Valo Atrocity

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The Valo Atrocity,^[9] also known as the Battle of Valo,^[10] and remembered as the Tragedy of Valo,^[11] was a battle that occurred during the High Republic Era when the Nihil attacked the planet Valo. The Galactic Republic had been holding the Republic Fair on the planet, with visitors from across the galaxy. The attack left Valo devastated, with hundreds of thousands of deaths.^[5]

The battle

On the morning of the second day of the Fair, Nihil forces under the command of Tempests Pan Eyta and Lourna Dee jumped into the Valo system, using hyperspace Paths to bypass the security cordon, and began bombarding the defenseless Fair. In the hours beforehand, Padawan Ram Jomaram discovered that the Nihil had sabotaged Valo's communications tower by planting spores of the sentient plant species known as the Drengir, but was arrested for trespassing and was unable to warn the Fair in time, and the communications blackout meant the Republic was unable to coordinate a unified defense. After the first bombing run, which saw them target the docked Innovator as well as the fairgrounds and led caused the panicking civilians to flee towards Lake Lonisa, the Nihil fighters deployed a war cloud of noxious yellow smoke and a swarm of blaredroids to disorient the survivors before Dee's forces landed and began sowing chaos on foot. The Jedi Vector squadron assigned to the fair was scrambled to try and combat the Nihil fighters, but the Nihil tactics of causing as much damage as possible were highly effective; Eyta's cruiser Elegencia destroyed many of the floating sky islands that were one of the Fair's main attractions.^[1]

Jedi Master Stellan Gios of the Jedi High Council was with Supreme Chancellor Lina Soh and the Togruta Regasa Elarec Yovet, and managed to protect the dignitaries from the war-cloud long enough to get them to an experimental walker from Rothana, and then fought off Nihil raiders alongside Yovet's security detail while other Jedi and the members of the Valo Security Force battled the enemy amidst the chaos. Padawan Bell Zettifar was able to rescue Chancellor Soh's son Kitrep Soh and a significant number of survivors from the sinking Innovator. During the fighting, Elzar Mann tapped into the dark side of the Force to destroy a Nihil cruiser in order to save the last of the sky islands, and the reporter Rhil Dairo managed to use an ancient transmitter among the Jedi artifacts in the Starlight Pavilion to broadcast a call for help by piggybacking off the Nihil's own transmissions, and restored the communications network, allowing the Republic and Jedi forces to begin coordinating. Under Gios's leadership, the surviving Jedi pooled their strength and dissipated the war-cloud with the Force, robbing the Nihil of the advantage of surprise.^[1]

A furious Eyta prepared death charges in response to the loss of the cloud, planning to raze the planet early instead of waiting for Dee's forces to evacuate. Elzar Mann and the former Jedi Ty Yorrick joined forces with the Jedi Vectors and Republic Z-29 Skyhawks by taming a pair of sanvals—winged predatory lizards freed from the Fair's zoo that would have attacked the civilians otherwise—and riding them into battle alongside the starfighters to combat the Nihil threat. Lourna Dee, who had been injured by the Jedi OrbaLin while raiding the Starlight Pavilion and was thus unable to call off Eyta, but found an opportunity to attack the Chancellor's group, only for Stellan Gios to hold off her raiders singlehandedly alongside Soh's two pet targons while the Chancellor and Regasa Yovet fled in the walker. Dee managed to bypass the injured Jedi Master and nearly reached the walker, but her ascension cable was severed by a timely lightsaber throw from Elzar Mann, moments before a bomb fell right on the fighting.

The Jedi Vectors were only able to partially cripple the Elegencia's bomb bays due to a swarm of scav droids interfering, but the timely arrival of the Royal Togruta Fleet tipped the scales in the Republic's favor, prompting Eyta to withdraw the Elegencia and flee along a Path, leaving the rest of the Nihil forces to be wiped out by Togruta and Republic reinforcements. Rhil Dario reestablished contact with her producers at GoNet in the Core Worlds and broadcast all of the footage she had recorded of the battle, showing the galaxy the devastation caused by the Nihil, and her on-air reporting was interrupted by the discovery that Chancellor Soh had been severely injured in the bombing.^[1]

Aftermath

In the aftermath, an emergency session of the Galactic Senate was called, and Pan Eyta demanded the Nihil continue on the offensive upon returning to their base at Grizal. However, Marchion Ro, the Eye of the Nihil, poisoned Eyta after his outburst, believing that the Nihil needed to scatter and remain hidden for the time being. Eyta was seemingly saved from death by Dee, who convinced him to launch a second attack on the shipyards at Cyclor—a suggestion that led the Dowutin Tempest Runner into a Republic trap, allowing Dee to eliminate her rival.^[1]

While most of the Nihil forces on Valo escaped, the Jedi Council did manage to recover footage of Lourna Dee that indicated she held a leadership position in the Nihil, and launched an effort to locate and capture her as a result. Chancellor Soh recovered quickly under the care of Jedi Master Torban Buck, though Buck was unable to save her right leg. Though the death toll from the battle was incredibly high, the event did result in Queen Yovet deciding to formalize an alliance with the Republic. The Nihil raiders also acquired a prototype recainium-powered nullifier weapon that could disable lightsabers and blasters, adding a formidable weapon to their arsenal.^[1]

Behind the scenes

The Battle of Valo first appeared in the 2021 novel The High Republic: The Rising Storm by Cavan Scott, in which it is the main setpiece for the second half of the novel. The comic book The High Republic (2021) 12 was the first to name the event as the Valo Atrocity, and the 2023 reference book Star Wars: The High Republic: Chronicles of the Jedi named it as the Battle of Valo.

Appearances

Sources

Notes and references