Ranks, Honors, Missions, Court Martials

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Ranks
In the Chiss Ascendency:

-Merit Adoptive in the Mitth family
-Cadet in the Taharim Academy on Naporar. Near expulsion after being accused of cheating on a simulation. Marked down fifty demerits for entering restricted areas without permission.
-Lieutenant after graduating, receiving a commission for the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet.
-First command: Captain of the Boco, lost command when he saved 8,000 lives but destroyed an empty cruiseliner to do it and was made a scapegoat due to family politics
-Offered an officer position aboard Ziara's vessel, the Parala.
-Senior Captain of the Springhawk, taking over from Mid Captain Samakro

In the Imperial Navy:

-Prisoner
-Cadet / Lieutenant in the Royal Imperial Academy
-Second Weapons Officer on the Gozanti-class cruiser Blood Crow, under Captain Rik Virgilio
-First Weapons Officer on Blood Crow under Virgilio after the first was promoted, then Captain Filia Ross after Virgilio was retired
-Captain and First Officer of the Arquitens-class light cruiser Thunder Wasp, under Commander Alfren Cheno after the Tibanna Gas incident
-Commander of the Thunder Wasp after the attack over Umbara
-Commodore / captain of the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera after impressing Tarkin by taking down one of his rival moffs and working with Pryce to root out a rebel cell on Coruscant
-Admiral of the ISD Chimaera and the three light cruisers Shyrack, Flensor, and Tumnor after suppressing a rebellion on Botajef without loss of life.
-Grand Admiral of the Seventh Fleet after the massacre at Batonn, with the ISD Chimaera serving as his flagship.

Missions - Chiss
Engagement with the Paataatu forces - Thrawn is made a Senior Captain of the Springhawk, one of five light cruisers within Admiral Ar'alani's forces, alongside her ship the Vigilant. While most expect the Paataatu to back off when the fleet arrives overhead, instead the Springhawk lands in the middle of a chaotic battle. With the gunners scrambling, Thrawn breaks formation against orders and allows the Springhawk to appear injured, instructing crew members to 'wobble' the ship in an imitation of a navigational issue. When most of the enemy forces take the bait and cluster up to swarm, Thrawn lets the Springhawk incur damages so that the rest of the Chiss fleet can center themselves and attack the enemy much more effectively.

Missions - Imperial

The Tibanna Gas Incident - while a First Weapons Officer aboard the Blood Crow, Thrawn, Eli, and three other crew members boarded a civilian vessel called the Dromedar, which was hauling 20 valuable canisters of tibanna gas. Because the gas is so volatile and explosive, a static-lock was used to seal the gas from the inside. However, the static-lock also had a negative effect of causing dust particles to get everywhere inside the ship, locking up the hyperdrive. Thus the Dromedar launched an automatic emergency beacon. Thrawn's captain directed them to aid the transport ship and recover any crew or valuables they could find, or ideally fix the hyperdrive to get the ship moving again.

When Thrawn and co arrived, it was to a presumed-empty ship, later found to be occupied by a pirate pretending to be a crew member. Thrawn meets the pirate Nevil Cygni, later known as Nightswan, and his group of pirates, including Angel. They're taken hostage with the Dromedar's crew on the pirate ship to be released later while Cygni and Angel disperse with the goods. Thrawn frees them through use of his placed weapons, hijacks the ship and reconnects with the Blood Crow. He then gets himself kicked off the ship, interrogates some of the captured pirates, and successfully recovers the gas by figuring out where Angel was headed with it. He meets up with Colonel Yularen during this time and impresses him. First Court Martial, after rubbing Captain Rossi and Admiral Wiskovis the wrong way. Results: Found not guilty, restored to the navy with a promotion.


The Attack over Umbara - While a captain aboard the Thunder Wasp, Thrawn is in attendance when both his light cruiser, two other ships, and the much larger Star Destroyer Foremost are attacked by four hundred vulture droids. These droids, leftover antiques from the Clone wars, are too small and fast to be hit by the Thunder Wasp's turbolasers. Thrawn takes control of the bridge from over-his-head Commander Cheno, ordering those with combat experience with these droids to take the turbolaser stations, and places himself at the replacement position of the chief sensor officer. This puts Thrawn in the prime position to observe the attackers, noting that the vulture droids shouldn't be fighting this effectively and in unison.

There, he points out that a group of four droids are speeding up for no reason, then firing indiscriminately at random, not at vulnerable targets, then return to the group to attack in formation with the rest. Thrawn concludes that the droids, normally not clever enough to attack vulnerable spots or swarm so effectively must be being controlled by something else nearby; the four defective ones on the edge are defective only when the fighters fly through the transmission shadow of one of the Imperial ships. Working hard and fast, Thrawn and Eli analyze the ship's shadows to backtrack to the transmitter and find where the signal to the droids is being broadcast. Within a few minutes, he isolates the ground-based transmitter coordinating the attack and sends the information to the Foremost to destroy it, as the Star Destroyer is the only one with the weapons powerful enough to reach it.

Except that the commander of the Foremost, Admiral Gendling, refuses to believe they found the transmitter (if one even existed) and demands they keep fighting the droids one-on-one.

Having to deal with an outright refusal of his suggestion, Thrawn thinks fast and shows where the transmission shadows are for the remaining ships, asking the turbolaser operator to focus only on the droids when they pass through those sections, and are therefore far more vulnerable to attack. While this tactic eventually wins the day, it also resulted in a lot more dead soldiers. Second court martial from Admiral Gendling for superceding his authority and ordering the Foremost's crew around. Result: Commander Cheno takes the fall, figuring he's due for retirement anyway and protects Thrawn, altering the ship logs. Thrawn gets promoted.


Pre-Spice and Land Dispute on Cyphar
While commander of the Thunder Wasp, Thrawn goes to the planet Cyphar to settle a land dispute between some of the native Cyphari people (Called the Afe clan) and the human colonists there; both sides claim to be the victims of raids and attacks by the other. Thrawn deduces that the Afe clan are the injured party, but more so that the humans are raiding Afe territory because of a vein of valuable, illegal pre-drug compound resting below the surface on Afe territory. Positioning himself and Eli in the grain near the pre-drugs, the two are able to take the human raiders by surprise. Thrawn draws their fire and forces them to take cover behind their vehicles, leading them wide-open to attack by Eli, also hidden. The bloodless encounter leaves the two of them victorious and twenty raiders stunned.

However, the problem of the vein still stands; as long as it exists, Thrawn predicts that more raiders will come to harass the Afe off their land and steal it. He requests the assistance of his best TIE pilot, Lieutenant Gimm, to map out the entirety of the vein using a hand-held scanner. Gimm, flying low, maps out the vein of pre-spice for the larger Thunder Wasp to follow, which blows it up from orbit. This way, the deadly drug is gone for good as well as the profits the raiders were hoping to make. However, in doing so, Thrawn pisses off both the Afe people (who had part of their farms and houses damaged) and High Command (by not asking their advice). Third court martial due to not being 'politically astute' and asking for permission first. Result: Cleared of all charges.


Attack on the troop transport Sempre - While a commodore of the ISD Chimaera, Thrawn is called for aid by the troop transport ship Sempre, currently being attacked by a frigate and two squads of V-19 starfighters. When he arrives, the crew is dead, beaten violently, and the quarters are emptied out. At the same time, the Chimaera's stormtrooper commander Ayer receives orders from Coruscant that he can't divulge to even Thrawn, telling him only that his troopers are to be delivered to the Sempre to recover the supposed 'troops' inside.

When it's clear the transport ship is empty and its raiders long gone, Thrawn goes aboard to investigate and discovers very troubling information: the 'troops' and transport 'items' aboard the ship were Wookiee slaves, and the attack was meant to free them from the Empire's grasp. Moreover, the Wookiee are planning to turn around and attack the base they came from; Thrawn sets a course for the base Lansend Twenty-Six. The Chimaera arrives in the thick of battle, as the frigate and the V-19 starfighters are attacking the base - Thrawn and his crew turn the tide of battle, disabling the frigate and sending the TIEs to attack the starfighters.

With the ground base under a ground assault, Thrawn orders the commander of the base - Colonel Zenoc - to retreat all his men to three halls away. He then has the Chimaera fire on Lansend base where there are no more people, separating and isolating the intruders from the rest of the base.


Suppressing rebellion on Botajef
The Governor of Botajef makes an outward declaration of secession from the Empire - Thrawn and the crew of the Chimaera are tasks with stopping the planet from seceding in whatever way possible. Eli worries that this is another mission designed to humiliate Thrawn; either he uses too much firepower on a planet of followers, or he's pushed back and has to retreat. However, Thrawn interprets the governor's motives correctly; he hoped to draw imperial might to the palace to blow it up, while the governor escaped on a corvette with billions of dollars of stolen art and the people of Botajef took the fall.

Not wishing that to happen, he uses the Chimaera to block the multiple corvettes and stall for time. He instructs his TIE fighters to do a fly-by around the palace and engages with the governor in useless bravado until he can get his tractor beam into position and halt the escape in its tracks. The followers of Botajef lose respect for their governor - the art is returned - the governor is arrested - and no one is hurt or secedes. Result: Thrawn is promoted.


Pushing back insurgents on Batonn, Part 1

Thrawn is called to action by the governors of Batonn, Denash, Sammun, and Lothal, who are all dealing with insurgents who are starting to work together. Batonn is the first world of focus: a group of insurgents took over an imperial garrison on Scrim Island, Batonn and have a hundred hostages. Thrawn is given an order to push back the Scrim Island insurgents and send the rest running for the other worlds, up to and including the option of destroying the island, which would kill both rebels and hostages.

Thrawn asks for more time to study the island because he believes there may be a way to free the hostages, but is denied: he is told that if he can't do it, the job will be given to someone else. Thrawn declines the mission: instead the overconfident and pompous Admiral Durril and his stormtrooper division take over to route the rebels from Scrim Island. He privately remarks to Eli that Durril values speed over precision and has miscalculated, which will lead to more loss of life and Durril's reputation. Instead Thrawn accepts the mission of being sent to Sammun, then sends his ship on ahead without him and sneaks to Batonn in a disguised freighter to watch whether Durril will have difficulty in recapturing Scrim Island.

Thrawn and Eli observe the battle from a distance, watching as Durril and his Star Destroyer Judicator fire full blast at the island's shields and do no damage. In doing so, Thrawn notes that Durril has demonstrated the full firepower of his ships far too early and marked all their positions out for the anti-aircraft guns on the ground. While Durril fires at the base's center, the ion cannons on the north and western shorelines fire back and land direct hits on the main ship before retreating back inside the island's shields. Durril fails to notice the shields contracting when the cannons are getting ready to fire at him, flailing to hit something and just impacting off the island shields.

When ships are hit by ion cannons, they short out and lose most of their navigational and firepower: thus Durril doesn't notice the eight freighters coming out from the island and moving fast underneath his enormous ship to escape. Seven of them head eastward and one heads for open space. As the island insurgents continue to fire turbolasers at the Judicator, Thrawn concentrates his attention on the lone freighter heading for space and about to jump to hyperspace. He asks Eli to hail it and pretend to be a smuggling ship with weapons to sell.

Eli does so, at first getting no answer and then threatening to call attention to the freighter from the imperial side. Finally Eli gets an invitation to the coordinates the freighter is about to jump to. Thrawn tells Eli to jump, understanding that there's no aid they can do and that he's already sent an emergency distress signal on Durril's behalf. Eli hesitates, noting that the freighter gave up his coordinates easily and that he sat a little longer before he could have jumped to hyperspace, perhaps receiving new instructions or intel.

Thrawn lets Eli know that he's already detached one of his infantry captains to watch the other seven freighters, leaving the two of them able to follow the eighth into hyperspace. When they reach their destination - an old ship-to-ship floating repair site called a Nomad - Thrawn gives Eli his uniform in order to pass him off for a smuggler who killed an Imperial soldier, and affixes his old lieutenant's plaque to him, telling him to press a tile on it 'when the time comes'.

Once taken aboard by himself, Eli runs into a familiar face: Cygni, from the Tibanna Gas incident, aka Nightswan. Nightswan orders Eli to sit down with him, under the impression that Thrawn is commanding the forces on Batonn, not Durril, and apologizes for needing to kill him - that he tried to convince High Command to end his career politically instead but that Thrawn seemed to always evade convictions from his court martials. Nightswan begins to talk to Eli about Thrawn, when Thrawn from the hangar starts blasting from where he'd been hidden away and setting off the 'abandon ship' alarm when he blows part of the bulkhead up.

Eli touches the lieutenant tile, blowing up the blaster in front of him. Taking advantage of Nightswan's distraction, he runs for the hangar. There he meets up with Thrawn in the middle of a blaster fight, and steals a different vessel as cover for the escape. The two return to Batonn. There, Eli is amazed to see the Star Destroyer Judicator intact; Thrawn had left his captain Brento instructions to assemble a handful of light cruisers, focusing their combined tractor beams on the Judicator and move it out of the way of the ion cannons and provide a way for them to escape. Result: Durril is embarrassed and humiliated about his public failure. Thrawn is given Fleet Admiral Donassius' permission to try his hand at Batonn instead, this time with the additional time needed to gather intelligence.


Pushing back insurgents on Batonn, Part 2

Thrawn holds the Chimaera in wait over the atmosphere and sends in his three light cruisers towards the planet to attack Scrim Island once more. The three ion cannons on Scrim island are brought out in turn, and the cruisers instead fire on the ion cannons before they have a chance to retreat back into the shield. A fourth ion cannon is brought out and successfully knocks out the sensors and primary weaponry of all three ships. The cruisers still have communications, secondary weapons, and auxiliary drives.

Thrawn orders the cruisers to start 'drifting' as if their drives were not working, and then waits for the cruisers to get in range of the ion cannons. The Chimaera shifts down, hiding behind its own damaged cruisers, so that the three ion cannons can't reach it to disable it as well. The fourth is ignored - Thrawn points out that it was likely faulty from its last few blasts and was brought out as a bluff to get them to retreat and reevaluate. Scrim Island has one powerful turbolaser, but Thrawn predicts that it won't fire until it's certain of a kill shot on the Chimaera and that Thrawn won't fire through his own ships.

Eventually the Chimaera is within optimal firing distance. Thrawn orders the Chimaera to fire on the ocean around Scrim Island, slamming it with tsunami-like waves and flooding the ion cannons. Eventually the water hits the turbolaser on Scrim Island, which explodes when the capacitors overload. Thrawn opens a comm, demanding the Scrim Islanders lower their shield and surrender, or be destroyed by the ocean waves caused by the Chimaera. Result: The plan works: the shield is lowered, the hostages are rescued and Thrawn orders the insurgent commander to come out to meet the assault boats.


Pushing back insurgents on Batonn, Part 3

Eli Vanto is able to track where the other seven freighters went from the Batonn attack in Part 1 - to Creekpath Mining and Refining Complex, outside of Paeragosto City on Batonn's main continent. Eli, Thrawn, Yularen and Pryce convene to discuss what to do to root the insurgents out: an aerial assault is deemed impossible by Thrawn, both because of the complex's shield and the 30,000 civilians living inside it.

Pryce, due to her background in mining and the fact that her parents are two of those civilians, offers to head there first to do some reconnaissance and look for defenses and weaponry. Thrawn notes that Pryce is a governor now and therefore the civilians and insurgents will consider her untrustworthy. She assures him that no one will recognize her except her parents, and they can be kept quiet. Thrawn casts doubts that they don't know which side of the conflict Pryce's parents are on. Pryce counters that she and Agent Gudry - Yularen's man who will be Pryce's bodyguard and investigator - are highly competent and the best Thrawn's got at the moment. Thrawn disapproves due to both safety and efficacy reasons, but concedes that as Batonn isn't classified as a military zone, he has very little authority with which to tell a governor what to do.

Thrawn also leaves his three light cruisers - all disabled - out of range of the Chimaera while they're being repaired, which effectively is baiting Nightswan into coming out and blowing them up. However, it would mean that if Nightswan took the bait, it would lead to the destruction of all three cruisers before the Chimaera could manage to protect them, as Yularen warns Eli privately, worried that Thrawn's obsession with Nightswan is leading him to play with Imperial lives.

Thrawn in the privacy of his office, uses a commlink he stole during the Attack on Batonn, Part 1 to hail Nightswan, asking him for a face-to-face meet-up outside their shields in a field on neutral territory. Thrawn reassures him that he doesn't seek his death or capture, and tells Nightswan he has value to him but will only speak face-to-face about it. To the question of Nightswan wondering why he's so sure Thrawn won't be killed, Thrawn states that Nightswan values the lives of citizens as Thrawn does, and that there are 30,000 people that most in the Empire will happily slaughter to get to the rebels if it wasn't for Thrawn leading the attack. Nightswan professes he tried to get the civilians with him to go home but couldn't keep them out; Thrawn reassures him that he'll do all that he can to prevent unnecessary deaths.

The two meet and talk: Thrawn correctly surmises that Nightswan once belonged to a Mining guild that was hit hard by the Empire buying up all the doonium in existence, and turned to smuggling from the Empire to help the smaller guilds survive, later leaving that practice when it was clear that the smaller guilds were just selling the stolen goods back to the Empire. Nightswan then became a consultant for innocent people and the occasional insurgent who had been hurt by the Empire, giving them advice for nominal fees to smuggle goods away from the Imperials. He reports that he was happy enough to make a living that way until he started to hear rumors of the project that was eating up all the doonium and other ores in the market, with whole planets strip-mined.

Thrawn asks Nightswan if he wants to stop the project because he's also interested in what it is, and asks what Nightswan's heard about it. Nightswan doesn't tell him, purely because that information could be vital to his people someday. The conversation turns briefly to Cyphar, and Thrawn asks why he was baited to go there; Nightswan admits that he brought Thrawn there purely to stop the operation, hating spice as much as Thrawn does and was brought in to help the human settlement under false pretenses. From there, Nightswan tells Thrawn that Tarkin is at the head of the mystery project, and it's in one location: Thrawn corrects that it's one prime location and one subsidiary location.

Nightswan admits he has a duty now to the 30,000 people who've attached themselves to him and see him as some sort of leader. He also tells Thrawn that he had a grand plan once to unite the insurgents and the rebels together, but that squabbling and pride and infighting stopped him from managing it, and that he's not much of a leader. He turns to Thrawn, asking him why he still serves the Empire, knowing what evil it is.

Thrawn first tells Nightswan a story about how if two people are running from a predator, they can either band together to kill the predator, or one can injure the other to leave as bait and then use that time to construct a weapon or escape the predator all together. He then tells him that he was exploring the Empire after the Clone Wars and had seen the instability of the Old Republic: that there were too many different points of view and that it was 'sluggish and inefficient'. The Chiss government was worried about the report, with Thrawn speaking frankly;

"There are evil things in this galaxy, Nightswan. Far more evil than the Empire, and far more dangerous to all living beings. We know of some, while of others we have heard only rumors. We needed to know whether the Empire that was rising from the ashes of the Clone War could be an ally against them.” "Or whether it should instead be collapsed into an easy prey.""

Thrawn explains that the exile from the Chiss was a ruse; the Chiss put that together to ascertain what sort of ally the Empire could be. He admits it was completely unexpected that the Emperor would make him an officer of the navy, having hoped for permission instead to study the political and military structure of the Empire, and report back to the Chiss. He admits here the Empire is corrupt and tyrannical, but 'quick and utter ruthlessness is necessary when the galaxy is continually threatened by chaos.'

The two have a brief debate about whether toppling the Empire will be a good or bad thing in the long run: if it will bring freedom or chaos, justice or lawlessness, or another war like the Clone Wars. Thrawn is convinced that his position as a senior officer will put him in line to influence the new leader when the Emperor finally dies, and declares that if evil is victorious, it will hardly matter who the Emperor is. Nightswan tells Thrawn that he's politically naive, and asks if this is where he'll be asked to abandon his people and join the Empire to make it better. Thrawn says no; he wishes to offer Nightswan a position with the Chiss instead.

Nightswan briefly considers the offer but says that while Thrawn would guarantee the civilian lives, once he leaves, the governor would keep oppressing them, the people would eventually rise up against them, and without Nightswan, they'd be slaughtered anyway; he has an obligation now to protect his people. Thrawn mentions he may know where the Empire's secret project is being constructed and asks Nightswan if that would make him change his mind: despite it being a vast cache of Imperial resources, Thrawn would want to evaluate if it held any threat to the Chiss and if so, have it eliminated. Nightswan tells him that it's a political situation and Thrawn's power lies only with the military. They depart on peaceful but unhappy terms: adversaries who seek the same ends in the distant future, but who have chosen different paths to get there.

On the way back, Thrawn meets up with Yularen to discuss why he put his cruisers out so far and why he was talking to Nightswan, both hallmarks of a traitor. Thrawn replies that he was offering Nightswan a job far away, rendering the insurgents leaderless, and that the cruisers only appear unprotected but can jump to hyperspace if need be, placed far enough away from each other that an enterprising pirate can't get all three at once.

Meanwhile, Pryce inside the shield has made the unhappy discovery that her parents - while not insurgents - are supportive of the rebels against the tyrannical government. She separates herself from Agent Gudry to get her parents out while Gudry rigs the shield generator and an explosives cache with mines. Gudry finds her at her parents' house and tells her she's leaving without her parents, as they'll slow them down and draw attention to them. She refuses - a fight breaks out and Pryce kills Gudry by shooting him in the chest in front of her mother. She takes the trigger mechanism from Gudry's body and starts searching him. Thrawn asks Yularen to send a squad to Pryce's parents' home, figuring that since they aren't answering their comms, they might be holed up there. In escaping, Pryce murders a civilian guard and uses an explosion she planted to distract, much to the revulsion of her father. She reaches the edge of the shield and discovers that Yularen's squad is on the way to her house and will discover the body of the agent she killed in there.

Eli gets a report that there are about thirty ships from the insurgents unaccounted for and coming to Batonn, with all of Thrawn's ships still in recovery and the Chimaera extremely vulnerable to attack. Just then, three groups of 10-11 mid-sized ships appear, each one headed for one of the three grounded, defenseless light cruisers. Eli worries that Thrawn is ruthless enough to let the cruisers explode, but he appears outwardly calm. He gives the command to let the cruisers flee, and opens the repair barges, where squadrons of TIE fighters from the Judicator lie in wait to begin the battle.

Fearing discovery of her killing an imperial agent by the rescue squad being sent to her house, Pryce commits a heinous war crime; she detonates the second blast of the rigged explosives without lowering the shield first, leading to a contained and deflected inward blast that renders the mining complex to ash, murdering the rescue team and both the insurgents and the 30,000 civilians all trapped inside.

Thrawn, furious and regretful, immediately calls off the battle and orders the ground troops to conduct search and rescue operations. He orders that if any enemy ships break and run for it, to let them go to spread the tale of what happened in order to demoralize the enemy, but to destroy any who fight back.

Result; The murder of 30,000 civilians, insurgents, and Nightswan. Thrawn and Pryce have an intense falling-out over Pryce's suspected role in the massacre, but the two agreeing to work together because of Thrawn's blindness into political matters and Pryce's desire to rid Lothal of rebel activity. Thrawn gets promoted to Grand Admiral and earns the undeserved nickname 'The Butcher of Batonn'.