Galactic Empire Special Operations Command



"Since, assassination, espionage, torture, kidnapping, the overthrow of sovereign governments, and other terroristic activities have become part of the galactic defense policy of the Galactic Empire. Justified time and time again by the Special Operations Command and, agents of the Imperial government are terrorizing civilian populations in the name of galactic peace and security. Under and Camila Tavira, the "" doctrine is now "Victory Without War, But By Terror"."

- Public statement by Imperial civilian non-profit organization regarding the Special Operations Command

The Galactic Empire Special Operations Command, colloquially known as the Imperial Special Operations Command (ISOC), was one of the component commands of the during the Legacy era. It was responsible for the training, equipment, organization, and command of all special operations forces of the, and drew personnel from all three major branches of Imperial military service — the , the , and — to conduct special operations in both the denied and domestic battlespaces. Under, the Special Operations Command was the only branch of the Imperial military legally authorized to conduct special operations in the name of the Empire, and its operators partook in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations across the galaxy.

The senior commander of the Special Operations Command, known as the "Commander-in-Chief, Imperial Special Operations Command", was a full of the Imperial Navy, and would be represented on the seven-membered Council of Moffs, reflecting the prestigious tenure of the Imperial Special Forces. The Special Operations Command was a senior command of the Imperial Armed Forces, and reported directly to the and its commander, the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Armed Forces.

Casus genesis (97 ABY)
The impetus for the creation of the Imperial Special Operations Command, its casus genesis, laid in the turbulent times of the middle years of the. In, a devastating and stunning turn of events would occur when , the Chief of State of the Galactic Empire, would be assassinated through unknown machinations. While the Empire reeled from the decapitation of its executive branch, his successor and son, the fifteen-year-old, would be covertly sworn in, and would resume his father's tenure as Galactic Emperor. The death of his father and the assumption of the title at such a young age would impress the young Roan with unforgettable lessons: that control of the feuding factions of the Imperial government was a political necessity, and that he, as Emperor, must ensure that such an atrocity would never happen again.

Therefore, even at such a young age, the hardened Roan Fel would instigate a scathing design of the while the assassin was sought out. Fel, liberally using his title, administered sweeping changes to the Imperial Armed Forces and to ensure such an intelligence failure would not occur again. The, long an independent Imperial intelligence service, was immediately amalgamated into , which became the centralized apparatus of the Imperial intelligence community. Furthermore, Roan would mandate the creation of the six-membered Council of Moffs, an organized body for leaders of both military and civil services to report to him.

However, one thing was clear: even the vaunted and even elite airborne soldiers such as those of the  had been powerless to stop such an assassination attempt. Immediate change in the Imperial Armed Forces was necessary to forestall another such galactic crisis. The answer was in small, highly-trained teams of humans and aliens, who practiced not mass warfare by press of arms, but instead, used covert force and precise application of force to inhibit terrorism and insurgency within the Empire: Special Operations Forces (more commonly known as "Special Forces").

The precedence for coordinated Imperial galactic special forces was firmly established in the Galactic Republic Special Operations Command, originally implemented in the as unified command to coordinate the operations of the es. However, after the Clone Wars, shockingly, the majority of the Empire's special forces units had receded into the cosmic background. Under the tenure of, who placed little stock in the infantry of the Imperial Military, the only units approximating true special forces were fascimiles such as the es, who were largely used as praetorian guards for ostentatious military commanders, and then veteran stormtrooper corps such as the , which were used as "shock troops" to preface the advance of conventional stormtrooper legions.

In contrast, the Rebel Alliance's special operations forces, the, had been used to dramatic effect against Palpatine's legions of tactically-antediluvian stormtroopers, and New Republic commando units such as "" also had achieved spectacular successes against the waning Empire.

Activation (98 ABY)
Therefore, in a bold move, newly-christened Emperor Roan Fel the Third immediately mandated the formation of an Imperial Special Operations Command, alongside the and the, to train, coordinate, and command newly-activated Imperial Special Operations Forces, in the reminiscence of the Galactic Republic Special Operations Command and its special forces. The first special operations forces activated were the Imperial Army Special Operations Group (after the 1st Republic Special Operations Brigade) and Naval Special Warfare (after the Galactic Republic Naval Special Warfare). Operators for both units were drawn from veteran s, and their Naval counterparts, the, with both commissioned officers and enlisted operators chosen.

After recruitment, both enlisted and officer candidates were passed through a rigorous and newly-formed Special Forces Selection course established on, designed to test the physical fitness, mental fitness, independence, and perseverance of the commando candidates. Stormtroopers who passed Selection were immediately transferred from their former parent units to the 1st Special Forces School on, where they were begin the Basic Operator Training Course and Special Forces Indoctrination courses, where they would begin to learn the tradescraft that discriminated special operations forces from the conventional infantry. Marines who passed Selection were transferred to the 2nd Special Forces School on, where they would undergo parallel training, but with more orientation to combat operations in zero-g.

The first graduates of the 1st Special Forces School would begin the Imperial Army Special Operations Group and the first graduates of the 2nd Special Forces School would begin Naval Special Warfare, and the resurrection of the supermassive Galactic Republic Special Operations Command had begun.

Early History (98—99 ABY)
"Upstarts! No one crosses the 501st Legion..."

- General, complaining to his subordinate officers on the unfair privileges imparted to the early Special Operations Command

The first operations of both the Imperial Army Special Operations Group and Naval Special Warfare would begin in, after Selection, Operator Training, and Indoctrination had produced the first batches of Imperial commandoes. However,, who had been responsible for the formation of the Imperial Special Forces, would insist on having the young organization under his tight and personal control, partly in memory of his father, of which he was sure would not have fallen if there had been Imperial commandoes patrolling the galaxy and stamping out all terrorism or insurgency that threatened the Empire before it could reach that scale.

As a result, the Special Operations Command would become somewhat of a joke, with Emperor Fel labeled the "Armchair General", a reference to the fact he had no military experience, and yet was attempting to coordinate several hundred thousand Soldiers and Marines. Because of Roan's favoritism, Special Forces officers were often quickly-promoted well before their time, but their operations were only partially effective under Fel's backseat driving, although there would be a notable success when a Army Special Forces team in, through quick work, would prevent the kidnapping of the Imperial ambassador to. However, largely as a whole, the Special Operations Command was hindered by Fel's lumbering bureaucracy, although Special Forces officers were highly-promoted within the organization.

Fortunately, members of the began to oppose Fel's backseat command of the Special Operations Command. Not only were the newfound Imperial special forces operationally clumsy because of his tight oversight, but the Special Operations Command, with its extravagant promotion and inside connection to the Emperor, was being seen by the more largely and largely as a Praetorian guard to the Emperor — highly-trained commandoes who answered to the Galactic Emperor and whose unconventional nature made them outside of the traditional chain of military command. Eventually, Moffs would begin to fear that Emperor Fel was marshaling a paramilitary army within the Imperial Special Forces that would eventually be used to dethrone them, if power struggle games between the galactic throne and the Moff Council became too fierce.

Therefore, the Council of Moffs unanimously submitted a correspondence to Roan Fel insisting that for the sake of "military uniformity", that the Special Operations Command's status as the Emperor's personal attack dog be called off, and instead that it be subjected to the traditional chain of military command, answering to the (and more importantly, the ) and not the Emperor and his aides. In their proposal, they also stated that having the Special Operations Command under the control of career military commanders (unlike Emperor Fel) would increase the efficiency of their special operations and allow the Special Operations Command to fulfill its full potential. However, in reality, the Special Operations Command, with its highly-trained and well-armed infantry commandos, had become a threat to people like General, commander of the — whereas the 501st Airborne Legion would typically be called to extinguish insurgency, now, it was the Special Operations Command that got the call; the careers of very senior Army Generals and stormtrooper commanders were now at risk by Fel's radical paramilitaries. These very same Generals such as Jaeger wanted Fel to relinquish the Special Operations Command from his grasp, and then intended to scatter the Imperial special forces far and wide, allowing the elite stormtrooper divisions to now be the first responders to terrorism.

Emperor Roan Fel, in another one of his notorious power games, would accede to the Moffs, but with an added condition, a thorn in the Council's side — that the Special Operations Command be a full unified command of the Imperial Armed Forces, equal in status to the and the, which were both millions of times larger. Furthermore, he dictated that the Commander-in-Chief of the Special Operations Command would be one of the twelve s and would become the seventh and newest member of the exclusive.

This was a tremendous effrontery to many stalwart Army Generals and Navy Admirals, since both the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy were millions of times larger than the Special Operations Command: it was too difficult to train enough special forces operators to accrue large batches of them, unlike the Army legions, who were typically packed with recruits who had signed up right after they had reached the age of legal consent. It was even more insulting, as now, the Special Operations Command would have a senior commander who would be equal in military rank to distinguished figures such as, the Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy. Furthermore, if the Special Operations Command was accrued a new seat on the six-membered Council of Moffs, the very small and renegade Special Operations Command would be represented in the highly prestigious council, whereas other uniformed services of the Imperial military such as the and the  would be entirely overlooked on the Moff Council, which would consist of: the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Armed Forces, the Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy, the Grand Admiral of the Imperial Army, the, the Chief of State of the Diplomatic Corps, and the Director of the Imperial Mission — and now, the Commander of the Special Operations Command, an infinitesimal subdivision of the Imperial military.

"This intelligence agency has noted the striking similarities in the dispositions of Jacen Solo and current Galactic Emperor Roan Fel, both Force-sensitives who had political enemies they wished to subvert — and also between the of old and the current "Imperial Special Operations Command", both consisting of commandoes beyond the control of the Imperial military..."

- Anonymous internal memo to the

However, to Fel's benefit, paranoia was sweeping through the Council of Moffs, as several hysterical agents purported to have "incontrovertible intelligence from highly-placed sources" that Emperor Fel would be using his "private army", the Special Operations Command, to instigate a coup to overthrow the Moffs — fittingly similar to how  had used his own secret police organization, the, to launch a coup against Chief of State Cal Omas sixty years earlier. These wildly-inaccurate Intelligence correspondences would make the majority of the Moffs fear that Army Special Forces teams were going to show up on their doorsteps in days, and forced the hand of the Moffs to accept Fel's compromise — the Special Operations Command would become under the control of the (and therefore would be unable to launch a coup against the Moffs) — but in exchange, the Commander-in-Chief of the Special Operations Command would be both a Grand Admiral and the seventh Moff.

The pact would be finalized in early, with a Army Special Forces officer, August Veers, the descendant of the esteemed , assuming the rank of the twelfth  of the Imperial Military and as the seventh and newest installation to the.

Reorganization of the special operations forces (99 ABY—103 ABY)
Under 's unofficial tenure as "Armchair General" of the Special Operations Command, its two component special operations forces, the Army Special Operations Group (Army) and Naval Special Warfare (Navy) were moreorless performing the same operations — providing security for governmental dignitaries, counterterrorism, etc... — despite the fact that they were vastly different organizations: Naval Special Warfare, like its predecessor in the, was composed of Marines that were trained to practice direct action operations in deep space and zero-g, and for combat actions on space stations or spaceships. Meanwhile, Army Special Forces operators had been trained primarily for fighting on planetary surfaces. The delegation of Naval Special Warfare commandoes to planetary operations largely forfeited their expertise, reflecting Roan Fel's unfamiliarity with how to run a day-to-day military command.

After Grand Admiral August Veers assumed the position of the first Commander-in-Chief of the Special Operations Command, he would instigate reform within the fledgling organization: the Army Special Operations Group would become the dedicated counterterrorism force for all surface actions, while Naval Special Warfare would become the dedicated counterterrorism force for all spaceborne actions. The exosphere of a planet's atmosphere became the dividing line between the jurisdiction of the two special operations forces: any Special Operations conducted by the Empire in the atmosphere or on the surface were the jurisdiction of the Army Special Operations Group, whereas any special operations conducted by the Empire in an orbit of a planetary body or anywhere in space would become the jurisdiction of Naval Special Warfare.

This would greatly simplify the chain of command of many Imperial special operations. The Army Special Operations Group became responsible for the protection of government VIPs on the surface and for the famed "terrorist hunt" chases in yonder mountain ridges on backwater planets, while Naval Special Warfare took place in resolution of the hijacking of civilian freighters, and in boarding actions of ships suspected to carry armaments or weapons of mass destruction.

"Green light for incursion — repeat, green light for incursion. Weapons free."

- Grand Admiral August Veers authorizing the Naval Special Warfare operation to retake the

Soon thereafter being amalgamated into a military chain-of-command, the Imperial Special Forces would achieve notable victories, such as the rescue of after he was kidnapped by terrorists on, and then the recovery of the , a Pellaeon-class Star Destroyer that had been hijacked by n fanatics while it was patrolling the. The Imperial Special Operations Command soon became a prized asset to the Empire, threatening the Emperor's exacting and furious retaliation upon all terrorists and insurgents who sought to undermine the peace. While a very new and inexperienced organization, soon, Imperial commandoes would become respected by their counterparts in the, with whom they were at peace as of 99 ABY.

Eventually, under a program to ease political tension between the Galactic Alliance and the Empire, select Imperial commandoes would undergo training with the and the Galactic Alliance Navy Strike Troops, with their more experienced Galactic Alliance counterparts mentoring and training them in the clandestine arts of direct action and special reconnaissance.

In, the Special Operations Command would recognize an impediment in the operations of the Army Special Operations Group on planetary surfaces — that their methods of insertion and extraction from denied areas was extremely hindered. There were few Army aviators who were rated to perform high-risk incursions into denied airspaces, as Army aviators were typically far less-well trained than their Navy counterparts in the Pilot Corps. However, special operations commanders would realize an ingenious solution with the Imperial Navy Search and Rescue program, a program designed by as part of his "" initiative to win the minds and hearts of his citizens — the creation of a sophisticated Navy unit which was responsible for searching for lost civilian spacers and freighter pilots in space or in the atmosphere, and then extracting them back home. While Search and Rescue was a strictly-noncombatant unit designed specifically to save the lives of civilian pilots, the Special Operations Command realized that there already existed a body of elite Navy pilots and navigators who had the potential to insert or extract Army Special Forces personnel; and to search for them, if they became lost in the fierce fighting.

Soon thereafter, would give his personal approval for the reformatting of Navy Search and Rescue to not only save the lives of civilians, but also to participate in military operations: renamed as Navy Combat Search and Rescue, its pilots became the third special operations force to be certified under the tenure of the new Imperial Special Operations Command. Known within special forces circles as "Special Operations Aviation" (SOA), pilots of Combat Search and Rescue would fly heavily-armored Nune-class gunships to clandestinely insert Army special operators at their objectives, and other aviators would fly Predator-class interceptors, providing close air support and aerial interdiction in support of Army special operations on planetary surfaces.

Many Army Special Operations Group operators would form close associations with their aviation brethren in Combat Search and Rescue, depending on their flying prowess to insert them clandestinely, and to extract them from denied and hostile territory. In agreement with their unit motto, "So that others may live", Navy aviators would often fly tirelessly to search for Army commandos whom which contact had been lost, extracting them safely back to base.

This newfound collaboration between Army special forces and Navy special forces would soon be put to the ultimate test.

Assault on Raxus Prime (104 ABY)
"All task force elements—this is the task force commander. The Noble Hound contingency is in effect. Godspeed. Out."

- Fleet Admiral Terra Needa to Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force—Caluula, authorizing Operation: NOBLE HOUND

In, the Imperial Ubiqtorate base on would be vaporized into thermonuclear vapor, along with a thousand square kilometers of adjacent cityscape and mountain range and twenty million Tangrene civilians and ten thousand  personnel. The devastating news would place the and the Special Operations Command on the highest alert that they had even been at, as the Empire reveled in shock.

would demand an immediate and intensive investigation, which would reveal that a had been detonated in a subbasement of the Ubiqtorate base, responsible for solid-waste handling. When this found, made a galactic announcement that charged Director Calixte and, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Armed Forces, to hunt down and assassinate the perpetrators of this heinous crime against civilization.

Intelligence agents, using backed-up security footage from the facility, found that the baradium thermonuclear device had been smuggled into a robotically-piloted cargo freighter that made autonomous runs between the Tangrene base and, the galaxy's waste fill. The hauler had been returning from Raxus Prime with an almost empty hold to Tangrene to pick up more solid waste: except it had brought with it a disguised thermonuclear device that had instantaneously wiped out twenty million lives.

Immediately, the Imperial military was mobilized to prepare for a massive attack on to capture the entire planet and tear it apart centimeter by centimeter until the perpetrators were found. Grand Admiral made numerous ostentatious public broadcasts that he fully intended to launch a Star Destroyer attack on the planet, performing an orbital bombardment until the perpetrators either surrendered or melted under five thousand degree temperatures. However, it became clear that neither the Army or the Navy were equipped for the task of rooting out the believed Raxus Prime terrorists. General of the  intended to flood the planet with a hundred thousand stormtroopers, but it was the Army's closest solution to the problem. It would take over a week for Veed's Star Destroyer fleet to be mobilized from their current positions and journey to Raxus Prime, and it would take two full weeks for Jaeger's 501st to be redeployed to the junkyard planet. It was obvious that within several days, the terrorists, upon hearing about their imminent bombardment at the hands of the Imperial Navy, would bolt and run from the planet.

The following events would become known as the success of the decade, and would initiate a standing collaboration between Imperial Intelligence and the Imperial Special Operations Command that would withstand the test of time.

It was evident that a much faster strike force would be needed to assault Raxus Prime within days to immobilize and neutralize the terrorists — the defining characteristic of the Special Operations Command. Fleet Admiral Terra Needa, Commanding Officer of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force— (CJSOTF—Caluula), would lead the largest force of commandos to Raxus Prime that the galaxy had ever seen since the : one thousand special forces operators. Collaborating with Imperial Intelligence, Intelligence agents would accrue nearly a hundred undercover Intelligence freighters to house the infantry task force and their support gunships and starfighters: it was clear that hardcore Imperial commanders such as Veed would take far too long to mobilize an appropriate Navy transport force for the job.

In a streak of genius, efficiency, and desperation, Needa would rally the one thousand commandos of CJSOTF—Caluula, rally them aboard Intelligence's hastily-scrapped together fleet of undercover freighters, and would give the order to make the brief hyperspace jump from to, Caluula's next-door neighbor in the. Sixteen hours after Veed had made his proclamation of his intent to bombard Raxus Prime into subatomic rubble, the fighting men, women, and aliens of CJSOTF—Caluula were in orbit over Raxus Prime, prepared to avenge the twenty plus million victims of Tangrene.

The global assault on Raxus Prime, codenamed "Operation: NOBLE HOUND", was a success story in special operations, for not only were commandos used in small-unit counterterrorism operations like they had been trained, but they were now fighting a war to reclaim and hold an entire planet: to work as a single, cohesive army. While the Intelligence freighters with concealed weapons systems encircled the planet, clandestinely blockading it, other troop-laden freighters, electronically masquerading as waste transports by electronic countermeasure disguises, landed one thousand CJSOTF—Caluula commandos on the surface.

Several hours later, a Naval Special Warfare reconnaissance team, known as Caluula Aurek-41 (CJSOTF—Caluula, Aurek Company, Recon Troop Four, Team One) equipped with a portable mass spectrometer would pick up a whiff of vapor nearby a massive trash compaction facility. Although a special reconnaissance team, minimally armed and instead equipped mostly with reconnaissance optics, sensors, and bomb detection equipment, Aurek-41's commander, Lieutenant Commander Ava Chyler, a descendant of, independently made the decision that it would become necessary to press the attack: if the terrorists found out that the remainder of the Task Force was stationed on the planet, searching thousands of square kilometers, they might activate the baradium device: and kill one thousand more Imperial personnel.

Chyler and her dozen reconnaissance specialists launched a clandestine attack, using suppressed sidearms to pick off stragglers, and then infiltrated the trash compaction facility. While her subordinates urged her to contact Admiral Needa in orbit to request for reinforcements, the Lieutenant Commander decided that would compromise operational security: if their transmission was intercepted, their mission would inevitably lead in the detonation of the baradium bomb.

The close-quarters fighting in the trash compaction complex was furious, although it favored the lightly-armed Imperial commandos: at those ranges, were more powerful than the most sophisticated blasters. Chyler and her commandos attacked aggressively, using s to clear out entire rooms, and using vibroblades to slit the throats of unaware sentries from behind. However, eventually, they would be detected, and the Raxus Prime terrorists, knowing that the Imperials were after the baradium device, would bolt from the trash compaction fortress, fleeing into underground tunnels between massive lots of land allocated for waste storage.

However, the sudden movement of the rebels would betray their position: alerted to the mass movement suddenly rummaging through Raxus Prime's underground, an entire company of Army Special Forces attacked the main body of the terrorist movement, forming a cordon while Lieutenant Commander Ava Chyler broke communications silence, using short-range communications to rally an entire troop of Naval Special Warfare direct-action operators to flank the terrorists in the tunnels underground. Cornered in the tunnels underground, and losing copious numbers of terrorists, the Raxus Prime insurgents eventually abandoned their second, allowing it to fall into Imperial hands underground, while the survivors fled to the surface.

At this time, it became evident to all of CJSOTF—Caluula of the activities that were occurring. However, once the subterranean Army Special Forces—Naval Special Warfare detachment underground had confirmed that the second baradium device was under their control and that no further baradium signatures had been detected while engaging the remainder of the body of the terrorists, Fleet Admiral Terra Needa (Commanding Officer of CJSOTF—Caluula) coordinated assault actions and security actions from the remainder of the CJSOTF—Caluula operators on the planet to pin down and eliminate the remainder of the Raxus Prime terrorists, now caught above ground. Army Special Forces were vertically deployed by Nune-class gunships piloted by Navy Combat Search and Rescue pilots, while other Navy Combat Search and Rescue aviators deployed in TIE Predators from the orbital undercover freighters, initiating relentless strafing runs to harass and overwhelm the terrorists on the ground.

By that time, the majority of combat actions had been finished on Raxus Prime. Four hours after their clandestine insertion, Chyler's Aurek-41 reconnaissance team had detected and engaged the enemy, forcing them to retreat underground, where they were engaged by Army Special Forces for a running subterranean battle lasting nearly two hours across hundreds of kilometers of stretches of tunnel, while Naval Special Warfare elements closed from behind, initiating a steady advance in the warrens that led to the eventual recovery of the baradium device, therefore marking the completion of Operation: NOBLE HOUND's primary objective in six and a half hours. While just under a hundred insurgents remained after the abandonment of the thermonuclear device, it would take eight more hours for Terra Needa's remaining special operations forces, numbering nearly nine hundred commandos, to organize and converge on them from across the entire planet. Army Special Forces teams would infiltrate the denied zone, liasoning with overhead TIE Predators to coordinate air strikes on the remaining retreating guerillas, with the last of them finally falling at the end of eight hours.

Operation: NOBLE HOUND was marked as an unprecedented success, with the termination of hostilities complete at fourteen and a half hours, with only five Imperial special operators killed and forty-two wounded. It also marked the exceptional quality of Imperial special operators in close quarters combat: both Lieutenant Commander Chyler's initial attack in the confines of the trash compactor complex, and the later attack by the Army Special Forces company in the tunnels, would lead to disproportionately high enemy casualties with little loss of friendly life: Imperial commandos had been specially trained in close-quarters battle for their urban counterterrorism operations, and thus excelled at the short-range actions that characterized the initial phase of the operation.

The mission was characterized by both Admiral Terra Needa's willingness to immediately act on actionable intelligence provided by that the first baradium device had been routed from Raxus Prime: her expeditious mobilization of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force—Caluula without resorting to Imperial military bureaucracy would be the key factor in catching the insurgents on Raxus Prime before they had a chance to flee. Fleet Admiral Terra Needa would be promoted to the rank of and would assume the position of Commander-in-Chief, Imperial Naval Special Warfare and would earn the Galactic Medal of Honor by 's own hand, who praised her swift judgment to coordinate and execute a massive planetary assault on such a brief time scale. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Commander Ava Chyler would be promoted to the rank of Service Commander and would also earn the Galactic Medal of Honor for her bravery to initiate an assault against a vastly-larger body of enemies, and with only minimal armaments.

Within days, the mass murder of twenty million Imperial citizens had been avenged by Special Operations Command and. Operation: NOBLE HOUND was an outstanding example of the Empire's newfound ability to retaliate fiercely against terrorism.

Reformation of the Special Operations Command
"Since, assassination, espionage, torture, kidnapping, the overthrow of sovereign governments, and other terroristic activities have become part of the galactic defense policy of the Galactic Empire. Justified time and time again by the Special Operations Command and, agents of the Imperial government are terrorizing civilian populations in the name of galactic peace and security. Under and Camila Tavira, the "" doctrine is now "Victory Without War, But By Terror"."

- Public statement by Imperial civilian non-profit organization regarding the Special Operations Command

Shortly after the stunning victory at Raxus Prime, Grand Admiral August Veers, at the age of seventy-five, would voluntarily resign from the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Special Operations Command, after witnessing a glorious victory that came about because of the Special Operations Command he had helped to build with his very hands. He would leave behind a legacy in special operations doctrine, and was regarded even by as a strategic genius, comparable to his grandfather,. Commander-in-Chief Veers would be remembered in the military best for his pioneering of tactics regarding the employment of the jump infantry and for the establishment of three core tasking divisions of the Imperial Special Forces — the Army Special Operations Group prosecuting planetary operations, Naval Special Warfare prosecuting extra-atmospheric operations, and Navy Combat Search and Rescue providing aviation support and fulfilling the search-and-rescue requirement.

Commander-in-Chief Veers would be succeeded by Fleet Admiral Camila Ivy Tavira, the granddaughter of. Camila was the Deputy Director of the Directorate of Special Intelligence,, and was the recipient of the Distinguished Intelligence Cross for the Imperial Intelligence success of the century — she had infiltrated the highest ranks of the Alliance government, subverting and blackmailing a senior member of the and pumping him for Alliance government and military secret for over a decade, and then escaping unnoticed. At the age of forty-five and the Deputy Director of the Directorate of Special Intelligence, she was an esteemed intelligence officer noted for her ambition and her resourcefulness with paramilitary and covert methodologies to resolve degenerating situations. Tavira was an obvious choice for to nominated as the second Commander-in-Chief of the Special Operations Command, and it was hoped that by her appointment, she would bring about the marriage of  and the Special Operations Command: the implementation of the collection of actionable intelligence and then having embedded special operators to act on such intelligence. The Intelligence Service and the Special Forces, in a Janus-like fashion, were merely two sides of the same coin.

Fleet Admiral Camila Ivy Tavira would be nominated by as Commander-in-Chief, and would be unanimously approved by the  for the position — , who was on the Council, very much desired her friend and colleague Camila to hold the position, as it would allow for close working relationships between Intelligence and the Special Forces. Following her confirmation, Camila would assume rank of and become recognized as the second Commander-in-Chief of the Special Operations Command, and would become the seventh  of the.

On her first week as the Commander-in-Chief of the Special Operations Command, Camila Ivy Tavira would immediately assimilate her old parent organization, the branch of, fully into the control and organization of the Special Operations Command. Special Intelligence, otherwise known as the, was the black operations division of Imperial division. Special Intelligence agents, such as Tavira, were handpicked amongst the best of all Imperial intelligence agents, and performed both human intelligence collection, infiltrating enemy organizations and subverting personnel within them, and also participated in special activities — the euphemism of the conduction of illegal operations, such as kidnapping and experimental torture. It was obvious to both and Tavira that such an organization was the paramilitary equivalent of the Special Operations Command: however, whereas Imperial special forces were charged with military operations (such as counterterrorism and counterinsurgency), operating on the side of the Imperial law, Special Intelligence agents conducted paramilitary operations far beyond the realm of Imperial law or military command: essentially, the logical and sinister continuation of the duties of the Special Forces.

However, Special Intelligence had an advantage over the Special Forces in that Imperial law was not conducive to victory and saving lives: terrorists, with s and dioxis poison gas, obviously didn't follow Imperial law and would go to any length to kill Imperial civilians and soldiers. Insurgents would capture Imperial officers, torturing them for information about their colleagues, and then gruesomely killing them. Special Intelligence agents played by the same rules: by torturing terrorists they captured, they provided an example for any citizen who was thinking of joining the terrorists. Tavira reasoned that in order for Special Intelligence to combat terrorism, they must play by the terrorist's own rules, and not the legal rules confined by Imperial law on the Special Forces.

Therefore, (the ) was immediately incorporated and transferred into the Special Operations Command and renamed the "Special Clandestine Activities Regiment". Special Clandestine Activities agents worked extremely closely with the Army Special Operations Group and Naval Special Warfare — if they had cordoned off a target, and were waiting for government bureaucrats or lawyers on to approve the kill, instead, Special Clandestine Activities agents would move in, liquifying the targets before some Imperial lawyer could deny the Special Forces the legal ability to kill their targets.

Special Clandestine Activities Regiment operators became critically successful in the field. Operating with unrestricted mobility and freedom, unbound by Imperial law, they conducted operations that saved the lives of millions of civilians, initiating operations that the "conventional" Special Forces were not legally allowed to undertake. Soon thereafter, Special Clandestine Activities became the prized gamma knife of the Special Operations Command, reaching targets and worlds that their conventional counterparts couldn't, and much like gamma knives themselves, excising troublesome individuals, without leaving a trace.

Her changes, however, would not stop there. As a career intelligence officer, Camila Ivy Tavira was far more acquainted with ancillary and secondary measures to support special operations: for example, the usage of misinformation to turn pirate gangs against each other, or the employment of psychological warfare to degrade and demoralize enemy garrisons, and also the vast power of signals intelligence to intercept and decode enemy tactical intentions. Hardcore officers such as Terra Needa, who were career soldiers in the field, had previously unappreciated the usage of such measures to act as force multipliers for Imperial special operations.

Tavira would authorize the formation of the Imperial Army Strategic Operations Forces (not to be amalgamated with "Special Operations Forces"), which, curiously enough, was a Army special forces element that was not authorized for live combat: a noncombatant commando team. The formation of such a unit seemed contradictory to many Special Forces officers, who became disdainful of the Strategic Operations Forces, seeing them as armchair commandos who would wear the insignia of the Special Operations Command but instead would be staying off of the front line: such a division would surely set the men, women, and aliens of the Special Operations Command against one another. The concept of the Imperial Army Strategic Operations Forces, however, was novel — the creation of a dedicated support branch that would field psychological warfare, cyber warfare, electronic warfare, financial warfare, and other forms of unconventional warfare in support of other special operations forces. The Strategic Forces would add a second dimension of depth to the one-dimensional, rifle-fixated Special Operations Command.

Strategic Operations Forces operated to preface of friendly special operations, using psychological warfare and disinformation to turn enemies against one another and to become disenchanted, making them less apt to fight and more amenable to surrender. Also, Strategic Forces were well-trained in psychological terror tactics: they ordered continual artillery barrages into space every hour, frightening terrorists, and would order regular stormtrooper parades and TIE Predator flybys over cities believed to harbor insurgents, enforcing the sense of an omnipotent Imperial presence against which it was useless to resist and take up arms against. Strategic Forces were also given direct control of media, regularly broadcasting rewards for the capture of terrorists over the, instilling fear in terrorists on the run. Furthermore, the Strategic Operations Forces focused on a necessary part of warfare — civilians. Practicing civil affairs operations, the Strategic Operations Forces attempted to encourage a positive relationship between civilian populations and Special Forces stationed there, and by forcing friendly Special Forces to construct schools and houses and to care for sick or injured civilians, the Strategic Operations Forces won the hearts of Imperial citizens, therefore encouraging them to turn over terrorists embedded in their midsts. Tavira also activated the Imperial Intelligence Combat Intelligence Division, a special forces unit that would provide a third dimension to the Special Operations Command: electronic and technical intelligence, supplementing the firepower of the conventional Special Forces and the unconventional warfare of the Strategic Operations Forces. Combat Intelligence agents were noncombatants, but they provided signals intelligence, measurement and signature intelligence, and image intelligence in target theaters of operations, therefore providing actionable intelligence to Special Forces commanders on the position of enemy formations and leaders. Combat Intelligence agents used communications interception readily, providing an astounding dearth of information: through transmissions characteristics, Combat Intelligence agents could identify the locations of broadcasting enemy units, and through decryption of their transmissions, this allowed Special Forces officers to overhear every word and forecasted tactic that their enemies were using. Insurgents broadcasting on the or the  were instantly triangulated by Combat Intelligence, pinning down a location for Imperial Special Forces to take down their targets.

Through the authorization of the formation of the Intelligence Special Clandestine Activities Regiment, the Intelligence Combat Intelligence Division, and the Army Strategic Operations Forces, Tavira would be recognized as a prodigy at special operations and covert action, adding two additional dimensions to the Special Operations Command: the intelligence-gathering capability of Special Clandestine Activities and Combat Intelligence, the unconventional warfare tactics of the Strategic Operations Force, and lastly, the unrestricted mobility of the Special Clandestine Activities Regiment. Tavira's reputation in reorganization and revitalizing the special forces would even reach 's own ears.

Liasoning with criminal elements
"These days, new Special Forces trainees are better at "talking" to criminals and making kriffing friends with them rather than "talking" with their damn blaster rifles."

- Anonymous Army Special Operations Group officer while drunk on leave on

Camila Ivy Tavira's history as a former swoop gang member made her well-acquainted with the criminal underworld: its underpinnings, mechanics, and leadership. Both she and would become intensely interested in subverting criminals, pirates, and bounty hunters into Imperial eyes and ears into the dark criminal world that paralleled the galaxy — for it was within such a treacherous and lawless world that many terrorists thrived on and used to supply themselves and acquire new recruits, equipment, and armor.

An Army Special Forces raid on, a smuggler nexus on , would yield in the capture of five hundred thousand s still in mint condition directly from , further reinforcing the importance of the effective control of criminal elements.

Knowing that the entirety of the criminal underworld was far too vast to be effectively controlled by special operations raids, a new special operations doctrine was envisioned — while most and even Special Forces commanders concentrated on legitimate "hard" military targets and responding to active terrorist threats or insurgencies that were ongoing, Tavira's and Calixte's new doctrine instead suggested reprogramming substantial assets into the smuggler, pirate, trafficking, and bounty hunter community. In addition to retaliating to terrorist threats that appeared, both Special Forces and Intelligence personnel would be involved in the capture and subversion of leaders of the criminal underworld: but instead of assassinating or incarcerating them, they would instead turn them into clandestine spies who would regularly report emerging terrorist threats who were arising amongst criminal elements, which Special Operations Command would nip in the bud. Under this program, criminal informants would be allowed to continue their illegal activities and would receive legal immunity in Imperial courts, provided that they continued to cooperate.

With such a doctrine, it was hoped that an intravital window could be gained into the criminal society in order to better forecast emerging insurgent and terrorist threats.

Although this program indirectly sponsored and protected many criminal elements, it would become an invaluable implement for the Special Operations Command and Imperial Intelligence to strike down anti-Imperial terrorist activities before they metastasized. Humans and aliens such as, who provided safehouses for criminals on the run, faced a difficult choice between being permanently terminated by an Army Special Forces raid or else handing over the occasional terrorist or guerilla to the Imperials.

Under this program, the Special Operations Command was made into a far more stratified and morally-complex organ of the state: its operators not only trained on how to assassinate terrorists and rescue hostages, but numerous Army Special Operations Group, Army Strategic Operations Forces, and Special Clandestine Activities Regiment agents were sent to lawless and crime-dominated worlds such as and  to subvert criminals into informants and to "handle" them, pumping them for information while ensuring that they would not betray their new Imperial masters.

Under Commander-in-Chief Tavira's tenure, many Special Forces officers would become increasingly disenchanted with the "sordid" state that the Special Operations Command was falling into — less and less resources were being allocated to resolve crises such as hostage scenarios and kidnappings, while increasing amounts of personnel, materiel, and attention were being diverted into liasoning with criminals. Although the Special Operations Command, under Tavira, would undergo massive expansion, the same faction of personnel would be dedicated to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations against legitimate targets, while more and more personnel were instead spending time in crime havens, taking information from interstellar criminals such as thugs or. Disappointment would sweep through the Special Forces ranks, with highly-trained operators feeling betrayed by the sudden new Imperial dedication to criminals — and not to operations against legitimate terrorist targets who directly were threatening the lives of hostages by waving blaster pistols.

However, to many senior Special Forces commanders, the program was a well-hidden and tightly-controlled success story: armed with actionable intelligence that was only able to be collected by criminals who actually participated in criminal activities, Naval Special Warfare teams made numerous seizures of arms and explosives on interplanetary freighters and Army Special Operations Group and Special Clandestine Activities Regiment teams were highly successful in assassinating terrorist ringleaders before they could nucleate movements of followers.

With Special Forces teams destroying terrorists or rebels who hijacked ships or took hostages, and many more Special Forces and Imperial Intelligence agents seeking to find potential terrorist and rebel movements before they reached to prominence, this represented a two-sided strategy that attacked terrorism from both ends — the formation of terrorist movements and also acting to antagonize the operations of matured terrorist movements. Galactic terrorism against Imperial citizens was gradually on the decline, earning both Tavira and Calixte the attention of, who became pleased at the decrease in violence — although he was partially unaware of the more sinister and difficult-to-justify methods by which the Special Forces and Intelligence were producing this effect.

Raid on Nar Shaddaa (108 ABY)
"Atop the towers of Nar Shaddaa to the wastes of Raxus Prime—we fight our Emperor's battles on land, air, and space."

- Special Operations Command marching hymn, referencing the Raid on Nar Shaddaa

In accordance with Tavira's highly successful criminal-affiliation policy, eventually, the Commander of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force—Ylesia (CJSOTF—Ylesia), the Special Operations Command force responsible for all operations in, would become aware of two long-lived and notorious assassins, a husband-and-wife team known by the names of  and. Undercover agents of the Special Clandestine Activities Regiment embedded within suggested that the two Anzati bounty hunters were highly-successful freelancers often hired by Black Sun for particularly unsavory assassinations, and the two had a reputation that far preceded them: this suggested that they would be excellent criminal contacts. Therefore, CJSOTF—Ylesia was authorized to conduct special operations to locate, cordon, and apprehend the two assassins in order to covert them.

Through numerous signals intercepts and decryption and analysis of communications traffic, agents of the Combat Intelligence Division team finally managed to confirm that the two assassins were on the moon of, pursuing a bounty set by in. A small Combat Intelligence Division was inserted onto the moon to track them and pin down their precise location on the supermassive city-world, while a three-hundred man Special Operations Task Force composed of Army Special Operations Group operators and aviators from Navy Combat Search and Rescue was mobilized to a mission staging site hidden within a toxic sea on, the principal body which Shaddaa orbited. Upon confirmation by the Combat Intelligence agents, the Navy pilots would transport the Army Special Forces strike teams to Nar Shaddaa in heavily-armored gunships, where they would apprehend the pair.

Shortly thereafter, the Combat Intelligence team intercepted a transmission from the assassins to their Black Sun handler, confirming that they had finished their contract kill. The intelligence agents triangulated the transmission's origin, and then the coordinates were provided to the Special Operations Task Force, which was scrambled for the takedown.

The ingress had been poorly planned: the s and s, upon seeing the sight of heavily armored Nune-class gunships descending down on Nar Shaddaa, laden with commandos, thought that the Empire was gunning after them, and suddenly, the Special Operations Task Force came under extremely heavy fire from all sectors as pirates, mercenaries, criminals, and other unsavory figures united as one to fight off the invading Imperials — word spread like wildfire and exaggerations grew out of proportion, and suddenly, thousands or millions of Nar Shaddaa criminals, convinced that the Empire was launching a planet-wide invasion, took off in pursuit of the Special Operations Task Force. Several gunships were lost immediately to anti-spacecraft fire and to pirate fighters, with three dozen troopers lost in the first few seconds of atmospheric entry as the Navy Predators began counterforce protocols, retaliating with force. Upon the sight of the Imperial starfighters, the criminals of the planet became even more convinced that the Empire was intending to subjugate their planet, and crowds of thousands were running through the towers, brandishing blasters, vibroblades, and missile launchers to attack the invading commandos.

By the time that the gunships had touched down at their landing zones, ninety commandos had been killed in their gunships by anti-spacecraft and anti-aircraft fire as Army Special Forces troopers disgorged from their ships, securing a cordon and arranging extraction points for their wounded. Meanwhile, an eighty-man advance force comprised of four Army Special Forces Troops was dispatched from the inner cordon, funneling down on the location of the assassins' transmissions.

It was overwhelming at the cordon—one hundred Army Special Forces troops, lost and disorganized in the city, were forced to defend against thousands and tens of thousands of criminals and unsavory characters who were determined to not let their haven of infamy fall into Imperial hands. It was a disaster: while CJSOTF—Ylesia was contacted to dispatch Star Destroyers for orbital fire support and also Army Strategic Operations Forces to begin negotiations with the tens of thousands of criminals, heavy casualties were incurred amongst the valiant one hundred soldiers that attempted to hold the perimeter. Frenzied criminals, believing that they had nothing to lose, threw their bodies against the perimeter, and jet-pack Mandalorians attacked from vertical directions, overwhelming them. Unit cohesion was beginning to wane, even as the Army Special Forces officers attempted to organize their men: sniper-spotter teams and heavy repeater teams providing overlapping fields of fire for their riflemen. In close quarters, it was horrendous: the criminals, which knew the labyrinthine secret passageways and tunnels of Nar Shaddaa, were ambushing the special forces personnel at every turn: eventually, of the troopers at the perimeter, thirty-three would be killed in action and fifty-two would be wounded.

Meanwhile, the advance force burrowed deep into the city, perilously seeking out the HoloNet kiosk where the transmission was made, battling criminals along the way. However, once they secured the kiosk, they realized that the Anzati assassins had simply been using a repeater: they had bounced their transmission to the kiosk, masking their true location to their Black Sun boss. While Combat Intelligence Division agents worked on triangulating the repeater's origin, mobs began to show up at the kiosk, threatening to turn it into a repeat of the massacre that was occurring at the cordon while their fellow troopers attempted to hold it. Meanwhile, TIE Predators dueled with pirate fighters overhead, straining to protect their surface-bound colleagues against one-to-two to one-to-four odds against local pirate gangs. Finally, Combat Intelligence would ID the location of the assassins from their jury-rigged repeater left behind at the kiosk: an apartment building halfway across the planet. The advance force was forced to re-board their assault shuttles while the Navy aviators made a breakneck run for the target coordinates, with pirate fighters harassing them and proton torpedoes soaring at them from below, leading to the destruction of several shuttles and the loss of even more commandos. Eventually, the assault force reached the apartment, bloodthirsty and enraged at the loss of hundreds of comrades. The remainder of the eighty-man force secured a cordon around the hundred-floor complex, and then assaulted it: liberally tossing s and indiscriminately firing rifle rounds, the grim Army Special Forces operators advanced steadily upwards through the complex, killing every living being within it that was not an Anzati. Securing one hundred floors filled with thousands of inhabitants, the assault force transformed the entire tower into a macabre horror, with thousands of civilians dead, and criminals amongst their midst fighting back, literally slitting the throats of commandoes invading their living rooms. Dozens of troopers were lost as they agonizingly pressed on, finally finding the apartment inhabited by the pair: the entire apartment was blasted with s and then filled with Czerka rounds, incapacitating the two and tearing down the entire penthouse. The assassins were drugged into unconsciousness, and both the assault force and the original cordon force were authorized for extraction in their severely-diminished number of shuttles.

"Cresh Six to Dauntless Firing Control. Requesting fire mission, danger close—adjust orbital fires from Aurek One-One to Zerek Nine-Nine. Turn this planet into a parking lot."

- Army Special Operations Group officer to the communications officer of the Dauntless

Meanwhile, overhead, a task force of five Pellaeon-class Star Destroyers decanted from, summoned by CJSOTF—Ylesia. The commandos on the ground began to identify coordinates for the Star Destroyers to bombard — the special operators, exhausted and wounded, literally began to identify target coordinates to vaporize whole sectors of cityscape in order to cover their extraction. However, when Grand Admiral Camila Ivy Tavira heard about this, she became absolutely livid to learn that the assault had been so poorly planned, and that so many Imperial lives and vehicles had been lost, and that now all of had been turned against the Empire: there was no chance that any more Nar Shaddaa criminals could be enlisted for Special Operations Command's purposes. The commander of the three-hundred-man Special Operations Task Force was relieved of command on the spot in combat, and Tavira ordered the Star Destroyers to leave immediately: if they began to bombard the planet, even more of Nar Shaddaa, seeing Star Destroyers in orbit, would only be more certain that the Empire had been there to kill all of them and take the planet for themselves.

However, upon seeing the Star Destroyer fleet in orbit, many of the criminals receded back into their dens and warrens, with only a few poking occasional harassing fire as the severely-depleted commando force parted for orbit.

The Raid of Nar Shaddaa was declared a disaster, although a pyrrhic victory. Of three hundred Army Special Operations Group, Navy Combat Search and Rescue, and Combat Intelligence Division operators sent to Nar Shaddaa, the running eleven-hour battle across half the planet would lead to the deaths of one hundred and twenty one operators and one hundred and forty-four wounded: an absolute catastrophe, compounded with Nune-class gunships and TIE Predators that were also shot down during the engagement. It was the greatest loss of Special Forces life since the establishment of the Special Operations Command, and would lead to the relief of command from the commander of the Special Operations Task Force and the voluntary retirement of the Commander-in-Chief of CJSOTF—Ylesia. Although the commandos fought expertly, with thousands of random criminals killed, the death of several thousand petty criminals was in no way comparable to the loss of over a hundred of the Empire's finest soldiers. Post-battle analysis by the Combat Intelligence Division in casualty estimation would estimate that upwards of a thousand civilians had also been killed in the fierce fighting, and it was a public relations disaster for the Empire. When Imperial citizens learned about the operation, they were shocked that hundreds of Imperial men, women, and aliens had been killed to simply snatch two on some forsaken smuggler's moon. Additionally, the promiscuous slaughter of civilians and the devastation of wide stretches of city made many Imperial civilians opposed to the Special Operations Command, which formerly had been revered for its stunningly-executed assault on Raxus Prime scarcely four years earlier.

Analysis of the battle indicated several outstanding points that accounted for the massive Imperial casualties. The appearance of the commandos in marked Imperial shuttles had fostered the wild idea that the Empire was invading the planet, and this obviously united the criminal denizens of the planet against them. There clearly had been no need to send a full Special Operations Task Force to apprehend the assassins: a ten-man Special Clandestine Activities Regiment team could have easily, in plainsclothes disguises, infiltrated the apartment building and drugged the two assassins in their sleep, just as easily. The Imperials, in their gunships and escort fighters, had appeared as the aggressors, and the usage of brutal Imperial force had invited an appropriately-lethal response from the Nar Shaddaa criminals. In the end analysis, Tavira was furious that the Special Clandestine Activities Regiment had not handled the operation: their undercover agents had been trained specifically for this purpose — and now, the entire Empire and Imperial civilians knew that Imperial Special Forces were openly involved with consorting with criminals and bounty hunters, to the point that over a hundred lives had been lost just to apprehend two of them.

Furthermore, the criminals had several major advantages: on their resident world, they obviously had potent defenses: anti-orbital batteries and shoulder-mounted missile launchers, that killed over a quarter of the assault force before their gunships could land. Additionally, fighting for their very survival, the criminals had nothing to lose, using reckless strategies to wear out and kill the Imperial commandos. Furthermore, they were quite literally fighting in their own living rooms, and their knowledge of the terrain allowed them to easily flank and distract the commandos, who had no idea about Nar Shaddaa's convoluted, horizontal topography.

However, and  would both be broken and converted at the Special Operations Command, and were released under strict terms: that they must issue regular reports to the Special Operations Command, and that they were prohibited from accepting contracts that led to the assassination of Imperial officers. However, soon the duress of force was released, as both Anzati assassins became wholeheartedly interested in reporting to the Empire when Tavira offered them large sums of s for their findings: financial gain was far more apt to win their hearts and minds than a blaster to the back. The Yoru pair would become invaluable assets to both the Special Operations Command and the Intelligence Service, and their reports on the activities of the criminal underworld would lead to the prevention of dozens of terrorist attacks before they occurred.

In, when Imperial  ordered the assassinations of  and ,  and  were chosen by  to complete the mission, as it was known to a few that the Yoru pair had close affiliations to the Empire through the Special Operations Command. However, both assassins would be killed, their contract unfinished.

Mass Defections (130 ABY)
When seized the Imperial throne by force from  in, shortly after the end of the victorious , the Special Operations Command, surprisingly, became divided. Although Camila Ivy Tavira herself had no qualms about the change in command, and in fact, she had been forewarned by her friend and colleague,, many Special Forces operators began to show remorse and uncertainties regarding the fact that now, their Galactic Empire was in the hands of the while the true Galactic Emperor of the Fel dynasty was ousted, on the run like a common criminal — the Galactic Empire was now the. While of all Imperial military personnel, the Special Forces had an especially fervent esprit de corps in order to perform their arduous tasks, many expressed doubts about the new Sith Order: they had been proud to fight for their Emperor, when he was a monarch descended from the sovereign Fel bloodline, but they all knew very well the carnage that Sith Lords such as and  had wrought onto the galaxy. Many special operators also remembered the tyranny that was Palpatine's Galactic Empire, which had subjugated and enslaved the galaxy, while many believed that 's dominion, in contrast, had been fairly just and liberal.

And the special operators remembered the mass purges executed by the after a Sith Lord had arisen to the office of Galactic Emperor — they knew that the Special Operations Command, alongside the, would become a tool of terror, eliminating all dissension in bloodthirsty purges that would cleanse whole civilian populations.

As many as one in ten operators of the Special Operations Command abandoned the Imperial military service, with many of those clandestinely joining up with 's, bringing their considerable skill and talents to support who they thought was the true Galactic Emperor of a sovereign heritage. Others defected in order to escape the moral agony that would be exacted upon them when they were ordered to eliminate those still loyal to Fel.

Over the following weeks and months, innumerable thousands of special operators would disappear from their posts, slipping away at night or embarking on missions and never returning. When word of the mass defections — nearly ten percent in some sectors — reached Camila Ivy Tavira, she would become inflamed with lethal rage. Standing orders were issued to all Special Operations Command units that they were to execute anyone amongst their ranks who even whispered aloud the thought of defection. Ironically enough, normally it was the Special Forces who policed the conventional Army infantry, ensuring that none of them committed treason: now that the police was defecting, there was no one to police the police.

It was a mortal embarrassment for the Special Operations Command and all of its senior commanders. When standing orders to kill anyone who considered desertion proved ineffective, Camila Ivy Tavira, along with and, began a joint Special Operations Command—Intelligence Service program that noted every single Special Forces deserter, and then rounded up their families and executed them without question, leading to the deaths of thousands of civilians, who had been killed merely because a relative had decided to betray the Empire. These terror tactics only drove more commandos to defect, enraged that their own parent organization would sponsor such atrocities.

However, former Imperial commandos, now with, would strike mortal blows against the Empire. Vastly superior and more experienced than the Army infantry that guarded many colony worlds and outposts, ex-Imperial Special Forces would tear deep wounds into the flanks of Krayt's Sith Empire, and this was exacerbated by fighting alongside the defected Imperial commandos. Former Naval Special Warfare operators would sabotage and explode Imperial Star Destroyers in planetary orbits, and former Army Special Forces teams would launch sniper attacks on stormtrooper garrisons, devastating both their morale and their ability to wage war against the Empire-in-Exile.

While Imperial Knights such as and  would be pleased to have the lethal ex-Imperial commandos fight alongside them, it was devastating to the Special Operations Command's reputation: the very best of the Empire's troopers were now using their own considerable skill against Imperial forces, and this grew even more tragic when Special Forces teams were sent to the front lines to combat their former friends and colleagues, with current and defected Imperial Special Forces troopers killing each other, friends shedding the blood of one another. Eventually, Tavira would escalate this policy, and she specifically instructed the Special Activities Battle Expeditionary Regiment (Saber Force) and Special Clandestine Activities Regiment, the Special Operations Command's two most elite covert action units, to actually specifically target and assassinate Special Forces deserters who were allied with Fel. Under these orders, the Special Forces conducted manhunts, mercilessly prosecuting the commandos who had chosen to defect, traveling hundreds of light-years simply to capture, torture, and kill their former colleagues.

Terror tactics—assassinations, ambushes, torture, kidnappings—were employed by both Tavira's Special Operations Command and Fel's ex-commandos as the Imperial Special Forces began a bitter internal fight to the death.

Invasion of Borosk (137 ABY)
"The 908th are traitors, and they will be killed - every last one of them."

By, the practice of embedding all Army, Navy, and Special Forces units with undercover informants had become ubiquitous. Therefore, when, a commander of the 908th Stormtrooper Division on , began to discreetly question his men of their loyalties to and began the faintest suggestions of defection to the , Special Clandestine Activities Regiment agents in the 908th immediately alerted  of the threat, and Special Operations Command, , and  began to confer. Although the Sith wanted to make a public example of the mutinous Cassel, Intelligence officers were concerned that publicly crucifying him would only hasten the unit's defection to Fel's open and waiting arms. While Imperial commanders and Sith Lords on Coruscant conferred heatedly on the most acceptable way to liquify the traitorous officer, the Special Operations Command began to authorize its Special Clandestine Activities Regiment agents within the unit to engineer an "accident" that would kill Cassel in some innocuous way, like the collapse of a barracks' structural supports or a misdetonation on an explosive.

However, the bickering on Coruscant proved to be too long, and Cassel proved to be too charismatic. Within days, the majority of the 908th was in open dissent, and of the twenty thousand-strong stormtrooper division, they had incarcerated the few amongst them who were still loyal to Krayt, and Cassel relieved the loyal division commander of his command, locked him up, and then prepared to mobilize the 908th across to board troopships that would take them to Fel's forces.

Alarmed, both Sith and Imperial commanders alike on Coruscant realized that it was far too late for covert action to take place — twenty thousand soldiers were days away to successfully defecting to Fel, and the chance to have acted and assassinated Cassel was long-lost. Urgent military force was necessary to nip the rebellious stormtrooper division before it could metastasize beyond Borosk's atmosphere: and then, they would be far gone.

Preface
A result of dramatic reform throughout the Imperial military after the ascension of Galactic Emperor Roan Fel to the Imperial throne, the Imperial Special Operations Command would be a newly-activated joint forces command that would assume control of special missions units attached to the Imperial Army, the Imperial Navy, and Imperial Intelligence, coordinating Imperial special operations cohesively across a galactic scale. This uniform organization was performed to synchronize Imperial special operations and to encourage the joint-arms integration of special forces from all three major branches of service, to create new joint-capability special forces units.

Other Imperial military services, such as the Imperial Engineering Corps and the Imperial Surgical Corps, which did not possess direct-action units, did not directly contribute to Special Operations Command's frontline combat units, instead often rendering auxiliary support through noncombatant means. During the Legacy Era, the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps would be subordinated underneath the Imperial Army, therefore placing Army stormtrooper units within Special Operations Command's jurisdiction.

The position of "Commander-in-Chief, Imperial Special Operations Command" was typically held by a High General of the Imperial Army or a of the Imperial Navy, due to the high demands placed upon the Special Operations Command during the unique challenges to Imperial stability during the Legacy Era. The commander-in-chief was typically closely connected to the Director of Imperial Intelligence, due to the close association between Imperial special operations as well as Imperial intelligence-gathering. The collaboration between the two commands was such that even certain Intelligence special units were placed under the formal command of the Imperial Special Operations Command.

Subordinate units
"Contrary to what you may think, Special Operations Command is a preventer—we do not seek to cause wars, but instead, to extinguish their seeds even before the first signs begin to manifest."

- Fleet Admiral Terra Needa, Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Special Warfare Command

Imperial Army
The Imperial Army Special Operations Command was a subordinate component of the Imperial Special Operations Command, responsible for all special operations forces contributed by the to the Special Operations Command. Its senior commander, the "Commander-in-Chief, Army Special Operations Command", was a of the, the second-highest achievable rank in the. The Army Special Operations Command was based on the Galactic Republic Special Operations Command, the brigade of the.

As of, there were three special operations forces subordinated underneath the Army Special Operations Command: the Imperial Army Special Operations Group, the Imperial Army Strategic Operations Forces, and the Imperial Army Special Activities Battle Expeditionary Regiment.


 * Army Special Operations Group: Principal Army special operations force, established in by the direct order of  . Organized principally by  August Veers, the Army Special Forces are responsible for the prosecution of any special operations authorized by the Empire on planetary surfaces and in planetary atmospheres, where they are airborne-capable. In the field, they fulfill special operations requirements such as counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, unconventional warfare, force protection, and escort of VIPs and military commanders in both the friendly and denied battlespaces. Based on the  and the former Galactic Republic Special Operations Command. Planetary counterpart to Imperial Naval Special Warfare.


 * Army Strategic Operations Forces: Unconventional Army special forces, responsible for the development, creation, and employment of strategic capabilities in the field in support of other combatant special operations forces, such as psychological warfare, electronic warfare, cyber warfare, biological warfare, chemical warfare, thermonuclear warfare, and economic warfare, generally developing capabilities that are useful for unconventional warfare and asymmetric warfare. Performs psychological operations in order to demoralize enemy soldiers and civilians, using techniques such as propaganda and disinformation through shadowfeeds. Strategic Operations Forces, although not authorized for direct combat, often accompany Army Special Forces as force multipliers in unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency missions.


 * Army Special Activities Battle Expeditionary Regiment: Army special activities division, mandated for the prosecution of covert military operations that are not legal by Imperial law. Established by the direct order of Camila Ivy Tavira, and perform highly sensitive operations in support of 's  and 's . Repertoire of responsibilities include specific counterforce operations against enemy Special Forces units, counterterrorism, and the assassination or kidnapping of enemy high-tier personalities, such as . Widely considered as the most experienced special operations force in the entire, and collaborate extensively with s of 's . Military counterpart to the Imperial Special Clandestine Activities Regiment.

Imperial Navy
The Imperial Naval Special Warfare Command was a subordinate component of the Imperial Special Operations Command, responsible for all special operations forces contributed by the to the Special Operations Command. Its senior commander, the "Commander-in-Chief, Naval Special Warfare Command", was a of the, the second-highest achievable rank in the. The Naval Special Warfare Command was based on Galactic Republic Naval Special Warfare of the Galactic Republic Special Operations Command, a unit that existed in the.

As of, there were three special operations forces subordinated underneath the Army Special Operations Command: Imperial Naval Special Warfare, Imperial Navy Combat Search and Rescue, and Imperial Marine Advance Force Operations.


 * Naval Special Warfare: Premier Navy special operations force, established in by the direct order of , and based on Galactic Republic Naval Special Warfare, a  division during the . Perform high-risk naval special operations in unconventional environments, and are responsible for the prosecution of any special operations authorized by the Empire beyond a planetary atmosphere, that is, in planetary orbits, in deep space, or aboard spacefaring vessels. Operations include boarding hostile warships, boarding spaceships in peacetime to search for weapons trafficking, zero-g operations, assault of space stations, assault of orbital platforms and satellites, and extremely high-speed orbit-to-surface insertion techniques. Extra-atmospheric counterpart to the Imperial Army Special Operations Group.


 * Navy Combat Search and Rescue: Originally established far before the activation of the Special Operations Command by the direct mandate of Galactic Emperor Jagged Fel and the "" doctrine. In its original organization ,it was a noncombatant Navy rescue force responsible to rescue stranded civilian spacers and aviators in deep space or in planetary atmospheres, and was an instant public-relations success in the Empire. However, in, it was co-opted by the Special Operations Command to provide aviation support for Army Special Forces in planetary surfaces, operating clandestine insertion and extraction of special operations forces and providing close air support, as well as performing high-risk search and rescue operations for lost or wounded Army or Navy special operations forces whether on the ground or in deep space.


 * Marine Advance Force Operations: Principal special reconnaissance force of the, consisting of special operations detached from shipboard duties and tasked as reconnaissance specialists on planetary forces. Notable as the only Imperial special operations force dedicated as a reconnaissance unit, responsible for preparation of planetary battlespaces preceding the arrival of Navy fleets in orbit.  Advance Force Operations operators are responsible for infiltrating enemy-held worlds prior to Imperial invasions, and then, conducting close reconnaissance to identify enemy targets on the ground for orbital bombardment, and then proceeding to liason with Navy assets in orbit to coordinate and target orbital strikes against enemy fortifications. Advance Force Operations Marines sometimes accompany Army Special Forces units, acting as joint terminal attack controllers and allowing orbiting Star Destroyers to provide precision orbital fires to support Army special operations forces on the ground. Based on the Surface Task Reconnaissance  division of the former Galactic Republic Special Operations Command.

Imperial Intelligence
The Imperial Intelligence Special Operations Command was a subordinate component of the Imperial Special Operations Command, responsible for all special operations forces contributed by to the Special Operations Command. Its senior commander, the "Commander-in-Chief, Intelligence Special Operations Command", was a of the, the second-highest achievable rank in the.

As of, there were two special operations forces subordinated underneath the Intelligence Special Operations Command: the Imperial Intelligence Special Clandestine Activities Regiment and the Imperial Intelligence Combat Intelligence Division.


 * Special Clandestine Activities Regiment: Only element authorized to conduct special activities that are illegal according to Imperial law. Created by  Camila Ivy Tavira in, the Special Activities Regiment was the continuation of the  unit of the Intelligence Service, and was comprised of highly-trained paramilitary operations officers that were selected from the best of Imperial Intelligence agents. Paramilitary operations officers of the Special Activities Regiment had twofold responsibilities: the covert gathering of  by infiltrating and masquerading in insurgencies or enemy military formations, and also the conduction of special activities: events such as the kidnapping, extortion, and subversion of Imperial or enemy civilians and military officers. Paramilitary counterpart to the Army Special Activities Battle Expeditionary Regiment and the human intelligence counterpart to the Imperial Combat Intelligence Division.


 * Combat Intelligence Division: Special operations force of, dedicated to the gathering of intelligence prior to operations and during ongoing operations to guide and assist friendly special operations forces. Largely concerned with electronic and technical forms of intelligence, such as signals intelligence, measurement and signature intelligence, image intelligence, and casualty estimation. Combat Intelligence operators typically gather electronic intelligence in operational theaters in peacetime or war, using communications intercepts and other measures of eavesdropping to learn about enemy tactical movements and the positions of hostile personalities, therefore providing actionable intelligence for other special operations to conduct direct action. Electronic intelligence counterpart to the Imperial Special Clandestine Activities Regiment.

Known Personnel

 * Grand Admiral August Veers, Commander-in-Chief of the Special Operations Command (—)
 * Grand Admiral Camila Ivy Tavira, Commander-in-Chief of the Special Operations Command (—)
 * Fleet Admiral Terra Needa, Naval Special Warfare (as of )
 * Service Commander Ava Chyler, Naval Special Warfare (as of )
 * Sergeant Major Aiden Page, Army Special Activities Battle Expeditionary Regiment (as of )
 * Chief Petty Officer Faith ke Hanadi, Naval Special Warfare (as of )

Behind the Scenes

 * The elaborate ranking hierarchy of the Galactic Empire Special Operations Command drew from multifarious sources: the rank insignias themselves were either from Halo 3 or were photoshopped from the game, and the rank titles were mostly based on the ranking structure of the United States Armed Forces, although there were contributions from the  and also Mass Effect.