Supercommando Codex

The Supercommando Codex was a guideline for Mandalorian behavior, created by the Mandalorian soldier Jaster Mereel upon his ascension to the role of Mand'alor in 60 BBY. A man of strong ethical principles, Mereel found that many Mandalorians of his era had become dissatisfied with the dishonorable and overly savage ways that had become prevalent among a number of the culture's warriors. Mereel chose to become a reformist, one who sought to restore honor to the clans and reinstitute the old warriors codes that had been largely forgotten over time. To that end, Mereel revived and modernized the ancient Canons of Honor that the Mandalorian Crusaders and Neo-Crusaders had followed, creating a series of several hundred commandments governing moral Mandalorian behavior, which he entitled the Supercommando Codex. The Codex, like the Canons before it, drew heavily from the Resol'nare, the six central tenets of the Mandalorian culture. From the Codex, Mereel preached that any Mandalorians who wished to fight would no longer engage in the shameful activities of raiders and brigands. Instead, Mandalorian warriors were to conduct themselves as highly-paid soldiers and honorable mercenaries.

Jaster Mereel's reforms were not unanimously approved of, however, and not all Mandalorians agreed to abide by the Supercommando Codex. The pacifistic New Mandalorians rejected violence and even Mereel's reformist warrior codes, while a number of Mandalorian radicals banded together under Tor Vizsla to form the Death Watch, a splinter group in violent opposition to the Codex and the changes Mereel sought to instill. Civil war broke out between the Death Watch and an army of supercommandos loyal to Mereel known as the True Mandalorians. While the True Mandalorians were largely defeated as a result of Death Watch's underhanded machinations, the Death Watch was similarly decimated at the hands of Mereel's surrogate son, Jango Fett. Long after Mereel and his True Mandalorians fell, the tenets of the Supercommando Codex lived on in Mandalorian society. The Mandalorian Protectors, for instance, drew their moral teachings from the Codex, and strove to adhere to its high standards.

Jaster Mereel's code was first alluded to in the first issue of the Jango Fett: Open Seasons comic series, but it was only with the publication of Abel G. Peña's 2005 Star Wars Insider article, The History of the Mandalorians, that the Supercommando Codex was truly introduced to the Star Wars universe. The subsequent reference book, The New Essential Chronology by Daniel Wallace, briefly mentioned the Supercommando Codex and its role in Mandalorian history, and Wallace would again feature the Codex in his later work in the Galaxy at War reference book. The online role-playing guide for the Star Wars Galaxies video game, entitled The Way of the Warrior: A Guide to becoming a Mandalorian Soldier, also mentioned the Supercommando Codex as an element of a Mandalorian player's potential roleplaying backstory, as did The Essential Guide to Warfare by Jason Fry and Paul R. Urquhart.