The Chelloan affair represents a chapter within the New Sith Wars and Second Charge Matrica narratives. It unfolded upon the world of Chelloa around the year 1032 BBY. This conflict was a multifaceted engagement involving the rival Sith Lords Daiman and Odion, alongside the Jedi Order and the Chelloan resistance, the latter being spearheaded by figures such as Vannar Treece, Kerra Holt, and Gorlan Palladane. Chelloa existed as a component of Daiman's domain, the Daimanate, which itself was a fragment of the former Chagras Hegemony under the rule of Lord Chagras. Chagras's passing initiated a period of disarray within the Grumani sector. Each faction involved in the Chelloan affair possessed distinct objectives tied to the planet.
Daiman leveraged Chelloa as a provider of baradium, a crucial substance in the creation of armaments for his military endeavors. Conversely, Odion aimed to obliterate Chelloa, asserting that its abundant baradium disrupted the Force's equilibrium, aligning with his nihilistic ideology. Concurrently, the Jedi Order, through Vannar and Gorlan, sought to dismantle Daiman's military installations on Chelloa via Operation Influx, a swift assault. However, Odion's forces decimated this Jedi contingent during a raid. Jedi Knight Kerra Holt, a novice and the only survivor, allied herself with the Chelloan resistance led by Gorlan Palladane.
Seeking to deny Chelloa and its baradium to Odion as part of a scorched earth strategy, Daiman successfully introduced several Kinetic corruptors, camouflaged as mobile munitions complexes, onto Chelloa. Daiman then deceived Kerra, manipulating her into drawing Odion and his Lightning Guard to Chelloa under the false pretense of expanding his baradium activities. Odion's attempt to seize these resources for his own war effort led him into a trap, as the concealed Kinetic corruptors ignited significant portions of Chelloa's surface, resulting in substantial casualties within Odion's army. Meanwhile, Kerra and Gorlan successfully orchestrated the evacuation of a large segment of Chelloa's civilian population using a hastily assembled collection of transports and cargo liners, which then became recognized as the Freedom Fleet.
During the age known as the Republic Dark Age, the Galactic Republic, weakened significantly, was compelled to pull back to a secure zone encompassing the Core Worlds, Colonies, and the Inner Rim. This effectively relinquished control over vast areas of the galaxy, notably the Outer Rim Territories, to various Sith warlords. By the year 1040 BBY, the Sith warlord Chagras had established an empire within the Grumani sector, known as the Chagras Hegemony. Following his death in that same year, the sector plunged into turmoil as different Sith warlords engaged in conflict to gain control over his prior territories. Chagras's mother, Vilia Calimondra, the head of the Calimondra family, fostered this conflict to protect her own extensive holdings. By 1032 BBY, the planet Chelloa had fallen under the control of the Sith Lord Daiman, a conceited Sith who saw himself as the creator of the universe.
In that year, Lord Daiman initiated the extraction of baradium, a highly unstable substance employed in the creation of munitions, from Chelloa's surface. This baradium was transported off-world to Daiman's war foundries located on the front lines. These extraction operations led to substantial damage to what was previously a pleasant agrarian world. Daiman's baradium production drew the attention of Gorlan Palladane, a former Jedi who had become a spy, who then shared this information with his longtime friend, Jedi Master Vannar Treece, on Coruscant. In response, Treece conceived a swift military operation, Operation Influx, to disable a portion of Chelloa's baradium production before it could shift the balance of power within the Grumani sector. Master Treece's Operation Influx was structured as a three-stage military endeavor: first, insertion into the Daimanate via Oranessan, a crucial transportation hub; second, the raid on Chelloa; and third, extraction via a direct hyperspace route to neutral territory.
Unbeknownst to Palladane and his Rodian friend Skodo, their communications were being intercepted by Daiman's estranged brother, the Sith Lord Odion, who considered himself the destroyer of the universe. Viewing the abundance of baradium on Chelloa as a source of imbalance in the Force, Odion resolved to destroy the planet using kinetic corruptors, massive devices capable of igniting baradium and generating molten activity. Meanwhile, the initial phase of Operation Influx proceeded without issue. Vannar's Jedi team successfully infiltrated Oranessan and commandeered a Daimanate Heavy-Lift Starcrosser with minimal resistance. They then journeyed to Chelloa under the guise of collecting a new shipment of Chelloan baradium.
Master Treece's Starcrosser freighter made its landing at the spaceport of Jenith as Daiman's slaves were in the process of loading baradium crates onto freighters destined for the front lines. Their freighter collided with several Daimanate cargo liners, igniting several baradium crates and causing chaos among the Sith ranks. After overpowering Daimanate Sith troopers, the Jedi provided care to the wounded and prepared to make their escape into hyperspace. Treece also established contact with his old acquaintance Gorlan, the leader of the slave miners in Jenith and the Chelloan resistance. Before they could commence the third phase of Operation Influx, Lord Odion's forces arrived above Squatter's Hill and launched an assault on Treece's Jedi team.
Amidst the conflict, Master Treece instructed his former apprentice, the Jedi Knight Kerra Holt, to evacuate the Jenith slaver miners. Kerra reluctantly followed her mentor's orders. During the battle, Odion deployed a kinetic corruptor, triggering a massive explosion that decimated much of the spaceport and resulted in the death or injury of numerous workers and combatants, including the majority of Treece's Jedi team, with the exception of Kerra. Odion also killed Treece following a drawn-out lightsaber duel. Kerra and Gorlan managed to survive the inferno by evacuating aboard their cargo freighter. Kerra Holt emerged as the sole surviving member of Vannar Treece's Jedi mission.
While the survivors began tending to the wounded, Lord Daiman arrived on a repulsorcraft. Showing no concern for the loss of life and the wounded, Daiman demanded to know how the Jedi and his rival Odion had discovered his baradium operation on Chelloa. When Gorlan pleaded ignorance, Daiman employed Force choke to strangle him. However, Kerra intervened, attempting to compel Daiman to cease tormenting Palladane at gunpoint. Admiring her courage, Daiman spared Gorlan's life and mockingly urged Kerra to embrace her anger. Displaying little regard for the well-being of his subjects, Daiman commanded them to erect one of his statues in the village square before dismissing the crowd. Kerra's anger at Daiman's indifference towards his subjects drove her to initiate an assassination attempt against the Sith Lord.
Given that the baradium operations on Chelloa were clandestine, Daiman sought to determine how intelligence had been leaked to his rival Odion. He apprehended the Rodian mechanic Skodo, a member of the Chelloan resistance, and subjected him to torture with Force lightning at his alpine compound situated above the mining colony of Jenith. Hijacking the shuttle that had been used to deliver one of Daiman's statues, Kerra Holt flew to Daiman's compound and landed in the hangar bay. Preoccupied with tormenting Skodo, Daiman remained unaware of Holt's infiltration of the compound, as she quietly eliminated the guards stationed outside his chamber. She stealthily entered a room and concealed herself atop one of Daiman's statues. After Daiman had concluded torturing Skodo to death with Force lightning, he instructed his guards to remove the deceased Rodian from his chamber. However, he noticed that one of his statues had been beheaded. While Daiman was caught off guard, Holt launched her attack, destroying the statue and knocking Daiman to the ground.
During the ensuing scuffle, Holt trapped Daiman within a suspension field. She attended to Skodo, but sensing no pulse, realized he was dead. She confronted Daiman verbally, criticizing his destruction of Chelloa's environment and his use of slaves to operate his mobile munitions complexes. Daiman defended his actions by asserting his belief in the Sith tenet of self-glorification and restating his philosophy that reality was an illusion. While utilizing his Force abilities to break free from the suspension field, he diverted Holt's attention by revealing that Odion was planning a second attack and possessed a mobile space station—The Spike—capable of producing more of the deadly world-destroying kinetic corruptors.
Upon breaking free, he managed to reactivate his lightsaber and turned to confront Holt. However, Holt had already fled and commandeered one of Daiman's starfighters, incapacitating the pilot. Daiman had dispatched a squadron of starfighters to attack Odion's space station. Rather than aborting the mission, Daiman viewed Holt as a tool to use against his main rival, Odion. In reality, Daiman planned to use Kerra to dissuade his rival Odion from carrying out his plan to destroy Chelloa; Odion believed that the abundance of baradium on Chelloa caused an imbalance in the Force. Daiman had misled Kerra with disinformation that Chelloa was rich in baradium, and the Sith Lord hoped to lure his estranged brother into a trap on Chelloa. Unwilling to expend any more resources defending his beleaguered holding, Daiman preferred to destroy Chelloa to deny its resources to rival Sith Lords like Odion. Not wanting to waste further resources in defending Chelloa, Daiman had dispatched only a token force of starfighters to harass Odion's fleet.
As planned, Daiman's token starfighter force attacked Lord Odion's mobile space station/foundry, The Spike, and his fleet. However, they were easily defeated by Odion's gunships, which included his flagship, the Sword of Ieldis. In the midst of the attack, Holt ejected from her starfighter into space and infiltrated The Spike by entering through an open hatch. Discarding her spacesuit, she disabled a service droid and then made her way to Pod Seventeen in the vast assembly area. There, Holt overpowered a labor droid known as GAD-3 and reset his motivation center. Gad-3 revealed that The Spike was dedicated to the production of kinetic corruptors.
Kerra then made her way to Pod Seventeen, where she witnessed Lord Odion and his Givin second-in-command, Jelcho, inspecting the factory. Kerra hid under a catwalk and eavesdropped on Odion and Jelcho's conversation. Jelcho informed his liege that an informant, later revealed to be Gorlan Palladane, had supplied intelligence on the existence of Daiman's baradium operations. From a recorded transmission, the informant claimed that all of Daiman's mining operations were permanently offline in an attempt to draw Sith attention away from Chelloa. However, Odion dismissed the informant's latest reports as an attempt by Daiman or other parties to undermine his planned baradium operations. Odion was aware that the extraction of baradium, a volatile material, would cause extensive devastation to Chelloa's surface.
Odion then concluded the meeting by ordering all his kinetic corruptors to be prepared for landing on Chelloa to harvest all the baradium. At that point, Odion sensed an intruder's presence in the Force and ripped apart the catwalk, exposing Kerra Holt. The young Jedi Knight led Odion and his minions on a cat-and-mouse chase throughout The Spike, causing some damage to the foundry's facilities. During a verbal confrontation, Kerra revealed that Daiman was shipping in thousands of slaves in mobile munitions factories each day.
Kerra escaped Odion by using Gad-3 to open all containment fields, exposing the station to Zero-G space. This triggered an explosion that wrecked large areas of The Spike, destroying many labor droids and killing many workers. Further destruction was averted only by Jelcho reactivating the emergency shielding. Taking advantage of the ensuing chaos, Kerra escaped on a stolen shuttle. Lord Odion pursued her in his gunship Sword of Ieldis and prepared to fire on her. However, their confrontation was interrupted by an incoming transmission from Daiman, who informed Odion that he had seized his informant, Gorlan.
As a reprisal for the leakage, Daiman had ordered a military crackdown on all mining settlements on Chelloa, with his troops razing and pillaging the homes of the masses. Witnessing the plight of her friend, Holt aborted her plan to ram Odion's gunship and did a quick jump into hyperspace. Due to Kerra's information, Odion abandoned his plan to destroy Chelloa and mustered his elite Lightning Guard for a ground invasion of Chelloa. Odion intended to annex the planet to his fiefdom, the Odionate. However, this information about Daiman's planned expansion of baradium operations on Chelloa was actually disinformation planted by Daiman to lure Odion into a trap.
Meanwhile on Chelloa, Lord Daiman ordered his troops to massacre the inhabitants of the town of Jenith as a reprisal for Gorlan's leakage of his baradium operations to Odion and the Jedi. Under Daiman's orders, his troops razed much of the town and slaughtered its people. The operation also sought to hunt down other members of the Chelloan resistance and their families. Two Sith troopers also invaded the Palladane family household but were repelled by Kerra, who had returned to Jenith. Kerra then hitched a ride aboard a Daimanate transport to Daiman's compound on the hills above Jenith. This shuttle was carrying the leaders of ten Chelloan mining towns for an audience with Lord Daiman.
Upon landing, Kerra emerged from her hiding place and killed the guards. After freeing the prisoners, she instructed them to move the transport to the outer wall. If Daiman returned, she instructed to leave without her and Palladane and to make for a safehouse in the town of Arboth. Kerra then made her way to Daiman's dungeons where she free Gorlan, who admitted to contacting Odion. He explained that he and Skodo had used a transmitter to reactivated a single interstellar routing station. However, he was unaware that Odion had been tapping into the signals. Gorlan explained that he had contacted Odion in order to dissuade him from attack Chelloa. Seeing the good motives behind his actions, Holt comforted Palladane by telling him that he had done his best to protect his people.
Kerra and Gorlan then returned to their transport and headed for Arboth with the mining town leaders. By that stage, Kerra came to the realization that her mission was not to destroy the two Sith Lords but rather to "save" the Chelloan people. As a final gesture of defiance, Kerra beheaded all of Daiman's statues. After arriving at Arboth, Kerra explored the fleet of transports that had supposedly been transporting workers for the mobile munitions factories. She quickly discovered that the transports had been empty all that time. Deducing that Daiman did not intend to expand his mining presence on Chelloa, she suggested that the Chelloan resistance used these ships to evacuate Chelloa's entire population of 60,000 sentients, scattered across ten mining towns. Gorlan agreed to assist Kerra in this effort and renewed his Jedi vows.
As Daiman had planned, his older brother Odion took the bait and launched a full-scale planetary invasion of Chelloa. Odion landed a large assault force of gunships, Lightning Guard soldiers, and tanks at Arboth and wiped out the token Daimanate resistance. Before Odion's men could seize the mobile munitions factories, the vast vehicles unsheathed their pyramid exteriors to reveal that they were actually kinetic corruptors. Soon, it became clear to everyone that Daiman intended to destroy Chelloa's surface rather than allow his enemies to seize the resource-rich world. The kinetic corruptors unleashed a series of magma explosions that consumed Odion's forces. Stranded, Odion and his surviving fled to a fleet of nearby freighters only to be rebuffed by Kerra Holt and Gorlan Palladane, who had requisitioned the ships for the purpose of evacuating Chelloa's population. By that stage, the two Jedi had organized the Chelloan resistance into teams which seized control of the freighters, which were formed into the "Freedom Fleet."
Daiman learnt too late that the Jedi had gotten to his decoy transports first. Daiman attempted to shoot down the "Freedom Fleet" but was unable to do so since he had ordered his fleet away from Chelloa. Meanwhile, Lord Odion, who was equipped with a jetpack, pursued the Jedi Knight Kerra to the upper atmosphere of Chelloa. Kerra managed to hitchhike on one of the ascending freighters but Odion caught up with her and attempted to finish her off. However, Gorlan resurfaced and attacked Odion, driving him into the engine thrusters. Odion was badly burned during the attack and Gorlan later died of his wounds. Despite Gorlan's death, they succeeded in evacuating Chelloa's population to Republic space.
The Chelloan Affair had some significant repercussions for Kerra Holt and the Grumani sector. As a result, Kerra attracted the attention of the Sith Lords Odion, Daiman, and their grandmother Vilia Calimondra. Following their evacuation from Chelloa, the Freedom Fleet raided the Daimanate world of Nilash III. There, they attacked a Daimanate factory and freed the local slaves. As a final gesture of defiance, Kerra beheaded Daiman's statue which forced the Sith Lord to realize that she "existed." Kerra Holt would continue her campaign of resistance and sabotage against the Daimanate, which led her to destroy a factory on the Daimanate capital of Darkknell.
- Operation Influx Vannar Treece Berluk Kerra Holt Mrssk Dorvin Eltrom A Koorivar Jedi A Twi'lek Jedi An Anomid Jedi
- Chelloan resistance Gorlan Palladane Skodo
The Chelloan affair is the central conflict in Star Wars: Knight Errant: Aflame, which is the first five–issue story arc of John Jackson Miller's Star Wars: Knight Errant series. This series was published from October 13, 2010 to February 16, 2011. It was in this story arc that the main character of the comic series, Kerra Holt, was introduced, along with the two primary antagonists, the Sith Lords Odion and Daiman. The name of the conflict was officially given in Knight Errant, which is a tie–in paperback novel released on January 25, 2011.