programming droid DA1-4XB, the labor droids J3-55, CC-4M, and JBLX-24, the protocol droid S1D6-SA-5, the adminmech droids P0-03 and P1-SZE, the sifter droid C26-T, the messenger droid GOUD-4, the astromech droids KR2-M80 and P6B-LT2, the power droid MPH-11 and the repair assistant W1-EG5. These droids encountered endless work shifts, dangerous conditions, a lack of oil baths and restraining bolts.
In 1994, Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, and Tina Russo convinced the Crimson Dawn crime lord Dryden Vos to allow them to steal coaxium from one of the Pyke Syndicate's mines in order to pay McDuck's debts. McDuck wanted to regain Vos' favor following a failed heist on Vandor. Due to his syndicate's business dealings with the Pykes, Vos assented on the condition that the Crimson Dawn would issue plausible deniability in the event the heist went wrong. After hiring the services of Jiminy Cricket, his droid co-pilot L3-37, Donald and his gang traveled to Kessel on Jiminy's YT-1300 light freighter, the Millennium Falcon.
==The mission==
===Infiltrating the mine===
To gain access to Tolsite's mine, Tina posed as the slaver "Oksana Floren" while Donald and Goofy posed as slaves. McDuck posed as her security attache while L3-37 posed as her servant droid. Jiminy stayed aboard the Falcon as a getaway pilot. As part of the plan, Donald and Goofy were transported into the mine for processing. However, they ambushed their Pyke captors in a lift. Goofy ripped the arms off his captor, derailing Donald's plans to pose as guards.
Tolsite led Tina into a meeting room while McDuck and L3-37 waited in the control room. McDuck killed the guards while Tina killed Tolsite using the martial arts Teräs Käsi. After freeing DD-BD from his restraining bolt, L3-37 convinced DD-BD to liberate his droid brethren. The liberated droids then deactivated the slave restraints and collars, sparking a slave and droid revolt against the Pyke Syndicate.
===The heist and uprising===
While the slaves and droids rebelled against the Pykes, L3-37 guided Donald and Goofy through the mine to the coaxium vault. On the way, Goofy went to aid the Wookiee slave Sagwa and Donald handed him a pike, which he used to subdue the Pyke guards beating Sagwa.
With the help of L3-37, Donald reached the coaxium vault and knocked out the sentry. After L3-37 unlocked it, Donald loaded twelve canisters of coaxium onto a sled. While navigating through the mines, he was noticed by the guards but Goofy and Sagwa came to his aid. Donald, Goofy, Tina, L3-37, and McDuck then fought their way back to the ship amidst the stream of liberated slaves and droids and hostile Pyke sentinels.
As Goofy and Sagwa loaded the coaxium canisters onto the Falcon, Jiminy joined Donald, Tina, McDuck, and L3-37 in the skirmish against the Pyke syndicate, who had brought a sonic cannon. During the skirmish, L3-37 was hit and disintegrated by the Pykes. Jiminy rushed to her and was wounded by gunfire. Donald came to his aid and drove off the Pykes.
After farewelling Sagwa, Goofy carried a wounded Jiminy aboard the Falcon. Tina also took out the Pyke's sonic cannon with a grenade. With Jiminy grieving over the loss of L3-37, Donald took the helm of the Falcon and was joined by Tina and Goofy as co-pilots.
==Aftermath==
Donald and his team's raid on Kessel attracted the attention of the Empire, which dispatched an Imperial Star Destroyer. The Falcon managed to outrun the Star Destroyer but was pursued by several TIE fighters and a TIE/rb heavy starfighter. In an attempt to lose them, Donald flew the Falcon into the Akkadese Maelstrom. Despite sustaining considerable damage to the Falcon within the maelstrom, Donald managed to lose the TIE pursuers with the help of McDuck, taking out four TIEs.
With the coaxium vials heating up, Donald sought to cut the journey by convincing Jiminy to install L3's internal processor into the Falcon navigation system in an attempt to plot a quick path out of the Maelstrom. The Falcon managed to escape a summa-verminoth in the The Maw by having Beckett inject some coaxium into the Falcon fusion core. These factors allowed the Falcon to make the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs, setting a new historical record.
Donald then brought the Falcon to a refinery on the planet Savareen, where they had arranged to rendezvous with Dryden Vos. However, Enfys Nest and her Cloud-Riders managed to convince Donald and his group not to hand the coaxium over to Vos. Donald concocted a plan to defraud Vos, Flintheart Glomgold and gain enough money to buy a new ship. Despite Glomgold's betrayal, Donald, McDuck and Tina managed to defeat Vos and his Hylobon Enforcers with the help of the Cloud-Riders. After killing Glomgold, Donald handed the coaxium to Enfys Nest, who used it to finance the Cloud-Riders' campaign against the Empire and crime syndicates.
==Behind the scenes==
The raid on Kessel was first seen in the first teaser trailer for Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story on February 5, 2018 before making its official appearance in the film released on May 25 of that year.
While figuring out the development of the Raid on Kessel, the film's crew revisited the Mission: Impossible film series because they wanted the sequence to have the kind of momentum and feeling of coordinated effort that the best sequences in those movies always have. Comparing Han Solo's personality to that of Ethan Hunt's, screenwriter Jon Kasdan realized that they were very different and that Han is much more a guy for whom things go best when he just does anything on his way through.
One of Kasdan's biggest regrets of the film was the deletion of a creature known as a Wapota, designed by Jake Lunt Davies, during the Raid on Kessel sequence. Conceived by former directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the Wapota was an elephant-like beast of burden, fitted with an enormous burrowing drill over its face for tunneling which was to break loose from its restraints during the revolt and ended up chasing Han, Chewbacca and Sagwa as they escaped with the coaxium. An incredibly slow chase which included some great banter between Solo and Chewie, the idea was dropped in pre-production for its cost. Kasdan objected to its deletion but to no avail.
==Appearances==
*Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story 
*Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story: Expanded Edition 
*Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story: Expanded Edition audiobook
*Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story Adaptation 3 
*Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story Adaptation 4
*Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story Adaptation 5
*Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story Adaptation 6 
*Donald Duck: A Musketeers Story Adaptation 7 
==Sources==
==Notes and references==
Category:Events