Thrawn Campaign

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The Thrawn Campaign was the highlight of The Thrawn Trilogy.

[edit] Prelude

This campaign was an extended series of operations by Imperial Warlord Grand Admiral Thrawn. His first act was an information dump on Obroa-Skai where he discovered information about the location of Wayland, the Emperor's private storehouse. He picked up some ysalamiri at Myrkr (with the help of Talon Karrde) and went to Wayland. Taking with them a pair of ysalamiri, Captain Gilad Pellaeon and Grand Admiral Thrawn defeated the attacks of the cloned Dark Jedi, Joruus C'Baoth. C'Baoth entered an alliance with the two on a pretense of great power and new Jedi to train: Luke Skywalker and his sister Princess Leia Organa Solo.

The Imperials used Noghri to try to capture the two while they were on a diplomatic mission on Bimmisaari. The attack failed and a search for the species began. An attack was again employed after a three-pronged strike of Imperial forces. It again failed. Afterwards, the safety of Skywalker and his pregnant sister was in danger.

During this time, the Bothan senator Borsk Fey'lya pushed to become head of the military by way of bitter infighting with Admiral Ackbar. At this time clones were being produced on Wayland and Grand Admiral Thrawn began to ask for capital ships to carry to his growing army.

Luke, Leia, and their friends went to Nkllon where Lando Calrissian could help them. Calrissian had barely brought them onto the dark side of the planet when the HIMS Chimaera attacked. Though Joruus C'boath communicated with Skywalker during the fire fight, the Imperials' main objective were Calrissian's "mole miners," small ships used for obtaining ore. The Imperials captured half of them and quickly retreated.

Skywalker attempted to return to Coruscant but was ambushed by the Chimaera and an Interdictor Cruiser, who were (supposedly) searching a (decoy) New Republic cargo ship. Luke escaped, but not without damaging his hyperdrive, rendering him adrift in space. Eventually, he was stumbled across by Talon Karrde, led there by Mara Jade. The Wild Karrde, with Skywalker aboard, returned to Myrkr.

Grand Admiral Thrawn then paid Myrkr a visit and asked for Karrde's help in finding Skywalker and getting capital ships. Karrde, noncommittal, said he would do his best but nothing more. During the Admiral's sojourn, however, Skywalker engineered an escape and screamed off in a stolen snubfighter with Jade in pursuit. The two went down in a flurry of trees. Thrawn, suspicious, placed three squadrons of Imperial stormtroopers and several speeder bikes and a Chariot Light Assault Vehicle in Hyllyard City, the only place logical for two fugitives to head for. Skywalker and Jade trekked through the forest through several days and were captured by Imperials at the city, but, with help from Solo, Calrissian, and Karrde's organization, defeated the task force.

[edit] The Fighting

Thrawn received word of the failed ambush on Myrkr only after he had began to move his fleet against the New Republic shipyards at Sluis Van. He promised to pay Karrde a visit and continued the campaign.

Organa Solo and Chewbacca had been hidden on Kashyyyk when the third attack of the Noghri came. They escaped and captured one of them, Khabarakh. He informed her that the Noghri had a deep respect for her father and regarded her as his heir, the Mal'ary'ush.

To strike against Sluis Van, Thrawn employed a normally-untenable bit of technology: a cloaking device, which would cut off a ship from any form of electromagnetic signal, in or out. Instead of turning a ship both invisible and blind, Thrawn used it as a sophisticated jammer, masking the radar signatures of forty TIE fighters hidden within a freighter, ready to boil out at any moment. These TIEs, however, were only escorts for Thrawn's true weapon: Calrissian's mole miners. The Millennium Falcon, which by coincidence was in the area (Luke's X-wing was still damaged), helped the surprised defenders fight off a few mole miners before the fleet of Star Destroyers came out of hyperspace and began to overwhelm the defenders. The mole miners then attached themselves to New Republic capital ships; stormtroopers within them took over, acting as boarding parties to commandeer the warships. Calrissian turned the tide by activating the miners' digging jets, melting stormtroopers and control circuitry alike. Thrawn, knowing he had lost his chance, fled the system.

The battle might have been a victory, but the Republic soon were losing terribly. The Empire began closing down major trade routes and Joruus C'boath successfully forced Luke to come to Jomark. He tried to turn Skywalker, but the timely arrival of Mara Jade convinced Luke Skywalker that C'boath was evil.

Thrawn came across where the Clone Wars-era Katana Fleet of Dreadnoughts was. He beat Solo and Rogue Squadron there and stole 180 of the ships before a New Republic task force saved the remaining twenty.

During all this fighting, Organa Solo had convinced the Noghri of the Empire's treachery while keeping their faith in Darth Vader intact. They secretly served the Republic while openly serving the Empire.

The next five months proved disastrous for the New Republic. Grand Admiral Thrawn regained a fourth of what the Empire had lost and was cutting the sky out from under the Republic. He had come across a new use for his cloaking device: by using Joruus C'boath to guide cloaked ships, he was able to simulate a dazzling new weapon that could penetrate planetary shields. Finally, in a daring strike, Thrawn attacked Coruscant itself. During the battle, his Star Destroyers activated their launch-and-retrieval tractor beams, expelling a group of cloaked objects. Thrawn deliberately fired upon one of the objects, revealing an asteroid. He then retreated, leaving Coruscant with the chilling knowledge that his ships had launched 287 such objects.

Niles Ferrier, a ship thief, tried to murder Talon Karrde. However, the bold move ended up bringing about the Smugglers Alliance, which Thrawn had feared.

Meanwhile, a human commando team unsuccessfully tried to kidnap Leia and her infant twins. During the skirmish, Mara gave Leia the locations of Wayland.

Skywalker and several others, including Jade, went to Wayland and started an uprising and with some Noghri destroyed the cloning facility there. Mara Jade destroyed a clone of Luke which had been made from Luke's hand, which he had lost at Cloud City, and killed C'boath.

With C'boath's death led to Thrawn's death as he was beginning to win the last battle of the Thrawn Campaign at Bilbringi. They had just recived word of an attack on Wayland that involved Noghri and Rukh, Thrawn's Noghri bodyguard, killed him. Thus ended the successful campaign and turned it into a rout.

[edit] View of Campaign

Most historians believe that this was the greatest and most skillfully executed campaign in history. Using not only standard military doctrine but also extraordinary psychological warfare, Thrawn managed to deliver massive blows to the Republic. He was the first to be able to master effective use of cloaking shield technology. In addition, he not only revived cloning, but discovered a very innovative technique for cutting down the required time for cloning down from twenty years to two weeks and made it so they were able to not need training. Moreover, Thrawn was the only ruler of the Empire that brought it together fully and nearly brought the New Republic to its knees. The Republic would always recall the Thrawn Campaign as the darkest time of their fight for independence.