Command Center
The Pinnacle, Aliso
34 ABY

Nearly the entire summit of Clan Plagueis, with the notable exception of the Dread Lord himself, had gathered together in the Pinnacle's command center. In the aftermath of their failed attempt to topple the Grand Master several new rumors had reached their ears. Plagueis had felt safe within their shield perimeter, but things had changed since whispers of some new weapon under development by Darth Pravus had surfaced. Standing arrayed around the central tactical monitor, the summit members were discussing their options.

"We've run several simulations," Arden Karn said, "and they all come out the same. If they are able to bypass the shields, the forces of the Iron Fleet would be able to overwhelm our remaining defenses and land forces to access the Pinnacle within as little as two hours."

"And that's if they decide to invade," Jai'de Serpens interjected. "It's entirely possible that they would just bombard us into nothing from orbit."

"Either way, two hours doesn't even give us time to get reinforcements from our allies in Tarentum," Furios Morega observed.

"There's always the Lotus," Xolarin, the recent arrival from Odan-Urr, suggested.

"I don't exactly think they'd be interested," Laren Uscott countered. "Sure, we stood with Arcona in our recent campaign, but I can't imagine their new allies in the Jedi would be much interested in rescuing us. Sithspit, we're probably next on their list after the Iron Throne."

Selika nodded. "Certainly not after what we gave them on Florrum."

"Just because they breach the shield doesn't mean we have to surrender," Abadeer Taasii offered.

"How do you mean?" Arden asked.

"If they take the Pinnacle, we could hide. Set traps, pick them off slowly, or even hide in the wilds of Aliso. Try and hold out until we get reinforcements."

"There probably won't be much of a Clan left by the time they get here," Jai'de scoffed.

"That leaves us with two options if our defenses fall," Arden explained. "Either we abandon Aliso and seek refuge with our friends, or we throw ourselves on the mercy of the Iron Throne."

"Neither of those two options holds much appeal," Jai'de said, leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed in front of her chest. "I want a third option. I can't believe we can't..."

The Zeltron Overseer was interrupted by an alert klaxon sounding from the sensor station.

"My Lords, I have multiple hyperspace reversions in orbit," the sensor officer reported, "Six mark at seven ten."

"What?" Furios exclaimed. "That's inside our defense perimeter!"

"Ten targets. Four corvettes, five vessels frigate size or larger. And one," the officer swallowed noticeably, "Star Destroyer. Imperial-class by the look of her."

"Alert all commands," Jai'de ordered. "Raise shields, energize all weapons. Prepare to engage."

Selika was holding up her hand to stop them when the sensor officer interjected.

"I'm getting an IFF signal from the Destroyer," he said quizzically. "It reads as the Ascendancy."

"Incoming holocom," the communications officer barked.

"Put it through," Selika ordered, a clam center in the chaos that surrounded her.

The holodisplay sprang to life, revealing two life sized figures. The first was Teylas Ramar, the second Admiral Cyvaria Ranin standing just behind his left shoulder.

"Dread Lord," Selika said with a bow.

The Falleen leader of Plagueis acknowledged her greeting with a wave of his hand. "I'll be arriving shortly. Prepare the facilities at the landing fields, our escorts will be making planetfall and require service."

Selika smiled as the rest of the summit around her were still lost in their momentary shock.

"The first of the new Ascendant Fleet," Telyas continued, "has come home."

Possessions Everywhere

As you've probably gathered from the fiction above (an homage to one of my favorite scenes from that other sci-fi universe), Plagueis now has a fleet again. With the hard work that's gone into possessions finally completed, Teylas and I both worked together closely to work out our plan moving forward within the new system over the last month plus. Our new Ascendant Fleet has been acquired (both in character and on the wesbite), and the Ascendant Legion has been rebuilt from the ground up as well to reflect the realities of the new system. So, let's get into them!

The Ascendant Fleet

Before we knew what the exact shape of the possessions system would be we decided to try to purchase a larger number of smaller warships that our members might be able to realistically use in their fictions, run-ons, or what have you while still creating a well balanced force for things like battleplans (and other general fleet measuring contests). Once we got the details of the new system and our budget, we were able to hold true to this philosophy pretty well.

The old Ascendant Fleet had a large number of destroyers and other large cruisers, and only six corvette sized ships, the latter of which would be more likely to have their keys handed out to a general member for a mission. Our new fleet, however, more than doubles that number to thirteen. In addition to this, we also endeavoured to maintain our House fleets moving forward. While we don't have the destroyers coming out of our butts that we used to, each House has been issued three corvettes, a carrier, and a strike cruiser to act as their flagship. Our last big decision was on what ship to go with as our Clan's overall flagship. Initially, our thought was to go with a Venator-class ship based on cost and ability. However, it was decided near the end of the process to go with an Imperial-class ship for it's iconic evil-ness and cool factor. The Impstar is probably the most well known and loved ships of Star Wars outside of the starfighter designs, and with it once again gracing the silver screen in the film Rogue One it seemed like the all-new Ascendancy simply had to be the classic Imperial warship.

On the subject of "Ascendancy" and ship names, we also put a lot of thought into naming our ships and starfighter squadrons. It was decided that the new clan flagship would return to the name Ascendancy now that the old Ascendancy was no more. We felt that the flagship for the Ascendant Clan should be named Ascendancy, an option that wasn't chosen when we purchased the Transcendent since the old Ascendancy was still around. Outside of that, all of our other ships maintain some discernable pattern in their naming conventions. Our House flagships were both named after Imperial cruisers from the Expanded Universe, and our Nebulon-B's were also named after Nebulon-B's from the EU. Our Carracks were named as a nod to our new Dominion. The two carriers we have were named after World War II aircraft carriers whose names were also used for ships from the EU. Finally, ship wise, all of our corvette class ships are named after ships from Plagueis's past. Names like Silent Scream and Ballista should be familiar to our more grizzled veterans, and we wanted to bring a bit of Plagueis's history along with us as we move into the future. As for our starfighters, all our X-wing squadrons are named after aircraft from World War II, our Y-wings are named after synonyms for earthquake (because they drop bombs as well, go Rogue One!), and our B-wings are named after synonyms for "storm". (Though I almost got all our B-wings named after WWII aicraft on accident, but Hawker Aircraft only built four aircraft with storm names!)

All the details of the new Ascendant Fleet can be found on the Ascendant Fleet wiki page, and the ship articles themselves are in the Plagueis Starships category. The former is all up to date, though the latter are not content wise. But the articles exist for the ships, along with including all their stats, and that's a start!

Ascendant Legion

The Ascendant Legion posed some interesting challenges for us in the new system. The biggest change is probably the lack of available battle droids under the new system, meaning that we're back to having an army that's made up of dudes and dudettes as opposed to machines. As far as the size of the army, we've seen a pretty large reduction in the number of people we have in our army. Part of this was simply as a result of the new system, but our army grew even smaller as a result of tradeoffs we made in order to secure the Imperial I-class Ascednancy above. Our thoughts when making that decision was that the credit allotment that we received as our clan's initial "seed money" as it were would be the only real large credit payout we'd ever really see. The high cost of the Star Destroyers in the system (that I'm 100% in favor of) meant that we could either get one now, or spend forever saving up for one later. Our thoughts on that subject were essentially confirmed in Evant's recent report that outlined the plan to grow clan credits by a baseline of around 70 million credits per year. Even if we simply wanted to upgrade from a less expensive destroyer to the Imperial, we're still looking at probably a year and a half of credit earning to get there. One of the two regiments we cut to help make way for the Star Destroyer purchase now can be put together for under 30 million credits, which makes that a far faster and achievable goal moving forward. So, smaller army, better navy was our choice now. We do, however, have expenditures moving forward mapped out to fill out the army.

With that being said, it was our goal to create a well balanced, efficient ground army with what resources we do possess. Much like our prior system, we looked to the real world for our inspiration. The US Army's Brigade Combat Teams served as the model to build our regiments. These were used in our prior system, but only after of purchases we'd made for our military. The new units were created from the ground up to model from the BCT's. Additionally, the Plagueis military has made sure that each and every soldier has a seat in one of our vehicles. Mobility was, of course, a major concern for us. The two regiments we currently possess are an armored regiment (built around AT-AT's because rule of cool) organized as a combined arms unit and then an infantry regiment built around a slew of LAAT/i gunships. More details can be found on the Ascendant Legion wiki page.

Final Thoughts

First, I want to highlight again the Plagueis Winter Trials that are still ongoing (round two ends tomorrow!). Each of our summit members has created their own competition for each of the three rounds, so please give them a try. Each and every entry you can get in is good for us, but even better for you when we go knocking on Santa Aabsdu's door with our list for gifts.

As far as the Clan Possessions we now have, both Teylas and I really hope that they're things that meet with the approval of our clan members. We did our best to put what we thought was something that balanced equal parts of nerd-war effectiveness and cool Star Wars iconography. Star Destroyers and AT-AT walkers: Cool and badass.