During the Cold War between the Galactic Republic and the reconstituted Sith Empire, a young Jedi Knight and crew were sent on a mission to the planet Ord Mantell in order to determine what the Sith Lord Darth Angral was planning in his campaign of vengeance for the death of his son Tarnis at the hands of the Knight. Along with the astromech droid T7-O1, also known as Teeseven, the Jedi attacked an Imperial listening post near the island of Avilatan in order to gain access to the facility's hyperspace data transceiver. The two were successful in their mission, though the Imperial soldier Lieutenant Marcovic destroyed the transceiver before they could download everything, but the Knight's Padawan Kira Carsen was captured by Darth Angral's retainers aboard the Ord Mantell Orbital Station. Carsen managed to convince Angral that her Master was on the planet Corellia, and the Knight freed her from the clutches of the Sith Inquisitor Ferav when the Jedi returned to the station with Teeseven. Thanks to the information gathered from Ord Mantell, the Republic scientist Nasan Godera was able to identify a flaw in Angral's planet-killing Desolator superweapon, and the Knight and Carsen used his discovery to disable the Desolator before Angral attacked the Jedi homeworld of Tython.
During the Cold War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire, a young Jedi Knight—the former apprentice of Jedi Master Orgus Din—killed the Sith Lord Tarnis in a duel. Tarnis had been operating undercover as a Republic scientist in the Republic superweapon initiative, working as the head of the design team for the Planet Prison superweapon, when his presence was threatened by the arrival of Jedi Master Bela Kiwiiks and her Padawan Kira Carsen on the Republic capital of Coruscant. Tarnis had seized control of the Planet Prison and attempted to use it against the planet, but Carsen and the Jedi Knight—the former apprentice of Jedi Master Orgus Din—had pursued Tarnis to the ruins of the Jedi Temple and engaged him in a lightsaber duel before he could activate the weapon.
The Imperial listening post
However, Tarnis's death was witnessed by his father Darth Angral, who had been speaking with his son via holocomm before the two Jedi had confronted Tarnis. Furious, the elder Sith promptly declared war upon the Republic in revenge, and he made use of Tarnis's final gift—files on all of the Republic's weapons projects and how to combine them into a single planet-killing device called the Desolator—he then dispatched his three Sith apprentices, Praven, Sadic, and Nefarid, to take control of the Republic's offworld research facilities. Fearing for the safety of his weapons projects, General Var Suthra of the Republic Military had the Republic Strategic Information Service, the Republic's intelligence agency, track the source of Angral's transmission in an effort to locate the Sith Lord. The SIS failed to locate Angral himself, but traced Tarnis's transmission back to a hyperspace data transceiver on the planet Ord Mantell, where the Empire was maintaining a secret listening post.
Discussing the matter with Grand Master Satele Shan of the Jedi Order, General Suthra requested that Din's former apprentice investigate the base on Ord Mantell, as both Din and Kiwiiks had departed earlier to secure the Republic's offworld facilities with Agent Galen of the SIS. At Shan's request, the Knight took on Carsen as an official Padawan in the absence of Master Kiwiiks, and Suthra issued the two Jedi and the Knight's astromech droid companion T7-O1 a Defender-class light corvette to take to Ord Mantell.
While the trio took their new ship to Ord Mantell, Suthra contacted Agent Ottau, an SIS operative stationed on the planet. On the General's orders, Ottau dispatched a probe droid from the Republic Military's base of Fort Garnik on the island of Avilatan, and the droid tracked the transceiver's signal to a small island just of Avilatan's northern shore. However, the island's Imperial defenders destroyed Ottau's probe droid, leaving Ottau without information on the base's interior. Just after Ottau finished giving his report to Suthra, the Knight and crew arrived on the Ord Mantell Orbital Station and contacted the General. The Mon Calamari general told the Jedi to locate Ottau at Fort Garnik and to take T7-O1—also known as Teeseven—along, as the astromech would be able to retrieve the necessary data from the listening post's systems. At her new master's instruction, Carsen remained on the station to protect their ship from scavengers.
Taking a shuttle down to Fort Garnik, the Knight and Teeseven met with Agent Ottau on the outskirts of the base and received the location of the Imperial facility from the operative. However, as the two crossed Avilatan to reach the island, Carsen was recognized by undercover Imperial Intelligence operatives aboard the space station, and they contacted Darth Angral. Arriving at the listening post, the Knight and Teeseven fought through several dozen Imperial soldiers—including the post's commander—in order to reach the entrance of the base itself. The pair then descended an elevator down to the listening post's lower level, where they fought through well over thirty soldiers and Imperial operatives as they headed deeper into the facility. Around this time, Darth Angral arrived at the orbital station with Imperial Admiral Hacklin, the Sith Inquisitor Ferav, and several other retainers, and his forces began to interrogate Carsen as to the location of her teacher. However, Carsen was able to trick Angral into believing that the Knight was on the planet Corellia, and the Sith Lord sent his forces to find the Knight there. He himself departed with Admiral Hacklin in order to oversee the installation of the Desolator superweapon onto his personal warship, the Oppressor, but not before he sent for a ship to take Carsen to the Imperial capital of Dromund Kaas for further interrogation. Angral left behind Ferav with several soldiers and Sith acolytes to guard Carsen until the ship arrived.
T7-O1 accesses the transceiver.
The Knight and Teeseven finally reached the facility's transceiver to find the last defender, a Lieutenant Marcovic, and the soldier attempted to hold off the pair with a vibrosword. However, Marcovic was overpowered and severely wounded by his opponents, and Teeseven activated the transceiver as Marcovic stumbled away. Hacking into the base's systems, Teeseven located the Planet Prison designs and Tarnis's transmissions to Angral, and he also discovered design files for a world-killer weapon codenamed the "Desolator." On the Knight's orders, Teeseven downloaded everything he could, but Marcovic realized what Teeseven was doing and attacked the transceiver with his vibrosword, managing to destroy it before the Knight cut him down. Their mission accomplished, the Knight and Teeseven returned to Agent Ottau and informed him of the Imperial facility's vulnerability before taking a shuttle back up to the orbital station. However, the pair found Ferav holding Carsen hostage in the airlock, and their standoff quickly devolved into a fight when the Sith tossed aside his captive to engage the Jedi. In the battle that followed, the Jedi and Teeseven defeated Ferav, his soldiers, and the acolytes, and the duo returned to their ship with Carsen after they removed her shackles.
With the data gathered from the Ord Mantell outpost, the Jedi and the SIS were able to determine that Angral was using Tarnis's research to combine all of the Republic's weapons projects into one weapon. The discovery confirmed Suthra's suspicions, as he had lost contact with Agent Galen on the moon of Nar Shaddaa. However, Suthra first sent the Knight, Carsen, and Teeseven to the planet Taris, as he suspected that Angral would try and capture the former Republic scientist Nasan Godera—the creator of the various technologies that the superweapon initiative had developed. The Knight and crew were able to rescue Godera from the Imperial Military and Imperial Intelligence, and Godera later used the files on the Desolator to locate a flaw in the weapon when Angral attacked the Republic agriworld of Uphrades. From the files, Godera determined that the Desolator needed to charge up for an extended period of time, and the Knight and Carsen used that information to disable the weapon before Angral could use it on the Jedi homeworld of Tython.
The mission to Ord Mantell was created for Star Wars: The Old Republic, a MMORPG released by BioWare and LucasArts on December 20, 2011. It appears in the Jedi Knight mission "New Intelligence", the first mission of the class' Act I storyline. According to Hall Hood, the head writer for the Jedi Knight class, the mission to Ord Mantell was intended as a kind of "special event" for the class that would take the player to a planet that otherwise would be overlooked.