Massacre of Endor

From TFC Galactopedia

In 1798 J.A., the Rebel Alliance traveled to the forest moon of Endor to destroy the second DEATH STAR. Reports of the DEATH STAR under construction had reached the Rebels through Bothan spies, but those reports were purposely leaked by the The Emperor in order to set a lethal trap for the Rebels.

The plan was twofold: a small team would infiltrate the surface of Endor in a stolen Imperial shuttle (using stolen Imperial verification codes) and shut down the shield generator protecting the unfinished battle station. Following the completion of their ground operation the combined Rebel fleet would begin a full scale capital ship assault upon the unfinished battle station, whose weapons systems were not yet believed to be operational. The larger battle would serve as a distraction to enable Rebel fighters to reach the most vulnerable point in the construction, deep inside the exposed superstructure, and destroy the second DEATH STAR.

Unfortunately, the Rebel commandos, after several unfriendly encounters with hostile (and carnivorous) planetary natives, walked directly into the Emperor's trap. Highly skilled though they were, the handful of Rebel troops proved no match for the legion of Stormtroopers and heavy vehicle brigades which had been assigned to secure the shield generator complex, and were slain to the last man. When the field team failed to bring the shields offline, the small contingent of fighters chosen to destroy the DEATH STAR construction were unable to penetrate the superstructure, and the entire Rebel fleet now found itself trapped between a massive formation of Imperial warships and the fully armed and operational battle station itself. Once the devastating power of the DEATH STAR's primary weapon was unleashed, the Rebel fleet quickly fell into disarray, an effect which was only compounded by the subsequent loss of the Rebellion's flagship Home One, killing all aboard and wiping out the senior command structure of the fleet in a single stroke. A slaughter quickly ensued, with Rebel ships being systematically destroyed by overwhelming firepower faster than their crews could calculate a hyperspace vector to escape. The Rebel fighter squadrons were almost completely annihilated, unable to cope with odds ranging into the hundreds of enemy fighters to one, and in the end only a bare handful of ships managed to escape the carnage and bolt for safety by making random, blind jumps into hyperspace, which claimed yet more ships and lives.

While the precise number of dead may never be truly known, informed Imperial sources place the number in the high tens of thousands, with over fifty Rebel capital ships of varying sizes and more than one hundred fighters confirmed destroyed or captured. This force represented the vast majority of the Rebel space fleet, and virtually all of its senior command staff - its loss broke the back of the Rebellion as it was then known, and the organization would rapidly disintegrate into dozens of rival factions bickering for what little was left. Once the DEATH STAR's primary hyperdrive systems were installed and operational, a series of brutal reprisals were set into motion for those worlds who had offered material support or safe passage for this Rebel force. Most notably, soon after the battle, the ocean world of Mon Calamari was utterly destroyed and the civilian population of Sullust exterminated for their treason in a Base Delta Zero orbital bombardment operation.

TFC Canon