Era: 24 years after Return of the Jedi
Prologue
The shouts of the protestors grew to a rising crescendo that echoed throughout the streets of the Maragosian capital city of Theldanspar. The voices, mostly human, but included some Ithorian, spoke as one massive tongue that lashed out at the perceived injustices of the current Governor-General of Maragos, Wilek Naltron.
Governor Naltron was the model of a modern Governor-General: a plump, older human man in his late fifties. He was intelligent, and genuinely liked people as individuals. But years in political office had taken its toll on what had been youthful idealism promoting quasi-socialism. He had gone the way many politicians had by his age: he thought he could do no wrong.
At first, when he was in the Maragos Assembly, his corruptoin had been small: a pork addendum to a bill here and there for his constituents, justified in his mind by bringing credits to his district. But then his corruption began to become more and more selfish: from campaign contributions being paid to his wife into his own accounts to finally getting caught with his hands in the cookie jar of the planetary pension fund, taking almost half the fund for his own personal use.
Under any normal circumstances he would have faced public humiliation and be forced to retire from politics. After all, on Coruscant, politicians had kept their political careers after much larger crimes, so why should his situation have been any different.
The relatively small fire that this scandal would have been was exacerbated by a catalyst unlike any other: a well known agitator named Nom Anor. Not much was known about this mysterious man but for the fact that strife and turmoil always seemed to occur in the same star system he was currently visiting.
Advertisements railing against the Naltron Administration were all over the newsnets, and Nom Anor himself stirred up the citizens in a righteous frenzy that had them all but calling for the governor’s head on a pressed latnium platter. Nom Anor had the people not only rallying against Naltron himself, but the Republic in general, labeling them as an inherently corrupt organization, little different from the Empire which they had defeated.
The protestors had become so numerous that local security forces couldn’t handle the problem. Infantrymen and armored soldiers from Fort Antillies, the local Republic Army post, had been called in and were out in force with their hover-tanks and automatic blaster rifles.
It was a recipe for disaster.
Quite suddenly, from a nameless individual within the crowd, a small object was thrown up to the second floor balcony of the Governor’s mansion in the city center. It landed within the balcony and rolled a few feet before detonating with a deafening blast that vaporized the balcony and a large chunk of the building as well.
A blaster went of from the crowd, clipping young Republic Army private John Anders in the arm, causing the burned limb to fall to the ground as the soldier screamed in shock.
It was the first of a series of blaster bolts that were fired by the more radical members of the protest crowd. The hot deadly beams came from the crowd so dispersed it was impossible to single out the shooters.
Private Draven Baklor looked at his friend’s burned off arm with rage and looked to the indiscriminate crowd of people who were responsible. With a vengeful battle cry, he fired his M-109 automatic blaster rifle into the crowd, mowing down both assailants and non-combatants alike. And with that, in the confusion and shouting, many other soldiers opened fire.
The Massacre of Maragos had begun.
