13th Special Operations Battalion

"Hey, 96, who are those guys?" "Black ops troopers, supposedly the best of the best. Don't know much about 'em, the thirteenth really love their redactions. My advice? Don't get testy with them."

The 13th Special Operations Battalion was a unit that served in the Grand Army of the Republic's Special Operations Brigade during the Clone Wars.

Following the volatile first months of the Clone Wars, the Republic found itself in desperate need of fighters capable of performing sensitive operations. While the GAR had found great success in the deployment of its versatile commandos and ARC troopers, these troops suffered from shortcomings that would ultimately hinder their availability and coverage. Commandos required expensive equipment and specialized combat training, while only 100 Alpha-Class ARC troopers were ever successfully developed by the Kaminoan cloners. Do to the expensive nature of these units and the lack of availability in terms of when and where they could be deployed, the Grand Army of the Republic sought a fighting force that could operate on the caliber of these elite supersoldiers while minimizing cost and increasing operational capacity. Thus the GAR commissioned the Kaminoans to create the perfect task force. That task force would be the 13th Special Operations Battalion

Personnel within the 13th were often discreetly transferred out of other elite divisions, most commonly from among the ranks of outer rim forces who would be forced to undergo harsh conditions, hostile wildlife, and other lethal hazards, all within the heart of separatist territory. This would ensure the strongest potential recruits, and would guarantee that each and every soldier was a battle-hardened warrior. New inductees would be trained and retrained in fields such as assassinations, search and rescue, EOD, close quarters combat, hostage taking, interrogation, espionage, and a number of other tasks, and were additionally required to undergo facial reconstruction surgery so as to obscure their Jango-esque heritage and aid insertion during covert operations. Troops in the 13th were also encouraged to adopt unique identities and accents to hide their distinct voice and speech patterns.

## Command Staff

Due to the highly specialized nature of the 13th, the Republic desired command staff with unique affinities and traits that would increase the capabilities of the battalion. These officers would also need to be expendable enough to be non-essential to the other operations of the Republic, as the unit would be operating almost entirely isolated from the GAR command chain, which would render non-scheduled contact or assistance would be difficult to impossible. For the battalion, highest authority would fall to the enigmatic Jedi Master Kodak Relar. Little is known of the origins of the relatively soft-spoken general, but Kodak was an incredible swordsman, serving time both as a teacher and jedi sentinel during the early days of his time there. Although an incredible contribution to the order, Kodak had silently grown disillusioned with the teachings of the jedi, believing complete detachment of emotions to be foolish, and was very outspoken in his thoughts that the rejection of older force-sensitives was both extremely dangerous and wasteful. After being resigned from his teaching duties, the Jedi Council would assign him to the 13th Special Operations Battalion as a way to both ensure peak performance of the unit as well as rid themselves of a potentially dangerous source of internal dissent.

The unit operated out of a mobile headquarters, the Mandator-class Dreadnought *Defiance*.

## History

### Rise of the Empire

"We would like to remind staff that while it may be disheartening to fire upon your brethren, particularly those of the Outer Rim divisions, remember that they will not show the same pity. They are the enemy now, having brought down the Republic you were bred to protect and having birthed a tyrannical empire from it's ashes. We must end them quickly, as to end their mindless servitude."

The 13th Battalion was one of the few Grand Army units that defected from the Grand Army in large numbers when the Declaration of a New Order resulted in the creation of the Galactic Empire. The thirteenth's commanding officers were disheartened to hear that the Kamino Uprising had failed and the anti-troopers were destroyed or captured. Kodak Relar was one of the first beings to coin the phrase "Galactic Civil War" before the actual event began, as he understood that there was a Galactic Empire and that his battalion's resistance along with the existence of other insurgencies technically designated it a civil war.

## Personnel Roster

CT-9754 "Harper" [Marine]

CT-2676 "Dancer"

CT-6436 "Minstrel"

CT-2435 "Jester"

ARF-1467 [KIA]

CT-7427

CT-8634 "Kodiak"

CT-7532 [Marine] [KIA]

Corporal "Mother Hen" [Pilot]

Corporal "Gyro"

Sergeant CT-4752

Sergeant CT-4677 "Clank" [Heavy Weapons]

Sergeant CT-7217 "Lockdown" [Riot Trooper]

Lieutenant CT-9907 "Thief" [Scout Trooper]

Captain CT-6843 "Pilum"

Battalion Commander CC-1015 "Spear"

Jedi Commander Andia "Shroud" Carris

Jedi General Kodak "Ancestor" Relar