On the Origins of a Galactic Civil War

The first part in a series on the radical reclamation of Star Wars for tabletop gaming

Prologue: The Jilted Lover Strikes Back

Star Wars is in the news again. Over the last ten years, this has meant nothing but trouble, as Disney has done everything within its power to destroy all affection and interest in this once-beloved story. Today, however, the news is optimistic: Kathleen Kennedy, the person usually identified as most responsible for the death of Star Wars, is finally retiring. Also, season 2 of Andor is coming. Andor, despite being a show that comparatively few people watched, was quite excellent; a tense and intriguing thriller about political machinations and guerilla warfare that managed to finally tell a fresh and interesting Star Wars story and yet also managed to be (along with its cinematic capstone, Rogue One) the only entry in the Mouse Wars neo-canon that felt like it really existed in the same universe as the original movies.

Naturally, this triggered my hobby attention-deficit, as I was reminded that I had quite a few 25mm Star Wars miniatures and vehicles still to be painted. But that also got me thinking about the Star Wars universe again, something which I used to do an awful lot as a kid, but haven’t done much at all in the last ten years.

Before we go farther, a brief sketch of the rise and fall of my Star Wars fanaticism is necessary. I wasn’t born in time to see any of the original films in the theaters, but they were on HBO a lot when I was a very young child. Return of the Jedi is one of the first films I have a memory of seeing and imprinted itself indelibly on my psyche and it remains my favorite Star Wars movie. In junior high, I discovered the novels and Dark Horse comics, and coincidentally this was about the time they started releasing the Star Wars action figures again. Like many people, my fervor was cooled substantially by the prequels, but I expected Disney to re-ignite it. But within five days after seeing The Force Awakens, I realized my interest in Star Wars was on life support. Rogue One pumped it up again, but we did not even go see The Last Jedi in theaters, waiting for it to stream on Netflix, and it was so horrible we didn’t even watch the last half hour. I still haven’t seen The Rise of Skywalker and, God willing, I never will. I watched the first two seasons of The Mandalorian and ended up thinking everyone who liked it had something wrong with them; the first season followed an infuriating pattern of having a run of dreadfully stupid episodes interspersed with really good ones, but the second season was garbage from beginning to end. I gave up on the Obi Wan series at the end of the second episode, and only got half an hour through the first episode of the Boba Fett TV show. I didn’t watch Andor at all until more classy people in my circles told me it was very good; I gave it a try and it blew me away. It single-handedly revived my interest in the Star Wars universe, even prompting me to dig out the ancient Star Wars Miniatures Battles figures from West End Games that had laid in a box, untouched since I was in 9th grade, and give them a proper paint job.

Here are a few of the Star Wars (and Ground Zero Games) 25mm minis that I painted since last weekend.

And some more, including a miniature representing my friend’s Trandoshan bounty hunter from my RPG campaign.

It also inspired me to run a Classic Star Wars RPG campaign. This was to be the Star Wars universe as I imagined it when I still loved it, and it was big, open, and relatively mysterious, albeit informed by the best parts of the EU novels and the prequels. It was set during the Galactic Civil War, before the destruction of the first Death Star. There were two primary foci for the action. First, it was about the tumultuous years of the Rebellion’s founding and the in-fighting between rival factions, the Andor-inspired world of espionage, guerilla warfare, and Imperial counter-insurgency operations. Second, an Indiana Jones-Meets-Star Wars theme of archaeology and treasure hunting amidst the 25,000+ year history of galactic civilization.

This RPG campaign, which ended up going hilariously off the rails in the best way, is what this article and the others in the series, is really about. It is my attempt to reclaim what was good about the Star Wars universe and make it my own, to create a satisfying setting for RPGs and wargaming.

But to do that, it is necessary to understand some things about the different takes of Star Wars that we’ve seen on screen.

Star Wars Prequels as De-Mythologization

This morning, the estimable

Alexandru Constantin

posted an uncommon take on the Star Wars prequels, particularly The Phantom Menace:

He has it mostly right. The only thing I object to is the suggestion that the mythology of the original movies was simplistic or infantile. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that the prequels were an attempt at de-mythologization, not just of Darth Vader and the Force itself, but of the legendary heroes and the political cause of the Rebellion, and ultimately the Rebellion itself.

Over the course of the prequels, it becomes clear that the Old Republic the Rebellion was fighting to restore was both incredibly corrupt and feckless, and that the Jedi, far from being “the guardians of peace and order in the Galaxy” as Obi-Wan claimed, were the merciless enforcers of this corrupt regime. Within the first minutes of The Phantom Menace, the Jedi “negotiators” are revealed to be a grim euphemism; they did not come to discuss anything, but to threaten and, if that failed, assassinate the Trade Federation Viceroy. That Nute Gunray is the cat’s paw of a Sith Lord does little to justify this, since the Jedi were unaware of this fact at the time.

At this point, I should clarify that I don’t think “myth” is synonymous with “falsehood.” The myths I’m talking about are the spiritually resonant beliefs of a culture, the way they understand the natural world, their place in it, the history of their tribe and civilization, and their heroes and villains. In one sense, they are likely to leave out details and thus be simplifications of the bare facts, but in another sense they are, as Tolkien said, more true than mere facts. So I am not saying that the Republic never represented a Golden Age of civilization, or that the Jedi were never the guardians of peace and order in the galaxy, only that these myths had already decayed to a much grimier reality by the time of the prequels. Thus, these stories don’t contradict the original movies, only the false perceptions of Luke and Leia, who never knew that era and had only romantic notions about it.

Speaking of grimier realities, let us depart from the Jedi and talk about what the whole Trade Federation invasion reveals about the political realities of the Republic. What is the nature of their dispute with Naboo? The opening crawl reveals:

The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.
Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo.

But this does more to mystify than enlighten. Who wants to tax these trade routes; Naboo or the Trade Federation? Where/what are these “outlying systems” — is Naboo one of them, or are they represented by the clients and members of the Trade Federation? Perhaps it is neither.

Many commentators, especially in the context of the present day, think that this represents Naboo imposing tariffs that have negatively impacted the Trade Federation. I disagree. Tariffs are a tax on imported goods, not on trade routes. If Lucas wanted to say tariffs, he would have. The wording makes it sound something more like the tolling of hyperspace lanes, something which Naboo self-evidently did not have the power to enforce even in its own star system, let alone in the galaxy as a whole.

If the Trade Federation is modeled on the historic Hanseatic League, or in part on the Guild from Dune, then the ‘restraint of trade’ was more likely imposed by the Federation than by Naboo. This is the reality I have set out in my Star Wars campaign setting.

Succinctly, the Trade Federation had long established itself as the primary carrier between the longer inhabited, more civilized worlds of the Galactic Core and the younger (but still venerable in absolute terms) worlds of the Expansion Region and Outer Rim. It is very likely that special privileges , if not a virtual monopoly, was codified into galactic law, as demonstrated by the Trade Federation itself (and not merely the Neimoidians) having a seat in the Galactic Senate, and some dialogue about the blockade and invasion of Naboo taking years to resolve in the court system, thereby indicating that the Federation had a strong argument in favor of its legal right to exert independent military force against another world in the Republic. For my purposes, it’s not important to determine the actual proximal cause of the action, though I can entertain several possibilities. One is that Naboo began building its own merchant marine (merchant astral?) to cut out the middle man. Another is that the Trade Federation imposed particular restrictions or duties on good that Naboo considered essential to its economic well-being, or gave special rates to Naboo’s competitors; perhaps Naboo regarded this as a violation of Common Carrier provisions. Maybe they not only refused to pay, but impounded some Trade Federation freighters.

Whatever the case, the episode shows how moribund the Republic was. Not only did the galactic government fail to keep harmful trade disputes from arising between its own members, it seemed utterly powerless to prevent one of its constituents from invading another. This strikes at the heart of the Republic’s reason for existence. Comparatively speaking, the Imperial Navy Base-Delta-Zeroing some obstreperous frontier worlds or gangster-controlled moon is nothing to get exercised about. At least the Empire is enforcing law and order.

The First Rebellion

Speaking of law and order, the prequels introduce an uncomfortable but, to my mind, unavoidable implication about the origin of the Rebel Alliance: it was an outgrowth of the Confederation of Independent Systems.

Yes, Count Dooku’s Separatists were the original Rebellion. In all likelihood, they are also the main reason why the Rebels had enough ships and starfighters to be a real threat. They may grow charismatic terrorists on Tattooine moisture farms, but they don’t grow X-Wings.

From the point of view of the Galactic Empire, which sees itself as a continuation of the Galactic Republic, the Galactic Civil War was nothing more than the continuation of the war against the CIS, and the so-called “Alliance to Restore the Republic” was a disingenuous name change by the Separatists. Of the post-prequel media, only the Andor/Rogue One series is bold enough to acknowledge this (cf. Anto Kreegyr).

Objections to this based on the movies fall flat. While Revenge of the Sith depicts the eradication of the Separatist leadership, it does not depict the elimination of their vast military machine. And while it must be acknowledged that Palpatine instigated the war to propel himself to the throne, it’s not like the Trade Federation, Techno-Union, Intergalactic Banking Clan, et. al, only got the idea to launch their revolt from him. On the contrary, Palpatine was an opportunist who planted seeds in already fertile ground.

There are many pieces of circumstantial evidence for this. Most significantly, the Rebel Alliance is notable for having a vast array of technically sophisticated weaponry that is not captured from its adversary. This is unusual, to say the least, and implies that they are being armed by another peer or near-peer power. Since the Empire is the sole legitimate government in the Star Wars galaxy, the only candidates for this near-peer power are the remnants of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, which was heavy on starship and armaments manufacturers.

(Since the Rebellion is swimming in Incom-produced designs — not only the famous X-Wing, but also the U-Wing gunship, the T-47 airspeeder, and the Z-95 Headhunter — I assume that Incom was associated with the CIS, either on its own, or as a subsidiary of some larger consortium like the Techno Union. The Republic’s use of the ARC-170 starfighter, a joint project between Incom and Subpro does not propose an insuperable argument against this. In the old EU material, Incom was said to have “defected from the Empire”. I propose they actually defected from the Republic in the midst of the Clone Wars, shortly after delivering the ARC-170 fighters.)

Another piece of circumstantial evidence is the composition of each force. The Republic was overwhelmingly dominated by humans, at least in military positions. The only real exceptions were the Jedi masters. The Empire follows the human-centric composition.

The CIS, on the other hand, was thick with non-human sophonts, and so was the Rebel Alliance. While the Rebels’ greatest heroes were humans, like Luke Skywalker Wedge Antilles, the huge diversity of non-human (Calamari, Quarren, Sullustans) and human sub-species (like the Twileks, maybe?) much more closely resembles the CIS than the Republic military.

Due to the influence of Bail and Leia Organa, it is sometimes supposed that rebellious core systems like Alderaan can explain the early source of all or most of the Rebel Alliance’s heavy equipment. I disagree. Already by the time of A New Hope, Princess Leia objects to the Death Star targeting Alderaan by saying her planet has no weapons. Now, Leia could be lying, or simply being sly, the implication being that Alderaan had transferred all of its military forces to the Rebel Alliance, the way the average American gunowner lost all of his rifles in a series of shocking boating accidents. But there is little evidence of this, as even Leia’s own pirate ship, the Tantive IV, was made by the Corellians.

To be clear, I’m not saying that the entirety of the Rebel Alliance’s war material comes from the CIS. A galaxy is a very big place, after all. I’m also not saying that the Separatist ideology of the Rebellion did not fade, or get replaced, over the course of the war. I’m only saying that the CIS is the logical source of much of it, and it is the only on screen example we have of an organization with sufficient military resources and the political will to arm a rebel group, rather than contenting itself with getting fat off of government contracts.

Thus, the various rebel factions in my campaign had a significant number of warriors and equipment that formerly fought on the side of the CIS in the Clone Wars. More details on these factions will be revealed in future essays, along with my attempt to re-mythologize the universe through the hunt for lost civilizations and wondrous artifacts from the legendary past.

In the meantime, I am very interested to hear your own thoughts on these matters.