This doesn't really sound good. It requires us saying that the CNS has ties to high level CIS people. That could easily be used against the CNS by Palpatine.
Not really. As high profile as the CNS is, I think it would be more unbelievable if we didn't have contacts in the CIS.
It's not particularly unbelievable, but I don't consider it something most people who are average citizens would really consider it en masse until it's pointed out to them because they are worried about other stuff. And I agree it is handing Palpatine a tool, kinda like the middle option. I think it may be better than the middle option, but I'm not sure.

It certainly does something more than the middle option by leading Palps onto a chase, because he kinda has to check, being like he is. On the other hand the thing we pay for that is giving him... public pretext of a sort to accuse the CNS government of conspiracy in his response. And the thing with that is I don't think it actually needs to stick, or even be aimed at Ciaran, because anyone with eyes can look at a map and see the spread of the CNS and be led to a conclusion like it's just the CIS all over again.
 
You're thinking of this in too straightforward of an action. Palpatine doesn't have to Stop The War just because he's declaring the war ended. Ok that sounds a little confusing, but it makes sense when you look at it through a broader lens.

The CNS is a part of the Republic, as much as we truly control it and it doesn't act like it at times. Most of the worlds joined us because they didn't want to be part of the fighting, not because they were truly neutral on the whole Separatists vs Republic thing. A lot of the senators in the CNS actually supported the heavier taxation Palpatine demanded when they knew it was going to the war effort. When the war is declared over, a lot of them are going to want to just fold back into the Republic. And the war's end is looking to be within sight.

The CIS has been taking some heavy blows over this war. The tide has turned against them on the battlefront, the clones defeating their droids and they've been losing tons of territory to our recruitment efforts in the CNS (and it's important to note we've taken more territory from the Seps than the Republic). There's also the massive amount of sabotage we've done to them (we've done some to the Republic as well, but nowhere near as much and in far less public ways). It's pretty obvious that the CIS is losing badly, I don't think they even have any Admirals left after the Trench incident. It won't be hard for Palpatine to 'make the final push' and order Dooku to roll over and let the CIS fall. As the final battle happens, he gives out Order 66 while fabricating some evidence of an assassination attempt.

There aren't as many Jedi with the clones, but the Jedi are still massively outnumbered and ambushed by the clones. We might get more than a handful of survivors, but we aren't getting 'thousands of exiled jedi' if he does this. It will still be a massacre. And he's ok with a couple running towards the CNS, in fact he wants that. When the Jedi join the CNS he'll demand them back to 'stand trial' (read: be killed or turned into his dark jedi minions) and if we manage to resist he'll accuse us of treason.

Dooku isn't going to want to give up, but Palpatine might actually unwittingly order him to do what he would have done in the first place: Join the CNS. Now he can spin a narrative that the CIS realized it was losing the war, so they've been slowly shifting assets over to the CNS, trying to ask for peace so they have time to build up their resources again. A lot of the CIS was big corporations so changing names and acting through different companies is hardly a new trick for them.

If we accept Dooku's assistance (or the public can be made to think we are) then he has plenty of grounds to further the war against us and strengthen his hold. If we reject it, then he sends in 'peacekeeping' troops to help us get rid of Dooku's forces and most of the CNS cheers him for his quick aid. Without the CIS support we do not have the forces to resist his armies (as far as he knows, we still have the Foundry but using that comes with it's own issues).

That's a rough outline, but Palpatine is a master at setting up plans that will benefit him no matter what. And he is certainly not going to wait 5 to 7 turns, that's utterly ridiculous. It was mentioned he'll be making a significant response soon. Even if he still doesn't realize how much we know, he has to realize by this point that we're taking out his pawns in rapid succession. He might not have things perfectly aligned, but he's smart enough to act before it's too late and realize that trying to continue is just causing him to lose more support than he's gaining because of what we're doing.

There are a couple of things that you are getting wrong here, It is true that the CIS is losing here, but not as badly as you may think. Since basically their whole army is made up of droids, their loses in territory are not as nearly as catastrophic as you may think since they don´t need lots of planets to recruit people or lots of food to keep their forces alive, with a few planets that serve as their centers of production they can still produce millions of droids, and spaceships.

Hell now that Dooku doesn´t need to follow Palpatine´s orders we may see a shift in the war, Dooku and Palps were the ones who tried to get the Republic and the CIS more or less tied up, remove that factor and Dooku will be able to use his COLOSSAL numeric advantage to his full extent and then the war starts looking very different.

Aside from that, even if he decides to stop the war, once Palpatine executes order 66 , goes full I AM THE SENATE!!! and declares himself emperor. Don´t you think that the CNS won´t become a Rebellion 2.0, only that they control half of the galaxy and with some of the most feared warrior races going for Total War (including the Kaleesh, the Wookies, the Moghri and the Godamm Mandalorians), and I am pretty sure that he knows that if he doesn't find a way of subduing the whole CNS he will find himself in a very bad position, so no I don´t think he will try giving the order 66 anytime soon.

I agree that he is going to make a significant move against the CNS soon, but he won´t try anything as drastic as that, since he cannot afford it.
Reminder that the office of Supreme Chancellor has term limits, and Palpatine is already passed his and is only still in office due to war time emergency powers. The best way to kick off the assassinate palpatine bit would be for the war to end before he's ready, and Ciaran have senators waiting to immediately demand the end to Palpatine's war time emergency powers. With Dooku on our side, and a little more work, we can pull this off from the CIS side and blindside him.

Darth Sidious is constitutionally incapable of relinquishing power. If we want to force him to launch a premature coup attempt without the cover he did in canon, this is one way to do it.

Unfortunately, we don´t have enough senators to stop him from being reelected and he knows it, the Core is still mostly loyal to him and they still have the vast majority of votes (since it is still the most populated region of the Galaxy).
 
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There are a couple of things that you are getting wrong here, It is true that the CIS is losing here, but not as badly as you may think. Since basically their whole army is made up of droids, their loses in territory are not as nearly as catastrophic as you may think since they don´t need lots of planets to recruit people or lots of food to keep their forces alive, with a few planets that serve as their centers of production they can still produce millions of droids, and spaceships.

Hell now that Dooku doesn´t need to follow Palpatine´s orders we may see a shift in the war, Dooku and Palps were the ones who tried to get the Republic and the CIS more or less tied up, remove that factor and Dooku will be able to use his COLOSSAL numeric advantage to his full extent and then the war starts looking very different.

Aside from that, even if he decides to stop the war, once Palpatine executes order 66 , goes full I AM THE SENATE!!! and declares himself emperor. Don´t you think that the CNS won´t become a Rebellion 2.0, only that they control half of the galaxy and with some of the most feared warrior races going for Total War (including the Kaleesh, the Wookies, the Moghri and the Godamm Mandalorians), and I am pretty sure that he knows that if he doesn't find a way of subduing the whole CNS he will find himself in a very bad position, so no I don´t think he will try giving the order 66 anytime soon.

I agree that he is going to make a significant move against the CNS soon, but he won´t try anything as drastic as that, since he cannot afford it.

The territory loss isn't quite as bad as it could be, but it can easily be spun to the public as such.

I'm not saying we can't form a rebellion against him, but that's not a position we want to be pushed into. Even with the CIS backing us and us managing to pull some incredible spin to keep the majority of our worlds, I'm not sure we'd win against his clone armies as they stand now. In any case, we don't want to be in that spot, but the only way to ensure it is to seize the initiative. Letting him do it will be bad no matter how many assets we've obtained (the odds of the assassination attempt succeeding drastically change if he's the one making the first move).

Maybe he won't make that drastic a move, but he also might. Sure it would suck to enact his plan know, but he will realize soon that he's actually losing ground, not gaining it, and decide to just go all out.

Another thing he might do is not enact Order 66, and just send the Jedi against us when conflict sparks between the Republic and the CNS. He's still able to hold onto his kill switch against them, and use the distrust they have towards us (plus the Force Wound messing with their judgement) to get more Jedi to join the clones and fight us.

Whatever the case, we've been cutting off his options for a long time, and if we back him into a corner too much, the results won't be pretty even if we win.
 
[X] "'It may be true that we had to fend off an attack on Kalee, but the Council will find it hard to swallow that the Republic 'reinforcements' arrived well after the battle ended - how are we supposed to trust in protection and security like that? Let alone a military that loses track of one of its most dangerous enemies.' I'll try and turn the tables and have people focus on the Republic's 'incompetence,' which shouldn't be too hard a sell with RI in chaos."

lets use the chaos we've made
 
[X] "'This brutal and unprovoked attack was committed with a Separatist fleet, yes, but this was not a Separatist attack. We were warned by a high-level source within the CIS government, that Admiral Trench had gone rogue and was no longer responding to commands from the Separatist Council or Parliament. It was because of that warning that we were able to prepare for and defeat Trench's attack here on Kalee. It is not clear whose orders Trench was following, but we are confident they did not come from the Confederacy of Independent Systems.' We take a strong stand, laying no blame on the CIS and using our media outlets to tamp down on the calls for war, while we dangle bait in front of Palpatine by revealing that we have allies and assets within the Separatist government. That way, he'll have to commit some of his agents to investigate the leak, while we plant evidence and lead them by the nose to the wrong conclusion."
 
Unfortunately, we don´t have enough senators to stop him from being reelected and he knows it, the Core is still mostly loyal to him and they still have the vast majority of votes (since it is still the most populated region of the Galaxy).

He's not eligible to be re-elected. That's my point. He doesn't just need normal popularity, but a complete stranglehold to do the transition from the Republic to the Empire.
 
[X] "'It may be true that we had to fend off an attack on Kalee, but the Council will find it hard to swallow that the Republic 'reinforcements' arrived well after the battle ended - how are we supposed to trust in protection and security like that? Let alone a military that loses track of one of its most dangerous enemies.' I'll try and turn the tables and have people focus on the Republic's 'incompetence,' which shouln't be too hard a sell with RI in chaos."

It look like hardballing, but I don't want to tilt our cards too early for old Palps. We can accuse them of unethical opportunistic behaviour as the Pride of The Core only came to Kalee because they're chasing reports of the Malevolence and now they're attempting to strongarm the CNS with blatant gunboat diplomacy. At least Trench was honest with his intentions.
 
Unfortunately, we don´t have enough senators to stop him from being reelected and he knows it, the Core is still mostly loyal to him and they still have the vast majority of votes (since it is still the most populated region of the Galaxy).
It's not that he doesn't have the votes to get reelected, it's that he cannot legally be reelected. His name isn't allowed to be on the ballot, he can't be a write-in, as soon as the war officially ends he must resign his post immediately and may not stand for reelection until at least one other Chancellor's term has come and gone. The only ways around it if he wants to stop fighting the CIS (and hence get any appreciable part of the CNS back onside) are:

- Keep the war going de jure but not de facto. It then becomes clear that he's only doing it to stay in office and his support plummets.
- Rule through a patsy until he's allowed to be elected again. This adds the risk of his patsy being compromised and even that assumes that he gets someone loyal to him elected in the first place.
- Preemptively declare Order 66 and the formation of THE FIRST! GALACTIC! EMPIRE! Without a Jedi 'assassination' attempt to justify it and with both his best possible agent and his three most potent military formations subverted by the Abyss Watchers, this will just turn into a massive shitshow.
 
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[X] "'This brutal and unprovoked attack was committed with a Separatist fleet, yes, but this was not a Separatist attack. We were warned by a high-level source within the CIS government, that Admiral Trench had gone rogue and was no longer responding to commands from the Separatist Council or Parliament. It was because of that warning that we were able to prepare for and defeat Trench's attack here on Kalee. It is not clear whose orders Trench was following, but we are confident they did not come from the Confederacy of Independent Systems.' We take a strong stand, laying no blame on the CIS and using our media outlets to tamp down on the calls for war, while we dangle bait in front of Palpatine by revealing that we have allies and assets within the Separatist government. That way, he'll have to commit some of his agents to investigate the leak, while we plant evidence and lead them by the nose to the wrong conclusion."
 
[X] "'This brutal and unprovoked attack was committed with a Separatist fleet, yes, but this was not a Separatist attack. We were warned by a high-level source within the CIS government, that Admiral Trench had gone rogue and was no longer responding to commands from the Separatist Council or Parliament. It was because of that warning that we were able to prepare for and defeat Trench's attack here on Kalee. It is not clear whose orders Trench was following, but we are confident they did not come from the Confederacy of Independent Systems.' We take a strong stand, laying no blame on the CIS and using our media outlets to tamp down on the calls for war, while we dangle bait in front of Palpatine by revealing that we have allies and assets within the Separatist government. That way, he'll have to commit some of his agents to investigate the leak, while we plant evidence and lead them by the nose to the wrong conclusion."
 
[X] "'This brutal and unprovoked attack was committed with a Separatist fleet, yes, but this was not a Separatist attack. We were warned by a high-level source within the CIS government, that Admiral Trench had gone rogue and was no longer responding to commands from the Separatist Council or Parliament. It was because of that warning that we were able to prepare for and defeat Trench's attack here on Kalee. It is not clear whose orders Trench was following, but we are confident they did not come from the Confederacy of Independent Systems.' We take a strong stand, laying no blame on the CIS and using our media outlets to tamp down on the calls for war, while we dangle bait in front of Palpatine by revealing that we have allies and assets within the Separatist government. That way, he'll have to commit some of his agents to investigate the leak, while we plant evidence and lead them by the nose to the wrong conclusion."
 
Okay, hear me out, I just had a crazy idea for a write-in.

Palpatine is a grade-A certified master manipulator, right? Sith Lord, his every word is a lie, all that rot. Have we ever considered, just... telling the truth?

Fact #1: Admiral Trench was in charge of Separatist military assets
Fact #2: Admiral Trench went rogue, and was no longer responding to orders from Dooku or the Separatist Council
Fact #3: We were warned of this invasion by Dooku certain unnamed sympathetic voices within the Separatist government
Fact #4: This attack showed all the signs of a false-flag set-up, trying to draw the CNS into armed conflict

Easy peasy. Now Palpatine is on the look-out for parties unknown within the CIS who defied his and/or Dooku's orders. Specifically, he'd probably order Dooku to investigate -- Republic Intelligence has been defanged, so he may not have assets of his own to do the job. At that point, we could pin the blame on whatever group is most convenient to us. Perhaps we might credit the Commerce Guild, seeing as we ousted Shu Mai and replaced her with one of our associates (SoroSuub will probably be joining Neutral Space in the near future, after all). Or we might plant evidence that the leak came from the Corporate Alliance, one of the few megacorps in the CIS that we don't have in our pocket.

Or, better yet, we could blame the Hyper-Communications Cartel. Frankly, looking at the wiki, the HCC look perfect for our purposes.
  • They're another CIS megacorp we don't have in our pocket
  • They're responsible for broadcasting Separatist propaganda via the CIS Shadowfeed (the Corporate Alliance owns the hardware for the Shadowfeed, but the HCC determines the content).
  • Their headquarters are located on the planet of Ando, next door to Admiral Trench's homeworld of Secundus Ando.
  • The HCC is staffed by Aqualish, who are distantly related to the Harch (Trench's species). Notably, the Aqualish and the Harch don't get along.
  • The Ando sector was absolutely ravaged 30 years before by the Andoan Civil War, when Admiral Trench won his stripes by defeating the Andoan Free Worlds in battle. Plenty of time for local resentments to build up, and for Aqualish sympathizers to infiltrate the HCC.
  • Ando was one of the first sectors to join the Separatist movement, specifically because the Republic intervened in their Civil War and forced the entire sector to demilitarize. Why did the Republic intervene? Because Admiral Trench was so reckless, ruthless, and brutal in the final Battle of Raquish (going out of his way to target Andoan civilians and non-combatants), that the Republic felt obligated to step in and impose peace on the Andoan government.
Basically: Admiral Trench is a military hero to the general public of Ando, but his excesses were directly responsible for the unsatisfactory end to the war, in the eyes of the Andoan government and upper class. His tactical success was in fact a strategic blunder, and the governing elite know it.

If Po Nudo or other high-level members of the HCC had discovered Admiral Trench bent on making the same farking error that he made in the last war, it's certainly plausible that they'd reach out to try to mitigate the fallout. Plant evidence that this actually occurred, and the HCC will either moderate its propaganda (making it easier to recruit them for the CNS down the road) or devour itself in a bloody purge of any moderate voices (making it easier for our new media network to establish itself while its main competitor is distracted).

I rather like the idea of just telling the truth. And given how Seperatist groups and systems have been defecting to the CNS, it's perfectly reasonable to suppose that some CIS members that haven't split are feeding the CNS intel.

This gets my vote.

[] "'This brutal and unprovoked attack was committed with a Separatist fleet, yes, but this was not a Separatist attack. We were warned by a high-level source within the CIS government, that Admiral Trench had gone rogue and was no longer responding to commands from the Separatist Council or Parliament. It was because of that warning that we were able to prepare for and defeat Trench's attack here on Kalee. It is not clear whose orders Trench was following, but we are confident they did not come from the Confederacy of Independent Systems.' We take a strong stand, laying no blame on the CIS and using our media outlets to tamp down on the calls for war, while we dangle bait in front of Palpatine by revealing that we have allies and assets within the Separatist government. That way, he'll have to commit some of his agents to investigate the leak, while we plant evidence and lead them by the nose to the wrong conclusion."

I don't think we should say our source is in the government though. We should just delete that word, be more vague to force Palps to work harder to figure out what's gone wrong.

Above all else, we need to use these preparation turns to have Serras master at least 1 saber style

The warp god of Primarchs learning how to use a lightsaber? Well... Worse things could happen.

fasquardon
 
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I don't think we should say our source is in the government though. We should just delete that word, be more vague to force Palps to work harder to figure out what's gone wrong.
What would you suggest? "high-level source in the CIS leadership" has a similar issue, and I can't think of any other word that conveys the absolute credibility of our source as a representative of the CIS -- remember that a big concern is to reassure our own allies within the CNS that this was not a Separatist-sponsor attack.

My impression is that 'government' is sufficiently vague to keep Palpatine busy. It might refer to the Separatist Council (the megacorp CEOs that jointly comprise the executive branch) or the Separatist Parliament (the delegates and representatives of each system/sector within the CIS, who comprise the legislative branch). Frankly, it might even extend to the governments of individual sectors or systems within the CIS (the real-world equivalent of state governments) since they might have received intel about Admiral Trench from their delegate to the Parliament.

Plus, knowing our reputation, Palpatine might be convinced that we're lying about having a source, and that we simply have surveillance on someone with the intel, which would force him to cast a much wider net. Palpatine is a Sith Lord, after all; they're not exactly the most trusting sort of person. Our telling the truth might be enough to flummox him. :D
 
Palpatine is a Sith Lord, after all; they're not exactly the most trusting sort of person. Our telling the truth might be enough to flummox him. :D
It'll also be interesting to see if this puts him back on his heels a bit, forces him to be the one reacting instead of us. Granted, our reactions in the past have been pretty good dodges or redirects or offenses of our own, but on top of everything else we've done this round (to re-cap: killed Isard and kneecapped Republic Intelligence; seem to have completely and utterly bitch-please'd the attempted false flag on Honoghr; Papanoida's Nat100 network for shitting on Sheev [that we haven't even gotten to yet!]; ousting one of the last CIS leaders not allied with us/under our thumb; and in this session alone taking out one of the last CIS admirals and a serious chunk of CIS forces besides) this plan of response may leave Palpatine on the defensive for once, and seriously off-balance. Especially since, given that we've outfoxed everything he's tried to use against us thus far (blackmail, false flags, economic assaults and literal assaults against us and the CNS) at this point he's going to likely feel very irritated with us.
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oh crap this is gonna be bad.
 
It'll also be interesting to see if this puts him back on his heels a bit, forces him to be the one reacting instead of us. Granted, our reactions in the past have been pretty good dodges or redirects or offenses of our own, but on top of everything else we've done this round (to re-cap: killed Isard and kneecapped Republic Intelligence; seem to have completely and utterly bitch-please'd the attempted false flag on Honoghr; Papanoida's Nat100 network for shitting on Sheev [that we haven't even gotten to yet!]; ousting one of the last CIS leaders not allied with us/under our thumb; and in this session alone taking out one of the last CIS admirals and a serious chunk of CIS forces besides) this plan of response may leave Palpatine on the defensive for once, and seriously off-balance. Especially since, given that we've outfoxed everything he's tried to use against us thus far (blackmail, false flags, economic assaults and literal assaults against us and the CNS) at this point he's going to likely feel very irritated with us.
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oh crap this is gonna be bad.

Yeah, see this is what I'm talking about. Palpatine is getting beat by us, slowly but surely, and this last turn really hammered that in. Even his attack here which he had complete control over and we should have had no way of knowing... we stomped it. Utterly crushed it, took almost no damage, and recognized it as a scheme to pull us in closer to the war and aren't taking the bait one bit, doing everything we can to resist it.

The entirety of the Jedi may have interrupted his schemes more times than us, but he's always been able to turn things around and work out a win from their actions no matter what they do. But he doesn't get those victories when we get involved. He thought he could turn us making Jango the Mandalore against the Jedi, but that didn't work out at all. When we were 'blackmailed' to work for him and Dooku, we mostly just used it to further our own goals before revealing that we had neutralized the blackmail and doing our own thing.

I'm not sure whether it's going to be Order 66 or something equally messed up, but I really think that Sidious is going to flip the board soon if we keep at it like this.
 
Yeah, see this is what I'm talking about. Palpatine is getting beat by us, slowly but surely, and this last turn really hammered that in. Even his attack here which he had complete control over and we should have had no way of knowing... we stomped it. Utterly crushed it, took almost no damage, and recognized it as a scheme to pull us in closer to the war and aren't taking the bait one bit, doing everything we can to resist it.

The entirety of the Jedi may have interrupted his schemes more times than us, but he's always been able to turn things around and work out a win from their actions no matter what they do. But he doesn't get those victories when we get involved. He thought he could turn us making Jango the Mandalore against the Jedi, but that didn't work out at all. When we were 'blackmailed' to work for him and Dooku, we mostly just used it to further our own goals before revealing that we had neutralized the blackmail and doing our own thing.

I'm not sure whether it's going to be Order 66 or something equally messed up, but I really think that Sidious is going to flip the board soon if we keep at it like this.
There's always Order 37, which I can't remember is either the singular "Kill Jedi" order or the "Kill this and this person" order.
 
There's always Order 37, which I can't remember is either the singular "Kill Jedi" order or the "Kill this and this person" order.
Here's the full list of Contingency Orders installed on those clone trooper bio-chips. Order 37 reads:
Order 37: Capture of a single wanted individual through the mass arrest and threatened execution of a civilian population. Follow-up directives include scenarios for body disposal of civilian casualties and suppression of communications.
In other words: we want to capture this Jedi but he's too darned good at hiding, so we'll take the entire population of a city/planet hostage to force the Jedi to surrender (and then kill everyone involved anyway). Is that what you were thinking of?
 
Here's the full list of Contingency Orders installed on those clone trooper bio-chips. Order 37 reads:

In other words: we want to capture this Jedi but he's too darned good at hiding, so we'll take the entire population of a city/planet hostage to force the Jedi to surrender (and then kill everyone involved anyway). Is that what you were thinking of?
Not exactly but yeah that's enough.
 
Speaking of contingency orders, since Order Five is a thing, should we plan to do something about that? Like, once Palps is gone, SOMEONE is in command, and it seems like the Chief of Defense Staff would be a reasonable person and defer to whatever we tell them to do. If not, they could be replaced with someone who is more amenable.
 
Palpatine always has the option of going on the offensive personally. Like he did to bring down Death Maul and Savage Opress. He probably wouldn't try to do so if we're in our base and surrounded by henchmen, but we should be careful about going on missions that would take us away from relative safety.
 
Speaking of contingency orders, since Order Five is a thing, should we plan to do something about that? Like, once Palps is gone, SOMEONE is in command, and it seems like the Chief of Defense Staff would be a reasonable person and defer to whatever we tell them to do. If not, they could be replaced with someone who is more amenable.
Order Four is the one that concerns me. Orders Five and Sixty-Five both involve some kind of parliamentary procedure, whereas Order Four is clearly set up as the emergency measure, and it puts power over the GAR in the hands of (atm I believe) Mas Amedda in the event of the Chancellor's incapacity or absence. If he is still the Vice Chair, he needs to be next and top on our list to neutralise and replace of Palpatine's inner circle--canonically, he's aware of Palpatine's true identity by this time, and is unopposed to the coming Empire. So, if we still have the option (and time) in the next round, we should probably move against him, and try to get him replaced with someone more reliable.

I confess, I'm not as well-versed on the Clone Wars as I am with post-war stuff, so does anyone have ideas as to who would make a good replacement for Amedda?
 
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