Battle of Coruscant (Great Sith War)

In 3997 BBY, the Dark Lords of the Sith and former Jedi Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma joined forces, leading to the establishment of a new Sith Empire and the beginning of the Great Sith War against the Galactic Republic and its protector organization, the Jedi Order. While Kun was attempting to convert other Jedi Knights to the Sith cause, Qel-Droma led the military arm of the empire's campaign, leading the Krath darksider cult on a galactic conquest. In 3996 BBY, Qel-Droma gained the allegiance of Mandalore the Indomitable, the leader of the Mandalorian Crusaders. The former Jedi then led the Krath and the Mandalorians on a series of raids on Republic military outposts and shipyards, including the Foerost Shipyards, where they stole nearly three hundred of the Republic's newest warships.

By that point, Qel-Droma, Mandalore, and Qel-Droma's lover, the Sith sorceress and co-leader of the Krath Aleema Keto—who was manipulating the former Jedi—all believed that the time was right for an attempt to conquer Coruscant, the capital world of the Republic, and take down the seat of the Republic government, thus eliminating further resistance to Sith domination of the galaxy. To that end, during the raid at Foerost, Qel-Droma intentionally allowed the shipyards' automatic security systems to record his claim that the Krath forces would next target the Kemplex Nine space station—a ruse that led the Republic to divert its main fleet away from Coruscant and leave the capital with minimal defenses. Qel-Droma believed that his closest former friends among the Jedi—his brother, Cay, and his former romantic interest, Nomi Sunrider—would not be on Coruscant at the time of the attack and that the operation would catch the Republic completely by surprise.

When Kun contacted Qel-Droma while the latter was at the Foerost Shipyards, the former overheard the Mandalore affirming to Qel-Droma their readiness for the attack on Coruscant—an operation of which Qel-Droma had not informed Kun and of which the latter disapproved, believing that they instead needed to bide their time and further consolidate their forces. Qel-Droma, however, believed in the superiority of his own acumen over that of Kun and insisted that the planned attack was strategically sound, leading his Master to refrain from voicing any further objections to his apprentice's plan.

Shortly afterward, when the Jedi Order learned that a rogue Jedi had possibly been involved in the attacks on the Republic targets, Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas led a group of Knights—Sunrider, Cay, Tott Doneeta, Sylvar, Shoaneb Culu, Dace Diath, and Qrrrl Toq—to Coruscant in order to petition the Galactic Senate to allow the Order to deal with the renegade. The Jedi were met at their starship's landing platform by the Republic Supreme Chancellor Sidrona and the Republic Minister of Defense Netus. During the meeting, Netus received a message confirming that Qel-Droma was indeed responsible for the Foerost attack, upon which Baas, suspecting that Qel-Droma was cooperating with Kun, expressed his intent to confront them both in an attempt to stop the conflict.

At that point, Culu experienced a sudden disturbance in the Force, sensing the Krath attack force emerging out of hyperspace in orbit over Coruscant. Moments later, the warships the Krath had stolen from the Republic entered the planet's atmosphere, disgorging CX-133 Chaos fighters that began firing at the Republic City's buildings and blew up the Jedi starship. Sunrider immediately realized that they were being attacked by Qel-Droma, and Netus ordered a subordinate to summon whatever defenses were at Coruscant's disposal.

The Krath initiated a massive battle over Coruscant, attempting to occupy the city-world. The Krath warships bombarded buildings, while the Chaos fighters and Mandalorians riding Basilisk war droids targeted the laser cannon emplacements and Coruscant defense teams of Republic soldiers using rifles to fend off the attack from the ground. Although Netus soon claimed that the soldiers had the situation under control, they had in fact had little experience fighting the Basilisk droid–mounted Mandalorians, and at least two cannons were destroyed by the enemy forces. In turn, at least one warship was brought down crashing during the combat, which also saw the participation of Republic aerial forces and a model of four-winged starfighters.

In addition, Baas's group of Jedi, which was eventually joined by Jedi Master Thon, also fought in defense of the Republic's capital, utilizing both their Force-using and lightsaber combat skills. When a Basilisk droid that had destroyed a nearby artillery emplacement returned for another strafing run, Cay and Doneeta attempted to help a soldier activate another cannon, an old unit that was still carrying a charge from a recent War Day celebration. Meanwhile, Sylvar and Diath used their lightsabers to bring the droid down.

The Jedi Knights and the sword-and-pistol-wielding Netus attempted to escort Baas to safety, but the Jedi Master, foreseeing that the battle would be decided in the Republic command center, insisted that the group head there. The Jedi, accompanied by Netus, Sidrona, and a Republic soldier, then boarded a repulsorcraft vehicle that transported them to the command center's vicinity. There, the group was intercepted by a unit of Mandalorians armed with ranged weapons, mythosaur axes, and bladed polearms, leading to a skirmish that delayed the Jedi's progress.

While the Krath advance teams were being deployed, Qel-Droma, Keto, and Mandalore observed the course of the battle via holographic representation aboard one of their orbiting command ships. The subsequent second stage of Qel-Droma's battle plan involved capturing the Republic command center, thereby disrupting the operations of the Republic's military command chain. The fallen Jedi assigned a phalanx of Tetan ground troops and a hundred of the best Mandalorian soldiers to the task. Mandalore himself, having been informed by his spies that the Republic was producing new weaponry at a weapons depot situated near the command center, requested permission from Qel-Droma to capture the technology. The latter felt the weapons would be redundant in the face of their inevitable swift victory but was manipulated by Keto into granting the Mandalorian his wish.

The trio subsequently traveled to Coruscant's surface, where Qel-Droma led a Krath charge on the command center. Having blown a hole in the wall of a building, the Krath soldiers fought Republic forces, with the former Jedi fighting at close quarters with his lightsaber while Keto, staying back aboard a hovercraft with several Tetan troops, supported the attack by casting illusions on the Republic soldiers that led them to believe their own weapons had turned into serpents. When the fighting ended, leaving multiple Republic and Krath soldiers dead, the attackers advanced into the command center itself. Meanwhile, Mandalore and his forces breached the nearby weapons depot, killing its Republic defenders and capturing the powerful MX laser cannon, but not before Keto had relayed orders for them to be prepared to withdraw at a moment's notice.

The Jedi group led by Baas had by that point cleared a way to the command center, repelling Chaos fighter attacks and even capturing a pair of Basilisk droids. Sunrider sensed Qel-Droma and Keto's presence in the structure, and the group of Jedi broke out in a sprint toward their target. In the Republic's war room, Qel-Droma ordered the commander present to instruct the Republic's admirals to deploy all of their ships to an identical set of coordinates in the Vento system, with the intention of having them all collide with and destroy each other upon emerging from hyperspace. When the commander refused the order, Qel-Droma subjected him to a Force grip in order to force him to comply.

Upon noticing via binoculars the Jedi approaching the command center, however, Keto, who felt that the newly-acquired allegiance of the Mandalorians rendered both Qel-Droma and Kun unneeded as means to achieve power, finally saw an opportunity to reassert her dominance over the Krath by abandoning Qel-Droma to his former friends. Keto ordered her subordinate soldier to remotely instruct Mandalore to immediately retreat and rendezvous with her aboard the Krath command ships. The order surprised the Mandalorian leader, who requested to speak with Qel-Droma personally, only to be told by the Krath soldier that the fallen Jedi had been killed and that the Republic fleet was approaching to vanquish the attackers. The Krath further relayed that Keto wished for Mandalore to take her former lover's place as her warlord, at which point the Mandalorian grudgingly complied with the orders, telling his troops to take from the weapons depot whatever plunder they could and then pull out.

Seeing the Krath and Mandalorian forces withdraw from the ravaged world surprised Netus, but the Jedi group led by Baas, united in its determination to stop Qel-Droma, nevertheless entered the command center. There, Cay called out to his brother, and Qel-Droma quickly became angered at the unexpected presence of his former Jedi friends. The Krath leader drew his weapon in preparation for an outmatched battle against the Jedi force arrayed against him, but at that point Baas demanded that Qel-Droma cease his resistance and surrender. Telekinetically disarming both Qel-Droma and his Krath soldiers, the Jedi Master, aided by Sunrider and the other Jedi, used a Force technique to temporarily imprison the former Jedi inside a construct made of the light side of the Force. Sidrona, expressing gratitude to Baas, then placed Qel-Droma under Republic jurisdiction and proclaimed that he would stand trial—and be sentenced to death—for his actions.

Qel-Droma's capture by the Republic prevented the Dark Reaper, a superweapon built by Kun and deployed earlier in the war, from being delivered to Coruscant. The Krath retreated to the Empress Teta system, where Keto executed any of her subordinates who questioned her right to lead the cult. There, Mandalore analyzed the battle on Coruscant, seeking to understand why the Mandalorians had failed to protect the man they had sworn their allegiance to. In the process, Mandalore came to suspect Keto's treachery but did not confront her over it, instead proposing plans to rescue Qel-Droma.

However, Keto was dismissive of any role the former Jedi could play in the future plans of the Krath and instead ordered the Mandalorian to assemble the Krath and Mandalorian forces for a double-feint attack on the Kemplex Nine station, which she reasoned the Republic would have left defenseless due to previously only having viewed it as a target of a diversion. After carrying out his orders, Mandalore himself traveled to the moon Yavin 4, where he informed Kun of Qel-Droma's capture and upcoming trial and convinced the Dark Lord to attempt a rescue of his apprentice.

The Mandalorians' role in the attack on Coruscant was later noted by Vilnau Teupt in the keynote address "Industry, Honor, Savagery: Shaping the Mandalorian Soul" at Brentaal Academy's 412th Proceedings of Galactic Anthropology and History in 24 ABY, and Jedi historian Tionne Solusar mentioned Qel-Droma's capture in her 40 ABY compendium Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force, as well. The battle was also recorded in a 25 ABY galactic history chronicle by the Historical Council of the New Republic as well as its 36 ABY updated edition by the Council's incarnation under the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances.

After being first alluded to as a planned event in the August 15, 1995 first issue of the Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi — The Sith War comic book mini-series, the Battle of Coruscant made its first appearance and was identified by name in the next issue, which was published on September 19 of the same year. Both comic issues were written by Kevin J. Anderson and penciled by Dario Carrasco, Jr. The StarWars.com Databank entry for Ulic Qel-Droma erroneously stated that it was Qel-Droma, not Mandalore the Indomitable, who wanted to capture the Galactic Republic weapons during the battle.