Maximilian Veers

Age
 Status
 Weight

**Maximilian Veers** was a Human male who served as a cool and efficient General in the armed forces of the Galactic Empire. In that capacity, he fought in the Galactic Civil War, which put the Empire against the Rebel Alliance. Veers is perhaps most famous for his role during the Imperial assault on the rebel base located in the Hoth system. Sent by Darth Vader to lead the the attack on the rebels, Veers led a squadron of AT-AT walkers past their defenses and with said walkers destroyed the shield generator protecting the base. His leadership in the battle was critical to the successful takeover of Hoth, a key victory for the Empire.

## Biography

### Early Career

**Maximilian Veers** was born the son of a middle-class working family on the planet of Denon in the Inner Rim. He would join the Imperial Academy and, while there, chose to look into the field of heavy vehicular support, hoping he might operate the mechanical behemoth that was the AT-AT. He believed the massive vehicles introduced during the Age of the Empire best embodied his own personality as well as that of the Galactic Empire. He took up his training with rigorous determination, showing a surprising intellect and initiative after emerging from "suicide missions" by surpassing his mission assignments. Veers graduated at the top of his class, and, his superiors finding him both dangerous and skillful, was upon graduation promoted to the rank of Lieutenant and given an assignment as commander of an AT-AT walker.

### Imperial Military Service

#### Campaign on Culroon III

As a test of his abilities, he was soon shipped to a barbaric and backwater Outer Rim Territories world called Culroon III. The Culroon III campaign was designed to either make or break Veers. If he failed, he was likely to perish.He quickly learned that the Empire did not tolerate incompetence and failure. During the attempt to pacify the natives of Culroon III, the ranking General had ordered for Lieutenant Veers to remain confined to the base while he and an Imperial party went to negotiate a peace with the Culroon natives. Veers had warned that it was a trap and that the General should bring armored support to deter any would-be ambushes. The General did not listen and paid the price with his life when he was executed for incompetence after the Culroon natives deceived and killed most of his party. If it had not been for Lieutenant Veers's quick thinking and disregard of a direct order, the Imperial party would have been utterly slaughtered. For his bravery and brilliance in saving the Culroon mission's Storm Trooper detail, Veers was promoted to Major.

#### Loss Fuels Commitment

Major Veers married and had a son, but when his son was only a boy they lost Maximilian's wife to a rare rare disease during a family vacation. Devastated by the death of his wife, Veers buried his grief in his military career, which began to affect his relationship with his son.Veers's devotion to the army seemed to pay off, as he was granted the rank of Colonel and the command of an Imperial garrison. Veers was also widely seen as an authority on the AT-AT, and often returned to the Carida Academy to guest-lecture at AT-AT training courses and demonstrate prototypes of new AT-AT models. During one of these demonstrations, before the Battle of Yavin, Veers came to the attention of Darth Vader when he defeated a rebel force. At this point, however, Veers's career seemed to stagnate. Veers lacked the aristocratic connections needed to move up in rank, and questions had arisen regarding his methods of career advancement.

#### Rising Through the Ranks

Following the Battle of Yavin, during which the rebels destroyed the Empire's planet-killing Death Star battle station, Veers would manage to stride through the ranks in the midst of the chaos. As it turned out, the fall of the Death Star aided Veers's career in the long run. The deaths of so many high-ranking officers aboard the station had left a power vacuum that Veers stepped into, allowing him to reach the rank of Brigadier General. Veers was able to continue work in secret on new AT-AT prototype models, which he described as the next generation of walkers. Because of his impressive abilities as a ground commander, he was recommend to the Emperor's dark enforcer, a Sith-Lord named Darth Vader. Impressed himself, Vader not only accepted the recommendation and promoted Veers to Major General. over the heads of several high colonels, placing him in command of Death Squadron's ground troops.

#### Takeover of the Hoth System

Despite the questions that had surfaced concerning his career advancement, not a single high colonel questioned Veers' unorthodox promotion to Vader's fleet, and these issues quickly faded. His new appointment was the pinnacle of success for someone in Veers's position, and he wasted no time proving himself. Just weeks after the promotion,Veers recruited only the best pilots to serve in his  AT-AT squadron. Veers often clashed ideologically with the Death Squadron's commanding officer Admiral Kendal Ozzel, his superior. While Ozzel preferred a measured, calculated approach to military strategy, Veers was more doggedly loyal to the personal whims of Darth Vader, making him a favored figure among the Imperial hierarchy. Admiral Ozzel, was charged to oversee the Empire's search for the rebel headquarters. As part of the search imperial probe droids were deployed throughout the galaxy to collect data and identify suspected planets where the base could be located.

One of the droids detected signs of an occupied settlement on the sixth planet of Hoth, a system located in the Anoat Sector of the galactic Outer Rim. On the *Executor*, the flagship of the Death Squadron, Veers joined the panel of officers who reviewed the probe droid's data, along with Vader, Ozzel and his subordinate, Captain Firmus Piett. While Vader immediately identified the data as proof of the Rebellion, Ozzel was more skeptical. Vader ultimately ordered the fleet to investigate the Hoth system, and Veers began to prepare for the assault. Admiral Ozzel's approved lightspeed course, intended to surprise the rebellion, brought the Imperial fleet out of lightspeed close to the system. As a result, rebel forces on the planet's surface had time to prepare a defense plan and organize an evacuation. Due to a localized energy shield protecting the base and power generator, orbital bombardment of the base was considered to be an ineffective attack strategy. Vader, dissatisfied with Ozzel's decision to emerge so close to the system, ordered Veers to lead a ground assault on the power generator and disable the energy shield.

Vader then executed Ozzel and promoted Piett to Admiral. Veers, who had always kept a low profile in front of Vader, had been offered a chance to correct Ozzel's mistake. His squadron of Imperial AT- AT walkers was deployed beyond the border of the energy shield, allowing a ground approach to be made. Veers led the squadron into the Echo Base mountain valley, facing heavy rebel ground fire as he approached the shield generators . The General led his troops from the front, in the cockpit of the lead walker, as the reels prepared to evacuate their headquarters. A group of snowspeeders led by the rebel Commander Luke Skywalker tried to delay Veers' force, destroying two walkers. As rebel ground forces retreated, Veers ordered his walker to fire on the shield generator, which successfully destroyed it. The generator's destruction marked the end of the rebel defense, allowing Vader and his men to land on Hoth and break into the base, and demonstrating Veers' effectiveness as a military commander.

#### Career after Hoth Victory

Although the Battle of Hoth was a great victory for him, bringing him fame and glory, it was overshadowed by a report from his son's COMPNOR commander. The commander reported that his son had gone missing during a SAGroup mission dealing with rebel spies. However, the honored General suspected that his son had defected to the rebellion and disowned him. The betrayal of his son brought shame and dishonor to the Veers name despite the General's victory at Hoth. He would suffer from the ignominy his son brought forth for the rest of his life. Nearly a year later, General Veers was on a planetside mission when the *Executor* was destroyed over Endor. After the death of Emperor Palpatine at the Battle of Endor, General Veers served under command of one of the first Imperial Warlords and created an Imperial splinter faction known, which was criticized by General Veers and other Imperial officers serving under him. In the following months he would move from one Imperial commander to the next in search of a new command, eventually serving as apart of the Imperial Remnant under Grand Admiral Rae Sloane.

Most of the time he was shunned away or rejected downright because of his relationship with Lord Vader. Post-Endor officers despised anyone who had served and survived Darth Vader and wanted nothing to do with those people. For months, Veers wandered the galaxy watching as everything he believed in and fought for crumbled around him. Eventually, he became disappointed and distraught with the path the Empire was following, but his sense of loyalty and honor had kept him from defecting or going AWOL. When the order recalling the remaining Imperial forces to Jakku arrived, Veers, like many other officers searching for a new hope, answered it and traveled to the desert world. It was during one of the final battles of the war that Veers suffered the worst fate that could be given to an established officer of the Empire. Hated for the fact that he served and survived Lord Vader, Veers was severely demoted and sent on a suicide mission, Maximilian Veers, one of the Empire's greatest ground tacticians and heroes, perished on that fateful suicide mission.