War of the Pretenders
From FABT
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11 March 1114 CE - 16 August 1125 CE | ||||||||||||||||
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Tactical Council victory
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- "While part of the Spectre Wars, and involving many familiar players, the War of the Pretenders is named as such because of little the "Spectre" part suits it. These "spectres" who rose up were just that...pretenders. They envisioned themselves carving a name for themselves, building little kingdoms of their own with whatever mercenary PMC they could afford to pay for, and the Trespassers, ever patient, waited to take advantage of the chaos they would sow. Cuna was long gone at this point, succeeded by her many great-grandchildren, none more pertinent than Brutso Kannos, eldest son of Cuna's granddaughter, and a turian who wished to emulate the success of Cuna back during the Third Spectre War. The players were there, but the pretenders were little more than children playing at war, desperately trying to claim ownership over persons who the Council wouldn't even acknowledge as having lived. And of the Kaaysha impostor, still so little is known of her. What we do know is that this war would be the final hoo-rah. A conflict nearly on the scale of the third. A war of pretenders."
- — An asari storyteller regarding the War of the Pretenders.
The War of the Pretenders, also known as Brutso's War and the War of the Petty Spectres, was a medium-scale conflict between the Citadel Council and thirty-nine faux-spectres, intermittently joined by the Trespassers PMC, that took place between 11 March 1114 CE and 16 August 1125 CE that served as the fourth phase of the Spectre Wars. At this point the Spectre Wars had been an off-and-on affair that had been waged for centuries, with two of the three conflicts ending in a Council victory, while the third ended in a tactical deadlock, with a strategic victory for the Trespassers. Cuna's tactics had left the Council stumbling to deal with the threat she posed, making her the top of a STG blacklist for targets of extremely high priority. Neither Kaaysha or Ezyn, the architects of the first and second wars, had reached this level of notoriety amongst the Council military, achieving minor successes where Cuna had lived to tell of her own victories. Following the Third Spectre War, and the Trespasser withdrawal into the Terminus Systems, she immediately set about rebuilding her organization and re-establishing itself. The Emerald Army had a brief resurgence in 836 CE and attempted to oust the Trespassers, but failed and was thoroughly destroyed. The Malefic Astarta sought revenge for the Artifact War and declared war on the Trespassers in 837 CE, and the resulting Astarta-Trespasser War lasted for four months before Cuna reached an agreement with the Vessel, leader of the Astarta, and brought a peaceful end to the war.
While all of this was going on, Snaker the True, claiming to be the true descendant of the vorcha would-be conqueror Snaker I who had declared war on the entire galaxy and been defeated decades before, proclaimed his intent to restore the short-lived Vorcha Empire, and established the Second Heshtoki Empire. This time, instead of invading the Terminus as his predecessor did, Snaker proved far more reckless: in 835 CE, mere days before the end of the Third Spectre War, Snaker the True launched an attack on the developing asari colony of Salamis, enslaving the population and committing horrendous atrocities now known to asari scholars as the Rape of Salamis; stories of vorcha feeding on asari children and raping civilians en masse were common, with the rest of the population who survived being sold into slavery. The Asari Republics were quick to declare war on Snaker the True, and the Asari-Vorcha War lasted five years. In the second year of the conflict, and to the surprise of the Council, the Trespassers extended an olive branch to the asari, offering their services in fighting the vorcha. Seven months later, Snaker II, the "true" descendant of Snaker the Conqueror and current Bloodchief of Heshtok, also joined the asari against his usurper brethren, and the resulting Salami Coalition defeated Snaker the True's forces within three years, with Snaker II dragging the usurper back to Heshtok to meet a gruesome death, while his supporters were put to death. In exchange for Snaker II's assistance, he was granted sovereignty over four of the six planets that Snaker the True had claimed. The asari also contracted the Trespassers to provide security and protection to asari colonies along the Terminus border. This brought the Trespassers enormous income boosts, and largely allowed them to recoup on their losses during the Third Spectre War. Cuna would live a full life, marrying one of her surviving lieutenants, Yaen'Semas, and having three children by him, but would largely abandon her plans for renewed war against the Council, instead dedicating the rest of her life to making the Trespassers even stronger. Cuna would pass away at the age of 94 in 881 CE, following her husband two years after his own death in 879 CE, with her three sons inheriting the organization. On her death bed, she was reported to have reneged on her changed perspective, and told her children to "never forgive, never forget, never let live. Tell your children, and make sure they tell theirs. Bide your time, then strike. One day, one generation, we will destroy the Council. For my uncle. For your cousin." While this claim is considered historical revisionism and possibly historical romanticism meant to make Cuna's death seem more prophetic than it was, it cannot be denied that her children did in fact carry on this tradition, as it was what ultimately led to the War of the Pretenders centuries later.
Only two years after Cuna's death, Thaw IV, descendant of Snaker II, styling himself "the Cannibal", disregarded the policies of his predecessors and engaged in rampant militarism and aggression, having ships harass shipping lanes and attack convoys. Thaw IV spent a great deal of time building up his military, crushed no less than sixteen rebellions across Heshtok (as vorcha governments were notoriously unstable, with the Snaker dynasty that Thaw IV was part of representing the most stable in vorcha history) and commissioned projects across the planet commerorating his achievements. True to his styling, he was known to feast on his own brethren, having a hunger for vorcha flesh. He engaged in ludicrous rituals dedicated to the old vorcha demon god of Kalunn, which included vorcha sacrifice and flesh offerings, and eventually delivered an edict to his empire that the religion of Kalunn would be reinstated (replacing the state-created peace god of Jora, who was meant to be a counterweight to Kalunn) and that he was Kalunn reborn. His insanity knew no bounds, believing himself to be immortal and that he was going to bring about the apocalypse. Long story short, his insanity eventually exceeded the galaxy's patience, especially when he began to launch military offensives against surrounding planets, and eventually even Omega itself. For the first time in decades, Drecuns Tanculus called for "unified war" against Heshtok. As such, the entire Terminus Systems went to war against Thaw IV, including the Trespassers. A year and a half later, Thaw IV was killed and his empire permanently toppled. Tanculus attempted to install a new puppet ruler, Snaker VI, but he was weak and shortly after the Terminus forces disbanded, his guards turned on him and murdered him. Shortly thereafter, Heshtok descended right back into anarchy, and has remained as such until the conquest of the planet by the Titan Covenant in the 23rd Century CE. Unfortunately, not long after the war ended, Tanculus passed away on the way back to Omega: infection had seeped into a wound he had thought minor, and after a few days, he fell into a coma and never woke up. Days after his death, one of his enforcers, Khurdok Chaggu, would succeed him as the Ruler of Omega, and would rule over the station for just under 900 years before being overthrown by Aria T'Loak in the 18th Century CE. Khurdok eliminated his rivals by enlisting Trespasser assistance, which gained them a significant presence amongst Khurdok's elite, and further solidified their growing power across the Terminus.
Cuna's sons proved to be equal parts the warring force that she had been, and over the next century continued to cement their influence and power galaxy-wide, even eventually expanding back into Council space. The Trespassers recruited significantly more manpower, proved to be the most technologically up-to-date PMC in the galaxy, and provided services for anti-piracy, counter-terrorism and corporate warfare, having numerous divisions for each. The corporate side of the Trespassers proved immensely profitable as well, helping to establish the Trespassers where other mercenary companies had failed and creating monopolies across the market. By the time these sons were succeeded by their own children, the Trespassers were the most feared and sought after PMC in the galaxy, providing services that few others could match. While most PMCs largely recruited from a certain species/selection of species, the Trespassers were one of the first to introduce universal recruitment, and did not hesitate to hire batarians the moment they joined the galactic community in 1085 CE. When Brutso Kannos and his siblings finally came into the throne of the company, it was the single most powerful conglomerate to be found anywhere, and highly sought after by even entire governments to help supplement their forces in numerous intragalactic conflicts of ranging scale, including by the Terminus Systems when Khurdok Chaggu went to war with the Council during the Council-Terminus War in 1041 CE, and again when the Terminus launched an invasion of the Attican Traverse during the Terminus-Attican War to crush the Attican Pirate's Alliance who had attempted to declare its sovereignty in the Attican region, in violation of the Treaty of Etamis. In reality, Trespasser involvement in the Council-Terminus War was an attempt to help the Terminus defeat the Council altogether, and when that failed, to aid any and all enemies of the Council. With the beginning of the Terminus-Attican War in 1110 CE, Brutso finally began to execute the generational plan to finally rekindle the flames of war between the Trespassers and the Council, now that sufficient time had passed and their spat had been all but forgotten. With the Attican Traverse firmly resting within the Council's neighbourhood, their military and intelligence apparatus were focused on keeping an eye on the raging battles being waged across the Attican systems. However, a new series of events were put into motion that neither the Trespassers nor Council could have accounted for when the 'year of the petty spectres' began in 1111 CE. A new player to the field, claiming to be Kaaysha T'vevo, announced herself suddenly on the extranet and began leaking a series of documents that declared the existence of the Spectre Wars to the public, including a detailed story of how she had been once again spared from execution and allowed to serve as a deep cover intelligence asset for the Council to perform covert espionage on the Terminus Systems, and principally Khurdok Chaggu, with plans for an assassination. The impostor, actually known by her real name of Narisme Gadequa, was actually a former tailor at Port Hanshan who had been present when the real Kaaysha and her forces captured the port centuries earlier. When Kaaysha knew her time was up and that she would die, she put in place a contingency to continue her shadow war against the Council and used torture and mind-control techniques she had stolen from a shelved asari TMI mind-control experiment to condition Narisme to become her sleeper agent. Through that, she indoctrinated Narisme into believing she really was Kaaysha, complete with everything she knew in order to sell it to the Council. Narisme was then released amongst the other hostages, free to pantomime a normal existence until such time as Kaaysha's mental programming kicked in. And in 1110 CE, it did, and Narisme Gadequa became Kaasyha T'vevo, complete with plastic surgery to restore her "original" appearance.
The Council quickly silenced the impostor's story, having the salarian STG, asari RBI and turian ISD scour the extranet to remove the leaked material, while also feeding the media press releases that not denounced the impostor's claims, but also delivered the "true" story of a deranged sociopathic delinquent who had fabricated an elaborate story in an attempt to bring down what they call the "imperialist dominion of the three master races". This was enough to quickly defame and destroy the impostor's reputation and credibility, but the impostor's true purpose had been to draw the Council's attention and ire, largely by having them detail information a member of the public could not possibly have known without insider sources. The Council immediately set about attempting to locate what they deemed to be a security breach, whilst also trying to capture the impostor. However, as this unofficial manhunt was going on, a salarian businessman who had just survived the collapse of his company read and saved the documents the impostor leaked, before declaring himself to be Pamow Norix, one of the rogue spectres who had joined Kaaysha in the First Spectre War and had been killed in action. While initially under the radar, he had his legal identity changed to Pamow Norix, and the name did not fail to catch the attention of the turian ISD, who quickly recognized the name and reported it. While the impostor sparked the beginning of these petty spectres, this salarian impostor is often considered to be the first of the pretenders. In the following years, dozens more began to rise up for varying reasons, either seeking power or wanting to capitalize on the fame these names held, fooling others into joining them. Some believed themselves to be the descendants of the rogue spectres, while others claimed to be them, just like Seron. The amount of pretenders became uncontrollable, and the Council quickly dispensed with any notion of containing them. Believing them to be non-existent threats, merely delusional dreamchasers looking for fame and glory amongst the ashes of dead (and, officially, non-existent) traitors with no real support driving them, the Council chose entirely to focus on capturing the Narisme, the first impostor. By this time, Brutso had gotten in contact with Narisme and arranged to grant her his full support, noting that their goals were identical, given Cuna's original goal to avenge her uncle, who was one of Kaaysha's lieutenants. At the same time, Ezyn'Kannos' wife and daughter were finally located on Illium, and while Ril'phiya Sabuve wanted nothing to do with the Trespassers, Nasanha Kannos readily accepted her extended family, and was sworn in as the fifth partner of the company, with Brutso promising to Ril'phiya that her role in the PMC would be purely limited to its less militant business. While Narisme gladly accepted Brutso's help, the turian remained in firm control of the operation, having noted Narisme's clearly unstable nature and in doubt of her mental faculties. He also began to take steps to make contact with many of the other pretenders, wanting to form an alliance with the ones that showed the most promise. The plan was to combine their might with the already powerful Trespassers to form a force that could finally take the war to the Council, with the Terminus Systems being manipulated into a second conflict in the process. With that, Brutso would finally have the necessary manpower and resources to tackle the entire might of the Citadel Council.
To this end, Brutso ensured the Council's continued involvement in the Attican war by making sure neither of the three parties gained too much ground. His quarian brother, Kal'Kannos, was in command of the Trespasser forces that were part of the Terminian invasion, and with his elder brother's blessing, Kal took to his mission with gusto. Playing the the three factions against each other from the shadows, all while maintaining official support for the Terminus, the Trespassers played their game. From feeding Terminus forces faulty intel, to attacking a Council convoy in vessels marked as belonging to the APA, the Trespassers did everything they could to deliberately prolong the war, buying Brutso time to rally enough support amongst the pretenders. Then, and only then, would Kal stage their ultimate deceit: using stolen STG codes to hijack an STG prowler, loading it with a nuclear warhead, and launching at the Terminus base-of-operations for the conflict on Maldor. Brutso would then approach Chaggu after the attack has occurred with a doctored recording taken from the vessel's blackbox that would incriminate the Salarian Union's "official" sanctioning of the attack on behalf of the Council. He would then expose all of the STG, RBI and ISD agents within Chaggu's organization, as Brutso already knows who they are and is waiting to use the information as proof of his accusations. Brutso would then use this to finally secure the most powerful alliance of all: the entire Terminus Systems. They would crush the APA, and then go to war against the Council. The plan was extremely ambitious, with Brutso imagining himself as the new Cuna in regards to strategic and tactical genius, but before the plan went into motion, things began to deteriorate due to the pretenders themselves. Whilst Brutso was hoping to unite with the most powerful of them, which he succeeded in doing by allying with four of the pretenders, he had been wrong in assuming the rest would be quitely snuffed out. Feeling overwhelmed, outnumbered and in need of a way to fight back, many of the smaller pretenders began to wage war amongst themselves instead. In a particularly disastrous example of this, five pretenders each hired a PMC to wage war on the other, and the chosen battleground was the Council world of Northumbris. The War for Northumbris lasted six months, but saw the streets of the planet's capital Bervarra laid completely to waste, with the Silver Phalanx, Dread Battalion, Winged Chevaliers, CyclOps and the Thresher Irregulars waging total war amongst the streets, the outside ruins in the hinterlands, and across the planet's orbit. It was then-considered one of the bloodiest interplanetary mercenary wars of the time, and saw the parties constantly shifting as PMCs switched sides, joined forces temporarily or splintered into smaller factions that warred amongst themselves; mercenary commanders attempted to outplay their employers, some crowned themselves kings for a day, and the commander of the CyclOps even briefly called himself the President of Bevarra until he was assassinated by a drell assassin hired by Thresher Irregulars. More drell assassins were used, being swapped out frequently and constantly stalking the streets: one turned vigilante and became a symbol of hope to the citizens of Bevarra, only for another drell to be hired to capture him and bring him to the commander of the Dread Battalion, who demonstrated his company's signature brutality in having the drell tied to the back of an armoured car and dragged down the street, killing him. In the end however, the people rose up to form a sixth faction: the Northumbris Filthfighters. These citizens had had enough of mercenary tyranny, and took up arms against the invaders, gradually retaking the streets from their weakened and depleted enemies whose terror tactics were no longer sufficient to keep them subdued: proof of this was in the Dread Battalion commander, who was given a taste of karma when he fell into Filthfighter capativity, only to be dragged out naked and tied to the back of his own vehicle and dragged down the same street in which Nosu Kuas had been killed.
Brutso himself was on the verge of deploying the Trespassers to Northumbris to take over the city and eliminate the remaining PMCs, but by that time the Council had taken notice and the turian military had deployed a marine division, supplemented by special forces, to subdue the planet and restore order. The remaining PMCs were defeated, three of the five pretenders were killed, another was arrested and tried for terrorism, and the other fled only for the Winged Chevaliers to chase him up for payment and kill him when he couldn't provide it, selling his properties and assets to make up the total of what was owed. Order was restored to Northumbris, but the cost ran far deeper than Brutso could imagine. For the pretender who was arrested was Pamow Norix impostor, and upon realizing who they had caught, and the threat the rest of the pretenders appeared to be becoming, the Council ordered an immediate investigation. Brutso knew that he had very little time left to snatch up what was left of the pretenders before the Council began hunting them down, and so he decided to use Trespasser resources directly. With the four most powerful of the pretenders still united with him in an alliance, he switched tactics and began bullying the remaining pretenders into joining with him, offering a simple ultimatum: submit to me running the show, or take your chances with the Council. Most chose to join with him, while the others either gave up on their aspirations or chose to go it alone, only to be killed or arrested. One final pretender instead joined the APA, finding better fortunes in Attican commerce raiding and in preying on volus shipping. Brutso, growing impatient to begin his war against the Council, convened a war council amongst his allies and they agreed to pre-emptive, deniable strikes against key infrastructure. This decision was well-timed, as the still-new but powerful Unified Batarian Republic entered the Council-Attican War against the APA but not on the side of the Terminus, using the official reason of wanting to put down piracy in the region, but in reality wanting to use it as an excuse to further expand into the Traverse. Whilst the Council was trying not to get dragged into the war, the Trespassers successfully launched key strikes against important Council facilities including weapons factories, power plants and civilian installations, with each attack in turn blamed on the APA. While the initial war went well and it seemed the Trespassers were going to be able to launch their masterwork of deception, they were then-unaware that the communications frequency in which the Trespassers used, which had recently been "upgraded" on order of Usheenes Kannos, was actually software the STG had arranged for them to buy, knowing that they would be able to crack it and listen in on Trespasser transmissions. It was here that they learned of "Operation Rising Sun", and quickly warned the ship that was going to be attacked to depart the area before then relaying their finds to headquarters. When the Trespasser forces arrived to ambush the prowler, it was found not to be there. Kal rightly became suspicious, and once it was discovered their comms were hacked, Kal warned Brutso that the game was up. Knowing that his plan was in ruins, Brutso acted accordingly in order to make his involvement official: he deployed "The Defunct", the Trespasser special forces, to a turian naval yard where they kept hundreds of decommissioned, mothballed ships. Here rested the THS Anthem's End, the ship which ultimately defeated his great-grandmother, and what he planned to be a symbol of her return to haunt them. Having extracted the schematics from a tortured servicemen they captured, the Defunct infiltrated the facility and boarded the Anthem's End, where they then proceeded to destroy the vessel by overloading its engine core. Brutso knew the Council wouldn't fail to notice the specific ship that was destroyed, and its significance. It was a declaration of war.
Despite this, the next five months passed with no further attacks from the Trespassers, though the Council had doubled security on every important facility and dignatary of value to them. The Council eventually got involved in the Terminus-Attican War anyway, with an incident in the Acheron system of the Styx Theta cluster resulting in a Terminian frigate firing upon and destroying a volus starliner that they had believed was carrying weapons and relief supplies to APA forces they were besieging on Grosalgen. The incident may have been salvaged if it wasn't for the fact that an inspection of the ship's wreckage found that it was, indeed, loaded with weapons and military-grade vehicles, including gunships and several orbital-attack aircraft, with the Council having planned to use the starliner's passing to covertly deploy the equipment to the APA without the Terminus finding out. The Terminus dropped the investigation, largely due to Khurdok not wanting to be dragged into further conflict with the Council over such an incident, but that wasn't the deciding factor that tipped the Council over the edge: the terrorist attack on the Council Chambers was. During a question-day of the Council where press were allowed to ask the Council about their ongoing interstellar policy, a bomb was detonated under the podium that wounded dozens of bystanders, killed longstanding asari councilor Eshorame Pesajin and wounded turian councilor Maninia Gratcius. There was outrage over the attack, especially over the death of Eshorame Pesajin, who was well regarded not just amongst the asari for her wartime leadership during the Krogan Rebellions that galvanized her people, but was well respected amongst her peers as well, and mourned by the other Council races as well. Investigation of the wreckage pointed the blame towards the Terminus Systems, and while the Council wasn't convinced, the flames of war were settled and they were finally forced to join the Terminus-Attican War, declaring the Terminus in violation of their non-aggression pact (the Unified Batarian Republic, however, remained an independent party in the war, despite being a Council secondary race). With the Council's entry into the war, it would be another year before Brutso approached Khurdok Chaggu and exposed the agents in his midst, officially allying with the Terminus Systems in a united front against the Council. Together, they waged total war on two fronts, the War of the Pretenders on one, the Terminus-Attican War on the other. It was this flashpoint that caused the War of the Pretenders to heat up significantly, exploding into open warfare.
The War of the Pretenders continued for over a decade. The Council first deployed forty spectres to infiltrate behind enemy lines, responding in kind to the Trespassers' previous attacks on their infrastructure by hitting their own. Key facilities were hit and destroyed, and several attempts were made on the life of Usheenes and Zellikzia Kannos, although these were foiled by their personal bodyguard contingents of Defunct. An attempt was even made on Brutso himself by a bribed Trespasser merc, although the subject was captured and later made an example of. Brutso's subsequent purge of his immediate leadership, followed by his orders to purge the leadership surrounding his sisters and brother, would lead to the deaths of hundreds of Trespasser commanders, and arguably proved detrimental to their own war effort, especially as many of these commanders had proven themselves in battle previously. Brutso's paranoia eventually rose to the heights of only trusting his own family, which included Nasanha, although Ril'phiya was kept confined to an island retreat owned by the Trespassers on the paradise world of Wrancia. With Kal commanding the war effort in the Attican Traverse, Brutso took personal command of the forces fighting the Council and launched retaliatory strikes against the spectres. Zellizkia and Usheenes, who were of less martial mind than their brothers, were put in charge of maintaining diplomatic ties to their pretender and Terminus allies. The Trespassers were granted leave to establish bases on Illium in secret, and a production facility was started on Omega. Using their expansive resources, Brutso was eventually able to lure a large raiding party of spectres to the site of a fake Trespasser base where Brutso was said to be located. Ambushing the team, all of the spectres were killed in the resulting trap, allowing one of them to send a distress call before killing them. When the remainder of the spectres arrived expecting a trap, Brutso destroyed their ship in orbit, stranding the rest of them and ordering them to surrender. Two of them were taken as POWs, the others chose to fight and were killed. This defeat was devastating to the Council, who lost a large amount of their operatives in one move; in response, another ten spectres were assigned to defeating the Trespassers, this time operating alone, and each in command of their own forces handpicked from the ranks of the asari, salarian, turian militaries. As a show of good will, the quarians and batarians offered up their own troops as well. The next four years would see Brutso's armies squaring up against ten task forces each under the command of a different spectre, all of them prepared for waging total war. But the Trespassers were far more powerful than they had been even during Cuna's time, and the forces they had proved more than sufficient to wage the multi-front conflict the Council wanted to fight. Brutso was a turian, unlike his mother, and turians were brought up under military service, being taught the lessons of the Coniti Serrectum (Art of War and Peace) that formed the basis of turian military philosophy. As such, he was far better equipped with the knowledge on how to properly wage a ruthless war and how to manage resources, when and where to engage the enemy. Brutso skillfully played to these strengths, feigning weakness where none existed, and giving up valuable possessions only to take them back after outsmarting his opponents. A turian spectre by the name of Ticus Bellaculus was so impressed by Brutso's tactics that he welcomed Brutso to drink and feast with him, and Brutso accepted. Neither side attempted to kill the other, and when they were done, they returned to open war. Ticus would end surviving Brutso's brutal campaign, although he would return to the Citadel in bitter defeat. The Trespassers won victory after victory, suffering a few losses that were more than likely deliberate concessions that were later made up for. And with the Council too focused on dealing with the Terminus in the Traverse, they were finally strapped for what resources they could send, and no longer had unlimited manpower to simply throw at the Trespassers until they gave up.
However, while Brutso was defeating the Council task forces one after another, seemingly without end, Council intelligence was working around the clock to find a way to undermine the Trespasser alliances. The first blow to be dealt was two years in the making, with the STG and ISD working together to dig into the backgrounds of the four powerful pretenders who had survived the initial struggle for survival amongst their other pretender rivals. Whatever bad blood or dirt could be dug up on them was, and when none was sufficient, some were invented. Once this evidence was collected, they began a smear campaign against these pretenders, bypassing them and going straight for their supporters. Infidelity, incest, drug deals gone bad, murdered children, racist jokes made in passing, perceived slights against one's character, backroom deals, and perhaps the worst of all: deceit, plans to betray Brutso and stage a coup to attain his mantle and become the CEO of the Trespassers, plans to sell them out to the Council or defect to Khurdok, and more. These supporters were fed false information by the droves, each played against one another. It didn't take long for civil conflict to take hold. Old habits die hard, and eventually the pretenders became paranoid about their own supporters. In three out of four cases, it would be the loyalists who struck the first blow. In the last, the pretender was smart enough to strike pre-emptively, having the most immediate threats to her position eliminated discreetly. Brutso became aware of what was going on, but was powerless to stop it. One of the pretenders was lynched by his own guards, another was seized by the crew of his pleasure yacht and was jettisoned out of an airlock. The third pretender to fall victim to his loyalists escaped his life to obtain Brutso's help, only to be killed by Brutso and deemed worthless. Brutso then had the traitors rounded up and slaughtered, but the damage was done. The great pretender alliance, including 85 percent of the forces that were brought with it, collapsed into nothing, destroyed by a war of intelligence Brutso didn't even know had taken place. This was the first victory the Council managed to seize, but as Brutso returned to his campaigning, the worst of these victories came halfway through the war in 1120 CE, but in the Attican theater. During the Battle of Venture, where a Terminus fleet, supported by a full regiment of Trespassers and other mercenaries, was meant to engage a large Council battlegroup of salarian and turian vessels over the planet Venture, the Terminus ships turned on the Trespasser forces before the battle could be met. Together with the Council ships, they wiped out the Trespasser forces, killing nearly 4,000 mercenaries in the process. Seemingly out of nowhere, the Terminus turned on their former Trespasser allies, and Kal was forced to pull back what remained of his forces as they experienced betrayal after betrayal across the Traverse. By the time Brutso received word of what had happened, the Council made an announcement that they had reached a peace settlement with Khurdok Chaggu, securing their exit from the Terminus-Attican War. They revealed that due to "the work of reasoned, calm agents of peace", they had acquired information that the Terminus Systems were not guilty of the bombing, but instead that the Trespassers were to blame, and declared them a terrorist organization before the whole galaxy, before declaring a "war on terrorism". One by one, the Trespassers found themselves deprived of their previous allies as they lost access to bases, resources, shipyards, men, etc. Assets were seized, men arrested, and their headquarters on Omega raided. Brutso was quoted as calling it his "week of infamy", because in just one week, he was dealt a devastating defeat he could not hope to recover from. Tens of thousands of troops were disbanded or killed, billions of credits lost, hundreds of ships seized or captured, and they were denied world after world for safe harbour. Zellizkia and Usheenes just barely avoided being arrested by Khurdok's thugs themselves, escaping Omega before it could happen. And so the tide turned in just under a week.
The other five years of the war was waged continuously and relentlessly. Operation Sinful Conduct was the codename for the multi-front war the Council now wished to wage in order to finish off the Trespassers once and for all. To add further salt to the wound, Ril'phiya was able to walk free from her island prison when the Trespassers guarding her abandoned their posts and fled, and in one day, she was able to convince Nasanha to run away with her. By the time Brutso learned of Nasanha's absence, they had disappeared once more, and this time, for good, and they were never heard from again by the history books. Brutso himself would wage one final campaign of defiance against his enemies, marshalling the largest of his remaining forces and launching a major offensive against several asari worlds. He enjoyed some success, dealing defeat after defeat upon the asari and even managed to arrive within the Parnitha system, but for reasons unknown, he immediately retreated all the way back to Salamis, where his campaign had begun...and where his career ended. Council reinforcements arrived and besieged the planet, and in the ensuing battle, Brutso and a large portion of his forces were killed, with the survivors being taken prisoner. When his brother Kal learned of his death, he planned to launch a massive assault against the Citadel itself to get revenge, but was betrayed and murdered by his lieutenant the day before the attack was to take place. The lieutenant took command of Kal's forces, and promptly surrendered to the Council on the day of the planned attack in return for being granted amnesty. The Trespassers at this point were effectively defeated, with Zellikzia and Usheenes realizing the futility of continuing the fight and knowing the Trespassers were finished. Reaching an agreement with Khurdok and the Council, they filed for a split-up of the company, with Zellikzia forming the Chethyus Goodsisters on Korlus and Usheenes established the Emovamey Trespassers on Omega. Although Zellizkia had given up on getting revenge against the Council, Usheenes remained confident they would once again rise again, hence her choice of name for her new company. Zellikzia claimed Narisme, the Kaaysha impostor, was dead, but in actuality she continued to serve in the Chethyus Goodsisters as Zellikzia's advisor. With the split-up and dissolution of the Trespassers, the War of the Pretenders was marked as finally over in 1125 CE. For a time, the Spectre Wars were also considered to be over by extension.
The War of the Pretenders marked the effective end of any real chance the remaining rogue spectre descendants ever had of defeating the Council. With none of the original rogue spectres still surviving, and the Trespassers liquidated and split into two weaker, unremarkable and financially poor PMCs with weak leadership, no real threats remained to the Council. Zellikzia and Usheenes remained the only remaining descendants of these traitor spectres, but they lacked the resolve or ability to make good of their threats, and without martial minded warriors such as Cuna, Brutso or Kal to direct the course of their revenge, they had no hope of making good on their ideals. The Fourth Spectre War would not take place for another two centuries, and when it did, the war was short and unnoteworthy. By that time Usheenes and her company were gone, and Zellikzia was driven on by the ravings of a mad woman and in charge of a pitiful mercenary force. By the end of it Zellikzia and Narisme were dead, bringing a whimpery conclusion to the Spectre Wars.