<strong>Name</strong>: Commander Rixx, Captain Nunq, New Republic personnel<br/><strong>Location</strong>: Indellian system, New Republic repair & supply ship Indata, conference room<br/><strong>Date/Time</strong>: Day 1, noon<br/><strong>Tagging</strong>: Everyone<br/><hr/>The question about team leadership answered, Commander Rixx left the briefing on the political and historical background of the Vandor sector to his Sullustan colleague.<br/><br/>The moment Nunq started talking it became apparent why Rixx had frowned earlier when mentioning that she would handle part of the briefing. The Sullustan had a high-pitched voice that made her sound rather whiny – and she loved to lecture, embarking on circuitous side topics and filling the briefing with details that seemed rather irrelevant to the mission.<br/><br/>While she talked, Commander Rixx sat down on a bench in the front row of the meeting room and quietly handed around some data sheets that summed up most of the sector background.<br/><br/>It felt like hours before Nunq was finished, but while many of the details were lost on the assembled spacers, a few things could be filtered out from the briefing:<br/><br/>The Vandor sector was settled thousands of years ago, mostly by humans. Back then the Expansion Region was a rather backwater area, but Vandor drew settlers to it nonetheless, as it offered several habitable worlds in close proximity. Back in those days the only charted hyperspace route into the sector led to the Grr'kar system, but a few hundred years after the first settlers arrived at Vandor, that hyperspace route was lost. A major battle in the great Sith war destroyed several planets in the system connected with Grr'kar and threw the gravimetric balance of that system off, making established navigational data useless. In addition, as the surviving Sith forces from that battle fled to the Vandor sector, Old Republic forces mined the exit point of the hyperspace lane, making it too dangerous for travel. (It was during this time that the mythical King Orson and his consort, Queen Shiris, ruled Vandor, the monarchs the Vandorians named their two strongest ships for.)<br/><br/>While much of the Vandorian history from that point on is part legend, part conjecture, it seems likely the surviving Sith forces who had arrived at Vandor mixed with the local nobility, bringing their own philosophy and mindset to the ruling class of Vandor. What is certain is, that the Vandorians only re-joined galactic civilization much later, when the Corellian Trade Spine was charted. By that time they had become the undisputed masters of their little corner of space, having settled all the habitable worlds in the sector, subjugating – and sometimes eradicating – the primitive native species they found. Always human-dominated, the Vandorians looked with caution and some mistrust at the many alien species that made up the Republic in those days and kept themselves often closed to strangers, allowing only limited migration of non-human species into their sector.<br/><br/>In the period leading up to the Clone War, the Vandorians were early supporters of Chancellor Palpatine. The ruling classes of Vandor had always viewed non-humans with some suspicion and never felt quite that much a part of a galactic republic that was founded on democracy, whereas their own culture was based on hereditary monarchy. Whatever his motives, the Emperor apparently took some small interest in the Vandorians. Why? No one can say for certain, just as no one can say for certain how much influence those Vandorians really exercised in the Emperors inner circle. But whatever the ties between the Emperor and the Vandorian rulers, the Emperor did see fit to appoint the Vandorian king Axander moff of the Vandor sector.<br/><br/>Nunq concluded: "Given their close ties to the Emperor, the Vandorian ruling class seems unlikely to join the New Republic, but if that means they will slip back into isolation or actively support a military campaign against the New Republic remains to be seen. Our analysis indicates Admiral Kalmann controls the Imperial forces in the sector with a firm hand, King Axander very much deferring to him in military matters, but one of the major questions is if the admiral will be content to hold this sector, or if he will be willing to join forces with other imperial officers and join a campaign against our forces. If Kalmann goes after us, he may lose support from the Vandorians. What happens beyond their border has only rarely been a concern for them, but if the admiral tries to persuade them he might succeed, giving him a very strong staging area for attacks on our forces when we move up the Corellian Trade Spine."