Welcome back to Dark Days.
Posted on Fri Aug 21st, 2026 @ 1:37am by Shipmaster Allore Titha
2,147 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission: Daiyu
DARK DAYS
THE STORY SO FAR
18 BBY — The Republic is dead. The Empire has risen.
The Clone Wars are over.
For three years, the galaxy tore itself apart. Republic fought Separatist, clone fought droid, and countless worlds became battlefields in a war few truly understood.
Then, almost overnight, everything changed.
Chancellor Palpatine declared the Jedi traitors. Clone troopers turned their weapons upon the generals they had served beside. The Jedi Temple fell. The Confederacy collapsed. The Galactic Republic was reorganised into the Galactic Empire, with Palpatine as Emperor and Darth Vader as his enforcer.
The war ended.
The darkness did not.
Imperial authority spread rapidly across the galaxy. Chain codes, military patrols and increasingly powerful regional governors became part of everyday life. The Imperial Senate remained, but its influence weakened as senators learned that opposing the Emperor too openly could carry a fatal price.
Meanwhile, the surviving Jedi scattered.
Some hid. Some fought. Some simply tried to survive.
THE GAUNTLET — SURVIVORS
Among those who escaped the destruction of the Jedi were Allore Titha and the younglings placed in her care.
Their survival came at terrible cost. The Jedi they had known were gone. The Order that had raised them had been destroyed. Across the galaxy, anyone discovered sheltering Jedi risked imprisonment, disappearance or execution.
Allore refused to abandon the children.
Instead, the survivors disappeared aboard the Gauntlet.
What began as desperate flight gradually became something more.
The ship became their home.
Its crew became their family.
They travelled under false identities, took legitimate cargo contracts and did everything possible to appear to be nothing more than another independent freighter trying to make a living in an increasingly hostile galaxy.
CORELLIA — HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Corellia offered the crew something increasingly rare: the chance to disappear amongst millions of ordinary citizens.
The Gauntlet could operate as a legitimate freighter. Its crew could work, trade and build identities that did not immediately attract Imperial attention.
But even there, Imperial control was growing.
Chain codes and interconnected records made simply disappearing more difficult. Every transaction became part of the crew's disguise, and every financial trail carried risk.
Allore therefore maintained a careful balance — enough legitimate accounts to pay the crew and keep the ship operating, while keeping reserves of physical credits outside the banking system should they ever need to disappear without warning.
THE INQUISITORIUS — THE HUNT
The Jedi Purge did not end with Order 66.
Darth Vader and the Emperor unleashed the Inquisitorius, Force-sensitive hunters tasked with finding surviving Jedi and anyone helping them.
Among the most feared was First Sister.
Brutal, unpredictable and relentless, she hunted survivors across the galaxy alongside the other Inquisitors.
On Nar Shaddaa, the hunt ended in massacre. Civilians were slaughtered to force Jedi from hiding, a Jedi Master was captured, a youngling killed, and First Sister executed one of her own fellow Inquisitors for failure.
But during the hunt, something changed.
Someone mentioned her sister.
Someone First Sister believed was dead.
Doubt began to take root.
THE GAUNTLET IS IDENTIFIED
Eventually, the Empire found a name.
GAUNTLET
While investigating Jedi activity on Taris, First Sister sensed the presence of two Force users who had passed through the area.
One felt recognisably Jedi-trained.
The other did not.
That second presence troubled her. Jedi were familiar prey. She understood their teachings, instincts and weaknesses. This other Force user was less predictable.
The investigation connected them to the Gauntlet.
For the first time, the ship itself became part of the Imperial hunt.
THE RAVAGER — THE EMPIRE'S FIST
While the Inquisitors hunted Jedi, the Imperial Navy hunted rebellion.
Admiral Martius Ferris, commanding the Ravager, became one of the officers charged with stamping out organised resistance before it could spread.
Ferris proved ruthless and effective.
Rebel convoys were intercepted. Ships were boarded. Prisoners were interrogated. Resistance personnel who refused to cooperate were made examples of.
Eventually, the Ravager's mission expanded.
Imperial military power and the hunters of the Dark Side were brought together.
And eventually, the Gauntlet became one of their targets.
FIRST SISTER FALLS
First Sister had grown increasingly disillusioned with her masters.
The Emperor demanded obedience. Vader demanded obedience. Her power, missions and very existence belonged to them.
Eventually, she decided she would no longer remain their servant.
At Imperial outpost SB-317, she enacted an elaborate escape. She sealed the facility, sabotaged its reactor and deliberately damaged her connection to the Force so Vader and the Emperor would believe she had died.
Then she escaped moments before the station exploded.
To almost everyone, First Sister was dead.
Admiral Ferris did not believe it.
Evidence eventually proved him right.
First Sister had gone rogue.
THE FIRST SPARKS OF REBELLION
The Empire believed opposition could be frightened into silence.
Instead, resistance continued to grow.
On Alderaan, Verranica Cadera and Tyvokk trained a new generation of fighters.
They understood that defeating the Empire might take years — perhaps generations.
But someone had to begin.
Their fledgling resistance needed fighters, bases, weapons, supply networks and, most importantly, ships.
An opportunity appeared at Jabo shipyard: an unused Arquitens-class light cruiser named the Valour.
The plan was not to destroy her.
They planned to steal her.
If successful, the Valour could become a mobile base, warship and symbol of something the Empire desperately wanted the galaxy to forget:
The Empire could be challenged.
THE SENATE — RESISTANCE BEHIND A SMILE
Not everyone opposing the Empire carried a blaster.
On Coruscant, senators continued to meet beneath the watchful eye of the Emperor.
Publicly, they praised Imperial order.
Privately, many were terrified.
Senator Selena T'eeda witnessed the danger firsthand when First Sister interrupted a political gathering and arrested a former senator accused of sheltering Jedi and Force-sensitive children.
Selena challenged the Inquisitor carefully enough to survive the encounter.
Later, she found an ally in Senator Kriton Delratta.
Their relationship became personal, but their conversations increasingly turned toward the future: escape routes, hidden militias, alliances between their worlds and quiet contact with senators such as Bail Organa and Mon Mothma.
The Rebellion was not yet one unified movement.
But its foundations were beginning to form.
THE UNDERWORLD — CREDITS HAVE NO ALLEGIANCE
While rebels dreamed of freedom and Imperials demanded obedience, the criminal underworld saw opportunity.
Zeggo Otex expanded his criminal empire through piracy, slavery and smuggling.
Smuggler Annir began recovering valuable Separatist technology and selling weapons and military hardware through criminal networks.
She understood the future clearly.
Another war was coming.
The Empire would grow.
Resistance would grow against it.
Both sides would need suppliers.
Annir intended to profit while ensuring neither side became powerful enough to completely dominate the Outer Rim.
SCARLETT — SOMETHING NEW
First Sister's escape did not make her a Jedi.
Nor did it make her a Rebel.
Now calling herself Scarlett, she disappeared into the underworld and began working through the Pyke Syndicate.
She sought Jedi and Sith relics, lost libraries and ancient holocrons.
One discovery may prove especially dangerous.
The Holocron of Darth Revan.
Scarlett intends to learn, grow stronger and build something of her own.
And for reasons known only to herself, she has decided that Allore Titha and the Gauntlet crew must not fall into Imperial hands.
At least, not yet.
DAIYU — THE GAUNTLET'S LAST LANDING
Eventually, the Gauntlet arrived on Daiyu.
The lawless city-world seemed perfect for people who did not want questions asked.
The crew landed in the freighter district and began unloading cargo. Jaden sent Sparky into local systems to monitor dock security. Connor worked on the ship's weapons. Illenya and TEX went into the city for medical supplies.
For a brief moment, everything seemed normal.
Then Allore learned the truth.
IMPERIALS WERE COMING.
There was no time to discover how much the Empire knew.
Allore ordered the immediate evacuation of the Gauntlet.
Everyone was to take their belongings, remove anything that could connect them to the ship and disappear.
Jaden took the younglings, Illenya, TEX and the droids aboard two speeder bikes.
Connor was ordered to take Covo and Tsafic in the landspeeder, along with weapons and whatever equipment could be saved.
Both groups received coordinates.
A safe house.
Allore promised to wipe the ship's computers and follow.
Illenya knew her sister better than that.
THE SAFE HOUSE
The escaping crew vanished into Daiyu.
When an Imperial checkpoint blocked their route, the speeders and landspeeder were forced to split and take different paths through the lower city.
TEX eventually led the first group to an apparently ordinary swoop repair shop.
Behind shelves of broken machinery was a concealed entrance.
Behind that entrance was a sanctuary Allore had prepared long before anyone else knew it might be needed.
Inside were bedrooms and bunk rooms, a communal lounge, kitchen, medical facilities, weapons, supplies, forged identities, emergency credits and a concealed escape route beneath the city.
For the first time since abandoning their ship, the crew had somewhere safe to hide.
But Allore wasn't with them.
From the distant starport, smoke was already rising.
AND NOW...
The Galactic Empire grows stronger every day. Its fleets patrol the hyperspace lanes. Its stormtroopers occupy worlds. Its Inquisitors hunt the remaining Jedi.
The Ravager continues its campaign against rebels and survivors.
The Inquisitorius continues the hunt.
Scarlett is free of the Empire and building power of her own.
The Rebellion remains young and divided, but fighters are training, senators are making quiet alliances, and plans are underway to steal the Valour.
The criminal underworld is preparing to profit from the war everyone can see coming.
And on Daiyu, the crew of the Gauntlet has lost the ship that became their home.
The younglings are hidden.
The crew is moving toward sanctuary.
The Empire is closing in.
And Allore Titha is still at the starport.
The Gauntlet's story may be ending.
But the story of the people who called her home is only beginning.
The Republic has fallen.
The Jedi are hunted.
The Empire rules through fear.
Rebellion is beginning to stir.
WELCOME BACK TO DARK DAYS
18 BBY
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