Chapter 2: A New Galactic Paradigm
Bo-Katan Kryze, the new Mand'alor
It became clear very soon after Bo-Katan’s rise to the throne of Mandalore that her rule would be markedly different to her predecessors. After her proclamation as Mand’alor by the clans in Sundari Square, in which she received her official name,
Mand’alor the Restorer and the Darksaber
, Katan announced that all those who served under the New Mandalorians and Maul’s Shadow Collective were pardoned, except for members of the upper leadership. The decision was not a show of mercy to placate the masses, it was a necessity if Mandalore wished to field an army large enough to protect its new empire. However, before they could be accepted back into the fold, each pardoned individual had to pledge eternal allegiance to Bo-Katan and Mandalore, the punishment for breaking such an oath was death, a fate which some Mandalorians would still face. The five main collaborators of Maul’s regime were tried under the Mandalorian Code and were found guilty of collaborating with outside influences that threatened to destroy the Mandalorian way of life and enslave its people. All five were executed the following day by ritual beheading.
With her rule established, Katan revealed a set of sweeping reforms to Mandalore’s governmental and administrative institutions. Instead of returning Mandalore to the old ways, Katan wished to make a Mandalore that would both respect the warrior traditions of the past and build a strong nation that would stand the test of time. In her years of exile, she had realised that the reason the Mandalorians had fallen so low was that after a Mand’alor would die, decades of war to find the next one would take place, weakening them and making them susceptible to outside threats. To rectify this, she established the post of Archon of Mandalore, whose job would be to run the day-to-day governance of the realm and to ensure the smooth passage of power between Mand’alors. Some saw this as the return of the Prime Minister position that had been used during the time of the New Mandalorians, but Katan made an express effort to distance the Archon position from such democratic notions. Archons would be appointed directly by the Mand’alor and could be dismissed as well. They also could only lead Mandalorian armies during the period when a new Mand’alor is to be chosen. The first Archon of Mandalore would be Esok Chorn, a member of Death Watch and supporter of Bo-Katan since Pre Vizsla’s death. Bo-Katan also banned raiding within Mandalorian territory, re-established many New Mandalorian public services, and founded the Mandalorian Warrior Academy. The official name of Bo-Katan’s government was also chosen to be The United Clans of Mandalore, though many just referred to it as the Mandalorian Clans.
The Mandalorian Military
In the early days of the Mandalorian Restoration, the Mandalorian Military was mainly made up of members of Death Watch, returned Mandalorian Warriors who had been bounty hunters and mercenaries, and former members of Maul’s Death Watch. This made it effectively a militia, though a potent and deadly one at that. Despite it being closer to Mandalore’s warrior past, Bo-Katan and the leadership around her were concerned by its capability in both fighting established armies and policing Mandalorian territory. Worse were the divisions between clans, groups, and origins, which threatened to pull apart the Mandalorians before they had even begun to establish themselves. It would be under the guidance of a visionary Mandalorian Warrior named Ghes Saxon that the solution would eventually be found.
Born on the planet of Zanbar in the edges of Mandalorian Space, Ghes was part of the second generation of exiles that had grown up away from Mandalore. Her mother, the leader of Clan Saxon and a senior member of the Death Watch, had trained her to realise that brute force and strength of arms was neither the bravest nor best approach to a battle. Having spent time at Brentaal Naval Academy, Ghes returned to Mandalorian Space with the expertise and training in military tactics and strategy, something that most in the Death Watch lacked. Following the death of Tor Vizsla the Younger, Ghes Saxon found herself at odds with the Death Watch’s new leader, Pre Vizsla whom she found arrogant and ignorant. Eventually, it became too much for the Saxon Matriarch and she left, leaving Clan Saxon under the command of her younger brother, Gar. For nearly twenty years she roamed as a bounty hunter until the news of Maul’s coup reached her ears. Enraged that an outside now ruled Mandalore, she sought out Bo-Katan and joined her resistance movement, with her eventually taking part in the Siege of Mandalore herself. It was only through her loyalty that she managed to save her two brothers, who had sided with Maul, from execution.
As a member of Bo-Katan’s new council, she found herself in charge of organizing the disparate Mandalorian forces into own cohesive fighting force. Immediately there was one option on the table, to turn them into one unified army like the Empire, a solution proposed by a few members of the council. Ghes rejected that outright, noting that Mandalorians strength was in their sense of identity, purpose, and history. The plan that Ghes put forward would still be radical, for she set out all Mandalorian forces be brought under what she called the Mandalorian Warband System. Each Warband would be made up of around 20,000 soldiers and would be led by one general, who would be directly appointed by the Mand’alor themselves. Directly subordinate to the General would be ten retainers and below them fifty Knights. The reason for this change was to both remove the emphasis on group and clan loyalty, and instead transform it to loyalty to Mandalore itself. Following the acceptance of this model, the groups like the Death Watch ceased to exist as fighting forces and instead were reformed into Warrior Lodges, clubs that warriors could join to show their cultural allegiances without fracturing the unity of the Mandalorian Armed forces.
The Mandalorian Navy would go not so much be reformed as be founded, for an established Mandalorian Navy had not existed since the days of the Mandalorian Wars, nearly four-thousand years earlier. The Navy would be built from the ground up by former mercenaries Tal Ordo and Fenn Rau, both of whom had been employed by the Republic to train and lead Republic fighter squadrons during the Clone Wars. The type of Navy they built up would be like most navies of the period, with the exception, at least in Mandalorian terms, that non-Mandalorians could serve and even lead in it. This was mainly due to the lack of a naval tradition within Mandalorian culture, which meant they would have to rely on outside expertise to build up their Naval institutions. Many former New Mandalorians would join the Navy due to their academic training.
Fenn Rau, a former foundling of the True Mandalorians, he survived the Battle of Galidraan and became a wandering mercenary. It would during the Clone Wars that the Republic would hire him and his partner, Tal Ordo, to train eite Clone Pilots. Upon hearing of the Restoration of Mandalore, they returned to their long lost home.
The Galactic Civil War
The peace that was supposed to arrive at end of the Clone Wars lasted only a fleeting few months. Though most of the Separatist’s armies had shut down, several holdout worlds in the southern quadrants of the Outer Rim continued to resist the newly established Galactic Empire, causing chaos across the southern trade routes of the galaxy. To make matters worse, the new Imperial Senate was hardly unified behind their recently proclaimed Emperor, whom some in the radical factions of the Senate called a tyrant. These ‘Republicans’ as they called themselves, had secretly planned the downfall of Palpatine before the end of Clone Wars due to their fears of a potential extension to his term in office, fears that quickly became realised. The most prominent among them, Senator of Mon Mothma of Chandrila, openly challenged the Emperor’s right to rule, and proclaimed his New Order a “tyranny designed to enforce Palpatine’s will across the galaxy”.
While most of the officers in the Imperial Armed Forces supported the Emperor, the local sector forces of many worlds were outwardly hostile to the idea of Empire taking over direct control of their security needs, citing that it was a contravention of a slew of Republic era self-determination laws. The response from Coruscant was always the same, that all Republic laws and treaties were null and void, and that it was the laws enshrined in the New Order that citizens of the Empire must follow. Within the New Order were several laws that alarmed many non-human worlds, specifically the right of the Empire to make ‘undesirable species’ indentured servants of the Empire, which even the most fleeting reader could tell meant slavery. It did not take long for the galaxy to see it in action, with the worlds of New Plympto, Kashyyyk, and Honoghr being brutally occupied and their denizens enslaved by the Empire. When Senator Mon Mothma spoke out about it on the Holonet, she was nearly imprisoned by the Empire, only escaping with the help of Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan. This would be the spark that would lead to war, for Republicans finally rose up, declaring a new Republic. From their base of Dantooine, the Republicans named Mon Mothma the acting Chancellor and rallied the northern Republican worlds to their cause. These included Ithor, Chandrila, Alderaan, Brentaal, Arkania, and Ord Mantell.
This new threat was yet another in a series of threats that threatened to tear the overstretched Empire apart before it had even properly begun. To retain his control over the Core and Expansion Regions, the Emperor ordered all Imperial Forces to be withdrawn to the Galactic Centre to deal with the Republican uprising, leaving many former Republic worlds in the outer sections of the Galaxy undefended and alone. Instead of falling into anarchy though, these systems quickly coalesced into a dozen groups across the galaxy, and within a week of the Imperial withdrawal, a slew of new states had sprung up from the Colonies to the Outer Rim. While unrecognised by Coruscant, these nations had de facto control of their territories, many of which used their sector fleets and security forces to maintain control. Even in areas that were supportive of the Emperor new autonomous authorities sprung up, from the Corellian Security Zone to the Eriadu Authority. Some Galactic Historians from the Core would come to call this the great collapse, whilst those in the Outer Rim would name it the Mass Liberation, either way, it seemed that the Galactic Civil War would be thought central areas of the Galaxy, a welcome thought to the recently ravaged systems of the Outer and Mid Rims.
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