First Spectre War
From FABT
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 Kaaysha T'vevo, the first of the traitor spectres and the one responsible for sparking the Spectre Wars.
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17 June - 20 July 768 CE | ||||||||||||||||
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Council victory
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Noveria is claimed by the Queendom, and then retaken just over a month later | ||||||||||||||||
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- "For all Kaaysha's machinations and scheming, her arrogance was fated to bring about her defeat. For she enjoyed the spectacle too much, and wanted to be known. An alias and working from the shadows wasn't enough...she needed to flaunt her strength, boast her prowess and demonstrate her profane defiance to the Council. She wanted to be famous, so she took Port Hanshan and dared the Council to retake it. The old Council may have been hesitant, in this Kaaysha is not wrong. Many attribute her exposure as an act of stupidity. Kaaysha simply underestimated how much the galaxy had changed. The turians were a different sort, and lacked the hesitance, indecisiveness and politicking that often paralyzed the asari and intrigued the salarians. Where the Council saw a difficult decision, the turians saw a rebellion, and so they acted quickly and proficiently. This insurrection lasted just barely over a month, stamped out and destroyed by the turians. They had already earned their stripes, but after this...the Council saw the worth they held. The turians were all but guaranteed to become the third Council member after that."
- — An asari storyteller regarding the First Spectre War.
The First Spectre War, also known as Kaaysha's Rebellion, Spectre Rebellion and the Port Hanshan Siege, was a small conflict between the Citadel Council and rogue members of its Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch led by the spectre Kaaysha T'vevo that took place between 17 June and 20 July 768 CE and kickstarted the Spectre Wars. In 764 CE, the Krogan Rebellions finally came to an end after sixty-four years of continuous conflict that tore the galaxy apart and left it in shambles, ending with the final collapse of the Tuchankan Empire and any remaining krogan resistance. Before cleanup efforts could begin however, the galaxy had many crises emerge from the aftermath that the Council, already exhausted by war, was forced to deal with: ontop of a looming economic depression, the Council was forced to deal with the early days of the Terminus Revolutions that began in 765 CE as the many organizations that would later form the Terminus Systems began to incite rebellion against Council rule. While these issues drew the majority of Council attention, a smaller, but just as prominent, issue began to rise within its very ranks.
The Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, whose agents were known as Spectres after the acronym for the organization, was an agency prededicated on discretion, lethal force and maximum effectiveness. Seen as a necessity for fighting a foe such as the krogan, and learning from lessons learnt during the Rachni Wars centuries beforehand, the Spectres were an organization whose purpose was singularly its lack of overarching authority. They could act as they wanted, and use whatever means and resources existed at their disposal to wage war on the krogan. Formed two years in the lead up to the Krogan Rebellions, the Spectres were seen as a last resort option that had finally been activated. The original Spectres were spawned from chosen members of the asari's Commando Corps and the salarian Special Tasks Group, and after later deliberation, members of the hanar's Kraput Order and the quarian's Tecr'fer were accepted as well, despite the original decision that only races with full Council membership could have members in the Spectres. The Spectres were given a specific mandate, and this Spectre's Creed became the oath upon which all future spectres would be sworn into service: they were given the tools and authority to act as they saw fit. Knowing that orders and hierarchy of superiority had only restrained their efforts to wage total war in the past, the Spectres were freed of these limitations, granted the translegal jurisdiction to act above the law, lead and operate themselves, and effectively wage their own private war free of any Council oversight. In order to satisfy public curiosity, a separate organization known as the Citadel Council's Committee for Special Tactics Oversight was founded, but it was effectively toothless, and existed only as a red herring to satisfy the public's belief that the Spectres were indeed leashed and under control: it held zero authority over the Spectres, and could be ignored when and where members of the Spectres saw fit to do so.
Following the Rebellions, however, the question of the future of the Spectres rose to prominence. Their effectiveness during the war had been of devastating effect, but with the conflict over, it appeared the organization had no further use during peace-time. However, members of the Spectres argued that they were needed especially during peace-time, in order to stop such wars before they begin, to eliminate terrorist threats before they become dangerous, and act as an interstellar police force to take down rogue threats, perform intelligence gathering, and monitor escalating incidents of interest to the Council. This argument was heard and commonly accepted, as few among the elite wanted to dissolve such a valuable organization that had proven its efficiency. The turians were the ones who most objected to their existence, as their culturally engrained belief in order, meritocracy and obeyance to authority directly clashed with that of the ideals of the Spectres. Their worries of a translegal authority would only prove to be well founded: a veteran of the Krogan Rebellions, and the first and eldest spectre, former justicar Kaaysha T'vevo was well respected amongst her fellow spectres and well commended for her actions during the war, which overshadowed her dubious past. Once a criminal responsible for running a criminal gang in the city of Illium on Thessia known as the Tree Bandits, Kaaysha was conscripted into the Justicars by an asari justicar who had raided her hideout and arrested her, although Kaaysha only did it to save herself. She proved herself as one of the most ruthless justicars in existence, her brutality in dealing with suspects often exceeding that of previous justicars, despite the ruthless reputation of the order that it already had: at times, she would even act without provocation, murdering civilians who she said "looked at (her) suspiciously." Finally, Kaaysha was arrested by the Armali Justice Agency when it was discovered she had been using her authority as a justicar to destroy rival organizations, using her network of contacts to privately rebuild and expand the Tree Bandits, until they had wiped out all other criminal gangs in Illium and dominated it, even expanding offworld. She had even taken upon herself a personal harem. However, due to her abilities and ruthless efficiency, an official order of clemency was granted to Kaaysha before her execution, and the Thessian Republics officially pardoned her for her crimes, in exchange for her joining the Spectres. Her organization was one again dismantled by police, with Kaaysha's plea deal contingent on her giving up all her lieutenants, which she willingly did. She was also quietly absolved from her oath as a justicar and effectively excommunicated, her name stricken from the record of the Red Justice, the official record of the Justicar Order and its members tracking all the way back to its foundation. Kaaysha remains as the only Justicar to be kicked out of the organization, whose oaths are normally for life.
After the Rebellions, Kaaysha began plotting once more. Even more powerful now than she had been as a justicar, Kaaysha began to use her authority to rebuild her criminal empire. One by one, she used her new contacts and jurisdiction to have her lieutenants pardoned and released from prison, and went to work building up the Tree Bandits, now renamed Kaaysha's Bitches, as an interstellar enterprise. In a short space of time, Kaaysha built a network of contacts across the galaxy, even allying with would-be Terminus revolutionaries in their infancy, promising them funding in their efforts to kick out the Council if they helped facilitate her attempts to dip into the interstellar drug and arms market. Day by day, month by month, her organization was becoming infamous, and eventually, and inevitably, to the notice of the Council's intelligence networks. To avoid being tied to her organization, Kaaysha adopted the alias of Sierlia T'pelis in all her business dealings. One by one, she was able to blackmail and/or corrupt high level politicians, members of the military, and even enlisted the help of former krogan soldiers and vorcha who were looking to get revenge against the Council. Kaaysha eventually even recruited other spectres, with two quarian, a hanar and four other salarian spectres becoming her enforcers, lieutenants and right hands. She established herself on the liberated world of Noveria. From here her criminal empire only continued to grow in size, eventually growing strong enough to crush smaller criminal groups and absorb them, and by 767 CE, these gang wars had allowed Kaaysha's Bitches to grow to enormous size, dominating most of Armali on Thessia and eliminating three of the biggest salarian crime bosses on Mercia and Anatol. These gang wars would continue throughout the eventual war with the Council that would follow, and would continue even when Kaaysha's organization splintered into several smaller factions, and would only end a hundred years later when the last of these splinter groups were wiped out by newer rivals or former resurgent gangs looking to avenge the death of their predecessors.
However, in the end, Kaaysha's discretion came to an end when she finally bit off more than she could chew. Drunk from power or perhaps engrossed in her delusions of grandeur, Kaaysha exposed herself to the Council when lead a large force to attack and capture Port Hanshan, establishing it as the seat of the "Queendom of Kaaysha", thus beginning the First Spectre War. In the beginning, the Council acted quickly to keep any news of the event from the public eye: Noveria was shut off from the extranet, and the salarian STG were tasked with ensuring no ships left or landed on the planet. The next step for the Council was to discuss what should be done, as they didn't want it being known that a group of spectres, emboldened by Council authority, had gone rogue. In response to the blockade, Kaaysha had one of her salarian agents, a spectre who formerly worked with STG, send a message to the Council demanding they lift the blockade or there would be consequences. The Council refused, so Kaaysha slaughtered half the population of Port Hanshan as a warning against further aggression. In the end however, the solution presented itself quite easily. The turians offered to deal with the problem themselves, and offered to appoint seventy of their best men, handpicked from the Blackwatch, Armiger Legion, Cabal Corps and Sigma Force, to become the first turian spectres and lead an operation to retake Port Hanshan and bring Kaaysha to justice. The Council approved the operation. As it was, within a month and a half, Kaaysha's "rebellion" was brought to heel: a turian fleet deployed three marine companies that quickly surrounded Port Hanshan, and the Valiant Seventy, as the turian military reverently regards them, stormed the port and retook it. In a single day, four of Kaaysha's spectres were killed, with the rest surrendering and being taken into custody, with roughly sixteen of the seventy turian spectres being killed in the operation, and an additional nine wounded. Kaaysha and her rogue band were taken to the Citadel and put on trial, and turned over to their respective governments for follow-up military tribunals. Three were executed, among them Kaaysha herself, while the quarian spectre, Ezyn'Kannos, was exiled by the quarian government and told never to return. Ezyn would later serve with Drecuns Tanculus as an advisor during the Terminus Revolutions, and helped to establish the dominion over Omega that would last for centuries more. And so brought the end of the First Spectre War.