Maarva Carassi Andor's passing in 5 BBY at the age of 77 standard years was followed by a ceremony in Ferrix, the planet located in the Free Trade sector, which was also her place of birth. The weeks leading up to this event were marked by rising tensions between the newly installed Imperial administration and the local population. This was due, in part, to the stringent policies implemented by Prefect Vanis Tigo, as well as the existing animosity towards the previous Morlani government, whose military arm, the Pre-Mor Enforcement, was responsible for the death of a local man during a special operation. Among those who mourned Andor were her fellow Daughters of Ferrix, her friend Brasso, and the B2EMO droid, a salvage assist unit B2 groundmech. B2EMO broadcast her last holorecorded message to the assembled crowd, in which she implored her fellow Ferrixians to stand against the Empire. When Prefect Tigo attempted to halt her speech, the funeral immediately transformed into a riot, with attendees attacking him and the Imperial Security forces present, marking the inception of the Ferrix resistance movement.
Ferrix, a manufacturing and trading hub in the Morlani system within the Free Trade sector, was the homeworld of Maarva Carassi Andor. Having previously been a part of the Galactic Republic, it transitioned to Imperial rule following the Proclamation of the New Order. The inhabitants of Ferrix deeply valued their autonomy and actively opposed external governance, with a radical faction even staging open protests against the newly established Imperial regime during the initial deployment of clone troopers after the Clone Wars in 18 BBY. These demonstrations were met with severe consequences; Andor's husband, Clem, along with others, was publicly executed, and their corpses were left hanging in Fountain Square as a public display. Although Ferrix was subsequently placed under the authority of the Preox-Morlana corporate entity, with the Empire significantly reducing its engagement with the system, the Ferrixians maintained a close-knit and dynamic community. They fostered a thriving market for used starship components recovered from the planet's salvage yards, where a significant portion of the population was employed.
The relationship between Ferrix and the corporate authority remained relatively passive, with the planet being almost forgotten by the galactic government, the last census being performed in 11 BBY. Few conflicts between the locals and the government ensued, until 5 BBY, when Andor's adopted son, Cassian Jeron Andor, traveled to the system capital Morlana One in an attempt to locate his long lost sister, Kerri. During his stay, he had an altercation with corpos Verlo Skiff and Kravas Drezzer which resulted in their deaths. Pe-Mor Deputy Inspector Syril Karn took over the case despite his superior officer's objections and was quickly able to identify Cassian Andor as the perpetrator of the crime, swiftly deploying a Pre-Mor Security Inspection team led by Sergeant Linus Mosk to arrest him on Ferrix. Unbeknownst to him, Andor was in the process of being hired by rebel Luthen Rael to participate in a mission for him; Rael was heavily armed and able to help Andor engage and kill many Pre-Mor corpos as well as destroy a speeder, ultimately escaping the planet with him. During the skirmish, local Ferrixians assisted the pair in their escape by banging on metallic fixtures along the corpos' path to notify Andor and Rael of their movements as well as removing street signs to confuse them. Maarva Andor was held in her home and refused to cooperate.
The unprecedented fiasco caught the attention of the ISB Supervisor Blevin who was responsible for the Free Trade system, and responded by placing the Preox-Morlana under permanent Imperial authority. The newly deployed Ferrix garrison consisted of heavily armed stormtrooper and Imperial Army trooper units with a permanent presence on the planet, a sight which angered and confused many locals who were used to a peaceful and unobstructed life. In addition to occupying Hotel Rix, an old city hotel in the central square, to set up a headquarters, the Imperial Prefect Vanis Tigo ruled the city with unrelenting fanaticism, showing no mercy to violators of Imperial law. When the new Supervisor for the system, Dedra Meero, requested that the Repaak Salyard be placed under observation under suspicions that it hid a communicator device used to contact a rebel agent, Tigo took the chance to demonstrate his power by having the yard owner, Salman Paak hanged in the central square, despite him having already confessed under intense torture to his lack of involvement with the device.
These and other events, combined with news of the Aldhani heist, the first open attack against an Imperial installation reaching Ferrix inspired influential Ferrixian and former President of the Daughters of Ferrix Maarva Andor to rebel against the Imperial occupation. She started using her knowledge of old passages and hidden tunnels to probe their headquarters and troop movements in hopes of eventually assisting the rebels to retake the planet. During one of these scouting missions she fell and was injured, having to be carried back to her house by her son's friend Brasso. She soon fell ill, but refused to take her medicine, instead secretly recording an anti-Imperial speech in hopes of having it play in her funeral. At the same time, Meero focused upon Cassian as her key to unraveling the growing rebel network under Rael, known to her as "Axis," while helping to counter the coming raid on the Spellhaus Imperial power station, being told to locate Axis upon the raid ending without prisoners being taken.
A month after her injury in the hotel tunnel, Maarva Andor succumbed to her illness at the age of 77. The Daughters of Ferrix, including her friend Jezzi, arrived the next morning to collect her body, which they prepared by wrapping it and adorning it with flowers. Brasso remained at her house, comforting her grieving B2EMO droid, a salvage assist unit B2 groundmech that refused to leave its charging station and repeatedly requested the return of its master. Locals, friends, and neighbors of Maarva gathered outside her home to accompany her body in an impromptu procession. Attendant Corv of the ISB, who had been assigned to monitor Maarva in the hope that she would contact her wanted son, Cassian, noticed the gathering and informed the Prefect, who then notified Supervisor Meero. Meero placed all Imperial forces on high alert, anticipating that Cassian would return to the planet to pay his respects to his mother. Luthen Rael, who also had agents Vel Sartha and Cinta Kaz stationed in the city to intercept Cassian, whom he considered a liability after their mission, was also informed.
In accordance with Ferrix traditions, Maarva's body was cremated, and her ashes were combined with mortar and Ferrix dust to create a pressed funerary stone. This stone was then inscribed with her full name and dates of birth and death, using Bazeese script according to the Coruscant reckoning calendar, and given to Brasso, who was chosen to carry it in the absence of her only living relative, Cassian. The Daughters, recognizing her status as a former President and respected citizen, sought permission from the Prefecture to hold a traditional public funeral for Maarva. Meero explicitly instructed Prefect Tigo to allow the funeral to proceed, hoping to lure Cassian into the ceremony for his arrest. However, Tigo limited the number of attendees to 40 and postponed the ceremony from midday to two standard hours later. Roadblocks were set up at the end of Fountain Square, directly in front of and around the Prefecture headquarters in the old hotel, while a containment team and a sniper unit were placed on standby around Rix Road. Meero later removed the sniper unit, as she wanted Cassian alive. Air traffic in the area was restricted, and patrol units were recalled, both as a gesture of respect to the Ferrixians and to create a false sense of security for Cassian if he were to return to the planet. The night before the funeral, Supervisor Meero arrived on the planet with a death trooper escort to assist in Cassian's arrest.
On the day of the funeral, two groups of Ferrixians gathered. The first group, consisting of the Daughters of Ferrix and the brass section of the Honor Guard band, assembled outside Maarva's house, tuning their instruments as they waited for everyone to arrive. The second group, comprised of Honor Guards and the woodwind section of the band, gathered elsewhere. At midday, the Time Grappler began striking his beskar anvil, signaling the start of the ceremony. To the surprise of the Imperials, the two halves of the procession formed behind the bands, and as the musicians played "Forming Up," they began marching along the streets leading to Rix Road. Despite the restrictions, citizens of Ferrix joined the parade, resulting in a massive gathering. By the time the Daughters and the Guards reached Rix Road, the funeral procession had grown to include hundreds of Ferrixians, including Maarva's doctor Mullmoy, her close friend Pegla, her son's friends Brasso and Xanwan, and Wilmon Paak, the son of Salman Paak, who had joined the ceremony hoping to get close enough to the Prefecture to bomb it with a homemade explosive device in retaliation for his father's death.
Upon arriving at Rix Road, the two halves of the procession merged under the Ferrix bell tower, with the Daughters and the Honor Guard at its head. With the two sections united, the band, led by a drummer, began playing "Unto Stone We Are," and the procession marched along Rix Road towards Fountain Square and the hotel. Caught off guard, the Imperials scrambled to establish a defensive perimeter under the command of Lieutenant Merzin Keysax. As the head of the procession reached the halfway point of Rix Road, Brasso, accompanied by B2EMO and carrying Maarva's stone, emerged from the crowd. Simultaneously, the band began playing a faster tune, "To The Sky," and the Ferrixians followed, marching more quickly towards the Imperials, who were still struggling to form a line in front of the hotel. Ignoring the Imperials, the Ferrixians entered Fountain Square and assembled around it, at which point they stopped and made way for B2EMO to reach the center of the street. Surrounding the droid, the crowd began chanting "Stone and Sky," while B2 deployed his holoprojector to play Maarva's speech, marking the beginning of the ceremony of the Truth.
In her speech, Maarva denounced what she saw as the tyranny of the Empire, accusing herself and her fellow citizens of being complacent and failing to recognize its destructive influence as long as they were well-compensated. She expressed her love for Ferrix and its traditions, including the Truth and the ceremony of the Stone, and her desire for the planet and its people to endure. However, she also called on the Ferrixians to awaken from their slumber, as she had failed to do, and to "fight these bastards." As the speech concluded with Maarva's call to "Fight the Empire!", Vanis Tigo stepped through the trooper line into the ceremony, pulled his cape over the droid's projector, and furiously kicked it to the ground to silence it. Enraged, the crowd immediately surged forward to attack him, marking the beginning of a resistance movement. Brasso kicked Tigo in the chest, sending him flying into the street, and wrestled two security troopers who were attempting to rescue their captain to the ground. Tigo seized the opportunity to crawl under the crowd's feet and back behind the trooper line.
Upon noticing Tigo's escape, the crowd surged forward to attack, but they were halted by the security troopers, who formed a wall with their riot shields to protect their officer. As more and more people rushed towards the hotel, pressing against the line, the troopers responded by striking them with batons and shocking them with zap rods, dragging the injured protestors back to detain them in the hotel. Amidst the chaos, Wilmon Paak pulled the bomb from his satchel and threw it towards the Imperials. The explosion shattered the hotel windows, instantly killing several stormtroopers and troopers stationed inside, as well as a Ferrixian informant, and detonated a crate of N-20 Baradium-core thermal detonator. The blasts destroyed the façade of the hotel and two armed speeders, killing both protestors and Imperials, and prompting an immediate response from Imperial security forces, who opened fire on the remaining Ferrixians in the square. With the ceremony disrupted, Brasso took Maarva's droid and funerary stone and fled the planet along with other Ferrixians. The ceremony was never resumed, and Maarva's stone was not interred in a city wall as per tradition.
As predicted by both the ISB and Luthen Rael, Maarva's son Cassian had indeed returned to the planet to attend the funeral. However, he managed to evade his pursuers amidst the riot. Disgusted by the atrocities he witnessed and the slaughter of his home planet's citizens, he joined the Axis network after the funeral to actively fight against the Empire. He became a valuable member of the Alliance Intelligence, ultimately recovering the DS-1 Death Star's plans alongside Jyn Erso during the Battle of Scarif, a crucial step in the Rebel Alliance's successful attempt to ultimately destroy the station in the Battle of Yavin.
The funeral was initially referenced in "Daughter of Ferrix" and later depicted in "Rix Road," the concluding episode of the first season of the television series Andor.
Executive producer and writer Tony Gilroy stated that the funeral was inspired by Provisional IRA funerals and the joyous and soulful New Orleans second line funeral processions. The funeral procession for Maarva Andor was the first aspect that Gilroy developed, with a particular focus on the music. He insisted that real instruments be played by on-screen actors rather than professional musicians, and that the recording take place on the Ferrix set in Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Two years before filming began, Gilroy and composer Nicholas Britell collaborated to create a seven-minute piece. Britell ensured that the piece would reflect the people of Ferrix and be a tradition with which they could naturally connect. He understood that the sound needed to evoke a sense of folk tradition and be meaningful enough to unite them. Gilroy explained that the funeral came to life for him through the civic procession. He also noted that the funeral further developed Ferrix's personality and demonstrated the people's care for one another.
Costume designer Michael Wilkinson and his team intensified the use of red as a powerful symbol of the spirit of Ferrix. To achieve this, Maarva Andor's red jumpsuit was echoed in the red cloaks worn during the procession. According to Gilroy, all scenes on Ferrix were filmed first. Actress Denise Gough, who played Dedra Meero, mentioned that the voice of Fiona Shaw as Maarva resonated with those filming the scene. Maarva's monologue originally ended with her saying "Fuck the Empire!" but it was changed to "Fight the Empire!" in the episode.