In 8 ABY, Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo "Thrawn" of the Empire of the Hand led an assault against the Red City on the planet Quethold. The operation's primary objective was the elimination of Storm-hair Warlord Nuso Esva, an ally of the Quesoth inhabitants of the Red City, to prevent his reign of terror from spreading throughout the Unknown Regions once more. Esva, anticipating Thrawn's strategic approach based on paintings, strategically selected specific artworks for the bowlcarrier Trevik of the Quesoth to share—as Esva foresaw—with Thrawn through Imperial Stromma Council Liaison Nyama. Nyama, in turn, provided recordings of the commands issued to the Quesoth Soldiers in Quesoth Soldier Speak by the Queen of the Red, the Quesoth's ruler.
Despite being aware of this scheme, Thrawn proceeded as expected during the Red City attack. He deployed nine juggernauts to the city's Setting Sun Avenue, where Imperial Gray Squadron TIE/IN interceptors and 501st Legion stormtroopers neutralized the Storm-hair umbrella shields safeguarding the Chosen warriors and heavy weaponry. Concurrently, the Chosen and the Soldiers engaged the attackers, ultimately penetrating the juggernauts under Esva's direction. Leveraging Nyama's recordings and Baron Soontir Fel's commandeering of a loudspeaker used by the Queen to broadcast her commands, the Grand Admiral directed the Quesoth warriors to the Dwelling of Guests building, where the Red monarch and her ally were coordinating the defense.
Misinterpreting the situation, Esva believed the Queen had betrayed him. In a moment of fear, he shot her before instructing Trevik to inform Thrawn that, despite his death, the Chosen would relentlessly pursue and eliminate the Grand Admiral wherever he sought refuge. As the Quesoth forces converged on the Dwelling and the stormtroopers eliminated the Chosen, the bowlcarrier carried out his assigned task. Following Esva's demise, Thrawn initiated the Thrawn campaign, an endeavor aimed at restoring the fractured Galactic Empire.
In 0 ABY, Nuso Esva, a Warlord belonging to the species known as the Storm-hairs by the Quesoth, the native inhabitants of the Unknown Regions planet Quethold, commenced a campaign against the Galactic Empire. The purpose of this operation was to lure Mitth'raw'nuruodo "Thrawn", then a Senior Captain in the Galactic Empire and Empire of the Hand, to the Imperial Candoras sector. There, Esva's Eastern Fleet—one of three equally powerful fleets comprising his battle fleet—and his elite Chosen warrior force would decisively defeat the Chiss, enabling Esva to continue conquests and seize control of the Galactic Empire. Although Thrawn did journey to Candoras' Poln system and Esva's forces engaged the senior captain's Death Squadron, Thrawn's Task Force Admonitor, and elements of the Rebel Alliance, the Galactic Empire was able to decimate the warlord's Eastern Fleet, forcing him into a defensive posture.
Sometime after the Candoras sector conflict, Esva attacked the planet of Oristrom in the Unknown Regions, the homeworld of the Stromma species. By analyzing the warlord's artistic creations, Thrawn gained insights into his strategic thinking, liberating Oristrom and other Stromma worlds, which led the species to align with the Chiss's Empire of the Hand. By 8 ABY, the Storm-hair had formed an alliance with the Queen of the Red, the ruling monarch of Quethold's Red City, promising to assist in the assassination of the Queen of the White scheduled to succeed her in two years, thus ensuring the Red monarch's eternal reign. In return, Esva gained access to the Quesoth Soldiers, the Queen's unwavering loyalty, and the ship manufacturing facilities located in the White monarch's White City. These facilities he intended to use to construct starships to once more inflict devastation upon his adversaries.
In the meantime, Thrawn, now a Grand Admiral, and a council within the Empire of the Hand, including Stromma Council Liaison Nyama, Voss Parck, Stormtrooper Commander Balkin, Baron Soontir Fel of Gray Squadron, and Nyama's conciliator, made preparations for the conclusive battle against Esva aboard the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Admonitor. The Chiss stated that Thrawn's forces had been blockading Quethold since they learnt Esva was on the planet, but the blockade had to be lifted so that the Grand Admiral could take care of other threats, and Balkin suggested that the stormtroopers of the 501st Legion were ready to eliminate Esva. In response, Nyama outlined the capabilities of the three Quesoth castes—the Circling, Midli, Workers and Soldiers—and ridiculed Thrawn's proposed attack strategy: using TIE interceptors to breach the umbrella shields protecting the Red City and deploying Balkin's stormtroopers to neutralize the Chosen's heavy weaponry.
Deeming such a strategy absurd, Nyama withdrew all Stromma personnel from Imperial service, but not before translating several of the Queen of the Red's commands to the Soldiers in Quesoth Soldier Speak. The liaison also proposed tasking a disaffected Midli with recording the paintings Esva had brought to his residence in the Red City, the Dwelling of Guests building, and made arrangements for that. In reality, Nyama was a double agent working for the Storm-hairs, and suggested this to manipulate Thrawn's strategy by sharing paintings selected by Esva to mislead him. Trevik, a Midli bowlcarrier, was assigned this task by his family Jirvin, and carried it out in hopes of proving to his brother that the Queen of the Red was a willing ally of her warlord ally. The Grand Admiral was aware of this deception, but proceeded nonetheless, dispatching his stormtroopers on A-rack vehicles behind nine juggernauts to the Quesoth city's Setting Sun Avenue.
Thrawn's seven transports and nine empty juggernauts then made planetfall on the city. Fel's Gray Squadron conducted reconnaissance flights over the Red City, searching for weaknesses in the umbrella shields to exploit. As Gray Squadron flew over Juggernaut One, Esva's cannons opened fire while a hundred Quesoth Soldiers left their Worker homes and attacked the stormtroopers from behind. General Tasse reported that the Storm-hair forces had hit Juggernaut One nearly as hard as they had hit Nine while two thousand Quesoth attacked the juggernauts. The stormtroopers sought refuge within three Worker residences located near a shield generator in hopes of destroying it, and drove back the attackers with an E-Web heavy repeating blaster operated by stormtroopers Shrinks, Lhagva, Bragger, and Line Lieutenant Dramos Sanjin.
An additional two thousand Quesoth emerged and advanced on the juggernauts, accompanied by several members of the Chosen, while another fifteen hundred Soldiers besieged the vehicles. Shortly thereafter, two shield projectors were destroyed, and Thrawn instructed his stormtroopers to continue their assault on the shield generator, adhering to Esva's pre-planned script. However, the fourteenth Quesoth loudspeaker was located, and Fel received orders to attack. The Chosen struck his left wing, which was a decoy, and Fel continued his simulated "crash" while Kres'ten'tarthi maintained his siege on the laser cannons. Ejecting his wings and firing at several homes, the baron destroyed all loudspeakers but one, which Thrawn used to order the Soldiers to go to the Dwelling and protect Esva.
Realizing the futility of the juggernauts, Esva urged his Quesoth ally to join the battle, directing her to order her Soldiers to attack the Imperial transports. The monarch, suspecting the Storm-hair intended to flee Quethold with his Chosen, refused, as did Trevik. Enraged, the warlord brandished his blaster, threatening the Queen to comply if she wished to survive; however, she remained defiant and died along with Circling Borosiv and several Workers. Instructing the late monarch's bowlcarrier to inform Thrawn that, despite Esva's death, the warlord's followers were far more numerous than the Grand Admiral could comprehend and would relentlessly hunt him down and kill him, the Storm-hair leader accepted his fate. The remaining Chosen opened fire, the stormtroopers eliminated them, the Soldiers entered the Dwelling, and the Imperial forces assassinated Esva.
Following the attack on the Red City—during which one stormtrooper perished—Thrawn informed Parck that one of the corpses found within the Dwelling had been identified as Esva's. Additionally, after hearing Trevik's message, a bodyguard had been assigned to him, the Noghri assassin Rukh. The Grand Admiral also instructed the senior captain to travel to the Chaos Triangle, where the Admonitor, under Pack's command, would eradicate Esva's legacy. While the Chaos Triangle was cleansed, Thrawn embarked on what he termed "victory," rebuilding the Galactic Empire.
The attack was first depicted in Timothy Zahn's novella Crisis of Faith, which appeared in 2011 as part of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Zahn's 1991 novel Heir to the Empire.