Confederacy of Independent Systems

The Confederacy of Independent Systems, referred to as the Confederacy, or more commonly, as 'the Separatists,' was a conglomeration of powerful and influential corporate interests several decades prior to the rise of the Galactic Empire. Under the leadership of one Count Dooku, the Confederacy declared independence from the prevailing Galactic Republic and waged a vast and brutal war against it. Driven principally by free-market profit motives, the Confederacy's various member corporations combined their illegal armies into a force which would have been capable of toppling the government of the Galactic Republic.

In the event, however, Republic operatives discovered two critical pieces of information: one, the treachery of the Confederacy itself; and two, an army of clones, trained and prepped for combat, which had been in production for some time on the planet Kamino. Inexplicably (at the time), this army had apparently been requested by a Jedi agent decades earlier, without the knowledge or consent of the Republic or of the Jedi Council. Despite such suspicious circumstances, the Republic eagerly employed this force to engage the imminent Separatist threat - as the Republic had no standing army as such, and lacked immediate access to the huge amounts of materiel required to counter the Separatist's legions of automated combat units.

War between the Republic and the Separatists raged across the galaxy for three years, with the Republic making extensive (indeed virtually exclusive) use of the Clone Army while the Separatists continued to churn out automated vehicles and droids, opting on the whole for a quantity-over-quality approach with the intent of wearing down and overrunning the forces of the Republic.

Approximately three years after the Battle of Geonosis which brought the conflict to a head, the Confederacy launched a vast offensive across the Outer Rim, assaulting hundreds of planets and successfully drawing the greater part of Republic forces away from the galactic core. Thus distracted, the Separatists under the cyborg General Grievous launched an enormous assault against Coruscant, capital of the Republic. However even this assault was essentially diversionary, as the real aim was to capture Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and thereby force the Republic to surrender. While the initial kidnapping narrowly succeeded (having faced stiff resistance from Jedi knights), it ultimately failed, as two Jedi knights inflitrated the Confederate flagship - the Invisible Hand - and rescued Palpatine. However, Count Dooku was slain during this course of events, ending his leadership of the Separatist movement.

Ultimately the Separatists were defeated not by the Republic, which was on the verge of collapse, but by its own true leader: Palpatine himself. Palpatine, in reality a Sith Lord named Darth Sidious, had engineering the entire formation of the Confederacy and the subsequent war with the Republic. With the Jedi spread thinly around the galaxy, Palpatine commanded the Clone Forces to execute Order 66, a pre-installed order which had been programmed into the Clones from the beginning. Isolated from other Jedi and other friendly forces, the Jedi acting as field commanders in the war were overwhelmed and slain by their own troops.

Other Jedi were hunted down and exterminated by the traitor Anakin Skywalker, who had become Palpatine's apprentice and taken the title Darth Vader. Not all the remaining Jedi were wiped out at that time; many were tracked and slaughtered by Vader in the two decades after the war. Between Vader and Order 66, less than half a dozen Jedi are known to have survived into the Imperial era.

Yet Vader was commanded not only to eradicate the Jedi; Palpatine also ordered him to assasinate the remaining corporate leaders of the Confederacy. Under the pretense of being a new apprentice to Palpatine and military liaison to the Separatists, Vader was sent to a secret meeting of the Confederacy's top officials. He executed all of them in short order, ultimately causing the Separatist movement to collapse.

Record 815 - group - Last update 07 Nov 2007, 05:16:19

Entry written by: Torvus

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