Second Spectre War

From FABT

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Post-war Krogan conflicts

Concurrent:

Krogan Civil Wars
Emerald Turf War

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Campaigns of Snaker the Great

Second Spectre War
Part of the Spectre Wars

Date:

8 November 815 CE - 17 August 816 CE
(9 months and 10 days)

Location:

Galaxy-wide

Outcome:

Strategic Council victory

  • Ezyn is cornered and commits suicide
  • Cuna and her rogue spectres escape justice and flee into exile, with the search for them being cut off a decade later
  • Ril'phiya escapes justice and no attempt is made to find her
  • The Thessian Rangers influence on Omega is greatly weakened

Engagements:

Belligerents

CitadelCouncil.png Citadel Council

SpectreInsignia.png Cuna's rogue spectres
ThessianRangers.png Thessian Rangers (until 17 August 816 CE)

Commanders
CitadelCouncil.png
Eshorame Pesajin

CitadelCouncil.png
Pegall Lilani

CitadelCouncil.png
Comiteia Albucus

Spectres.png
Luccus Calpdonis

Spectres.png
Antoponia Itaso

QuarianInsignia.jpg Sun'Yall

Ezyn'Kannos

ThessianRangers.png Ril'phiya Sabuve

ThessianRangers.png Halga F'Caci

SpectreInsignia.png Cuna'Kannos

Strength
  • 6 rogue spectres, including Cuna herself
  • 1 exiled ex-spectre
  • 800 Thessian Ranger mercenaries
Casualties
  • 1 Tecr'fer operator killed, 4 injured
  • 6 civilians killed on Armali, 5 civilians killed on Korlus, 1 civilian killed on Vulpes
  • 15 civilians injured on Armali, 2 civilians injured on Korlus
  • 690 Thessian Ranger mercenaries killed
  • Ezyn killed
 
"Nobody truly knows why some pursue vengeance so rigorously that all logic and reason takes flight. Ezyn'Kannos is one such curious example, for he made quite the life for himself after the failure of his compatriot, Kaaysha. He was the advisor to the great Drecuns Tanculus, and he held a position of power that made him the envy of many of Tanculus' court. He was safe, secure...he could have built quite the life for himself. Instead, he used those resources for revenge, seeking out those who "wronged" him and murdering them until the Council caught wind of it. To be sure, Ezyn didn't go out as swiftly as Kaaysha did, shouting and defiant in a court room, but his end was nonetheless ignominous. One must question the wisdom of waging these fights...one man, no matter how powerful, attempting to fight not just one government, but two? What was to gain? We may never know. Ezyn blew his brains out rather than be captured, and his wife and daughter are lost to history after the War of the Pretenders that followed a couple centuries later."
— An asari storyteller regarding the Second Spectre War.

The Second Spectre War, also known as Ezyn's War, and as the Ezyn Pursuit in its later stages, was a small conflict between the Citadel Council and the exiled ex-spectre Ezyn'Kannos, supported by the Omega chapter of the Thessian Rangers PMC, that took place between 8 November 815 CE and 17 August 816 CE and served as the second phase of the Spectre Wars. Over forty years earlier, the brief First Spectre War had seen seven spectres, led by Kaaysha T'vevo, go rogue and begin abusing their power and connections for personal profit and gain, constructing a galaxy-wide criminal empire and destroying gang after gang after gang utilizing Council resources. Of the eight spectres who rebelled against the Council, four were killed in combat, with the other four brought to justice and put to trial. Three, including ring leader Kaaysha, were executed, but Ezyn was exiled by the quarian government, who viewed capital punishment as too clean a fate, and utilized permanent exile from Rannoch instead, as quarians held contact with their kin sacredly. The Council did not agree with the decision, but were powerless to stop it, as Ezyn disappeared shortly thereafter. He would later pop up again a few decades later at the side of Drecuns Tanculus, the Terminus warlord who was one of many revolutionaries who escalated the Terminus Revolutions. Tanculus utilized Ezyn's knowledge of Council operations to great effect, but eventually turned his attention from the Council and eyed another prize: Omega. The great Battle of Omega ended in Tanculus securing the station from the krogan imperial remnant who held it, crowning himself the first Ruler of Omega, with Ezyn as his right hand. Twelve years later, the Terminus Revolutions came to an end, with the Council recognizing the independence of the Terminus Systems.

While the Council were aware of Ezyn's connections to Tanculus, Ezyn was able to evade their efforts in assassinating him, and once the revolutions ended, such efforts were ceased. However, Ezyn had a niece who had joined the spectres in 810 CE, who he had met eight months after her initiation and convinced her to use her resources to help him evade Council attempts to have him eliminated. Cuna, however, was being monitored by the Council regardless of Cuna's measures to remain indiscrete, who had been skeptical of Cuna's relation to Ezyn, but concluded that she had been born long after Ezyn's exile, and thus had no ties to him, allowing her to continue as a full spectre due to the Council lacking any evidence of her direct involvement, but monitoring her in case Ezyn attempted to reach out. During his time as Tanculus' military advisor, Ezyn became acquainted with an asari mercenary commander in command of the asari only Thessian Rangers PMC that had been paid to support Tanculus. A veteran of the Rachni Wars, Ril'phiya Sabuve and Ezyn had become quick friends as they fought beside each other against Tanculus' enemies, and eventually became lovers. After the Revolutions, Ril'phiya remained on Omega to establish the Omega chapter of the Thessian Rangers, which up until then had been a mercenary company that purely operated in asari space, and two years later, she would be married to Ezyn, and would fall pregnant a year later. However, during his time in exile, Ezyn's hatred for the Council only seemed to grow, and as 815 CE rolled around, he became determined to act on his hatred. While he had never been friends with Kaaysha, Ezyn lived with survivor's guilt for having outlived his compatriots, and wanted to get revenge against those who had sentenced Kaaysha and his friends to death and those who had exiled him. While it is rumoured Ril'phiya attempted to convince Ezyn to dismiss this line of thinking, Ril'phiya herself contradicts this, as during that time there was a marked increase in Thessian Ranger activity on the station, and it took very little time for such plans to be put into action and for the Rangers to back it. In a short amount of time, Ezyn was able to procure the full support of the Rangers to utilize their Omega branch, managed to acquire ships from Tanculus, and contacted Cuna to enlist her support as well. Some theorized Ezyn had ambitions similar to Kaaysha, and had planned a coup to overthrow Tanculus and become the Ruler of Omega after he completed his vengeance. If this was the case, then such a dream was never realized.

Utilizing Cuna's spectre credentials and resources, Ezyn, Ril'phiya and a company of Thessian Rangers made landfall on Rannoch, Ezyn utilizing an alias in order to fall under the radar. He then systematically sought out and hunted down every single quarian judge who had sat on his trial, killing them a series of hits that saw him enacting his revenge for his exile. While this took place, Cuna herself rallied what few sympathetic spectres she could to her cause and left for Thessia, making sure to hunt down the asari magistrates responsible for sentencing Kaaysha, with the intention of then moving onto kill the salarian judges that also sentenced Caegirn and Patarth: Cuna also had her own personal objective of eliminating the Valiant Seventy, who many of her fellow spectres, most of them joining her cause, believed to be responsible for paving the way for a turian majority in the spectres; Cuna also greatly hated turians, and did not balk at the oppurtunity to act on her vehemence. Both sides went about their separate objectives, and largely met success: Ezyn eliminated one judge after another, while Cuna did the same with the asari magistrates she was assigned to kill. While Ezyn's actions went largely unnoticed, with quarian authorities left unaware as to who was responsible for the attacks, the Council's surveillance of Cuna had allowed them to discover what was going on fairly quickly, deploying the Valiant Seventy to Armali to catch the rogue spectres before they escaped. The Valiant Seventy ambushed Cuna's men at a spaceport in Armali, but after a shootout that lasted eight hours and resulted in six civilian casualties, Cuna and her spectres escaped, with only one being injured and captured by the Council strike team. The prisoner gave up her compatriots in return for a plea deal, and disclosed Ezyn's involvement. The Council warned the quarian government, but by that point it was too late, and Ezyn had completed his work and escaped Rannoch. The Council determined that Ezyn could no longer be ignored as a threat, and employed the Valiant Seventy in order to hunt down and eliminate him once and for all, as well as to pursue Cuna and her rogue spectres and take them into custody. At the same time, the quarians clandestinely enlisted a unit of Tecr'fer to hunt down Ezyn as well, as they saw the quarian as a threat they had to personally deal with.

The Tecr'fer tracked down Ezyn and Ril'phiya to Omega and prepared an operation to raid Ezyn's home and arrest him. Before they could go through with the raid however, Ezyn apparently got suspicious and fled from the station with his wife. The Tecr'fer lacked the leads to continue their personal pursuit of Ezyn, but their commander quickly realized the involvement of the Thessian Rangers and petitioned to his superiors for clearance to raid the Thessian Rangers' headquarters on the station as reprisal for the attacks, as well as to find evidence for where Ezyn fled. The operation was approved, with an additional three squads of Tecr'fer reinforcements being sent to aid them. The resulting attack saw the near total destruction of the Thessian Rangers on Omega, a move that would cripple the organization's hold on their Omegan turf for a century; the attack itself was blamed on a rival PMC, Emerald Army, who had been competing with them for centuries, and many survivors were taken into custody and handed over to the Kasi'teh-13 to be interrogated, and later killed. Unfortunately, little intel on Ezyn's whereabouts were gleaned, and so the quarian military authorized a Tecr'fer-Kasi'teh-13 joint cross-branch operation to relentlessly pursue and find Ezyn, and this continued for three months with little luck, aside from the odd raid on a safe house believed to be accomodating Ezyn. One such raid turned out to be a trap laid by Ezyn, who had convinced the local townspeople on Korlus that the Tecr'fer were terrorists looking to harm them. The resulting firefight saw four members injured, with one killed, before they managed to exfil via gunship and escape. Over the three months this was taking place, the Valiant Seventy continued their own operation to track down Cuna and her rogue officers, with similar luck. Eventually both sides agreed to work together, exchanging intel and leads. While the trail on Cuna and her rogue spectres had gone cold, their effort bore fruit after eight months of searching, when Ezyn and his wife were finally tracked down to Sanctum. At this time, Ezyn had reached out to his niece, and they offered to meet up on Sanctum, with Cuna having a safehouse she was confident the Council would never locate. However, this meetup never got a chance to take place.

Not wanting to tip off the quarian again, the turian commander instead used diplomatic channels to contact the CEO of the Thessian Rangers at their headquarters on Hyetiana, and threatened to freeze their assets and file arrest warrants for their company members if they didn't withdraw their support for a wanted terrorist. This sufficiently spooked the CEO, who then ordered her men on Sanctum to quietly disengage and return home. Ezyn was not stupid however and quickly caught on to the trap, and hastily abandoned the hotel with his wife even as Tecr'fer and Valiant Seventy operatives surrounded his apartment in Vulpes and and moved inside to arrest him. The resulting pursuit is known as the Vulpes Pursuit, as Ezyn and his wife led his pursuers in a chase across the city, across rooftops and even through a school. Ezyn realized the game was up however, and allowed Ril'phiya to escape while luring his pursuers away from her location. When he was finally cornered, Ezyn pulled a gun on himself rather than be captured, and killed himself. The Tecr'fer took possession of Ezyn's body for transport, later flushing it out an airlock on the way back to Rannoch as a sign of disrespect to the body. The Valiant Seventy continued their search for Cuna and her men, but they were recalled a year later and the search was eventually called off altogether nine months after that. Ril'phiya was never found either, having fled to Illium and taken a new identity. While the Vulpes Pursuit was heavily publicized and talked about, the official story spun by the media and the Council was that the Tecr'fer and spectres had worked together to kill a wanted quarian terrorist, omitting his former spectre status. Nonetheless, conspiracy theories spun around the extranet for decades afterwards, and some even managed to rightly link together the shootout on Vulpes with the shootouts on Thessia and Korlus. However these theories were largely discredited, and no official connection was ever made until the Council declassification of the Spectre Wars in 1900 CE.

Prelude[edit | edit source]