Ousan-Peoly War

The Ousan-Peoly War was a conflict between the Ousan of Oourb'Rest and the Peoly of Yuclawav. The war raged for seventeen years and saw hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides before it was finally ended in 89 ABY by the Golden Empire.

Background
The carnivorous Peoly had acquired galaxy-level starship and technology following a disastrous attempted invasion by slavers from Quadia. Having reverse-engineered the technology, they began to scout for potential target systems themselves. An inability to access the details of the slavers' s ruled out Quadia, but Peoly astronomers speculated that Oourb'Rest was capable of sustaining life.

The Peoly arrived and found not only vast new tracts of land where their livestock could be grown, but also a native sentient species they could enslave to do the farming. When the Peoly clashed with the Ousan, however, they discovered that Ousan blood had effects on them. It was also highly addictive, and every Peoly who tasted it wanted more once he came down. After the Hunt King and his ruling council on Yuclawav were made aware of the situation and tasted Ousan blood for themselves, the complete conquest of the Ousan became the priority.

Combatants
The Peoly were a unified society under a single monarch, the Hunt King, who directed their forces with absolute authority. Their engineers had duplicated modern spacecraft, although, crucially, attempts to reproduce weaponry were still ongoing when the war started. As the apex predators of their native world, the Peoly were accomplished at violence and savage in fights.

The Ousan were not a unified people at the start of the war, which hampered defense coordination. Their military technology was generally on par with that of the Peoly, apart from interplanetary travel and capabilities. As the invaded party, they had the advantage of fighting on their home territory, and they outnumbered the entirety of the Peoly species more than five to one. Though the Peoly were better suited to brutality and violence, the Ousan were, on average, slightly taller and stronger.

Early maneuvers
The initial invasion was not conducted in sufficient force to achieve any real hold on Oourb'Rest. However, hundreds of Ousan were rounded up and taken back to Yuclawav for study. The potency of their blood became obvious, and the Hunt King massed forces for a larger-scale invasion. On Oourb'Rest, the nations of the world met to discuss the new threat, laying the groundwork for an international defensive force to repel the attackers.

The Peoly returned in force, deploying hundreds of thousands of troops in a concerted attack on one continent. Many thousands of Ousan were taken prisoners, but the rest set up a resistance, hiding in and striking from Oourb'Rest's forests and swamps, which they knew better than their invaders. Other nations provided military support, attacking Peoly bases with their navies and air forces and smuggling supplies to the resistance. At the same time, those nations which had not been attacked began setting up for resistance themselves.

The great resistance
As it became clear that the problem of the Peoly would not be solved overnight, the Ousan developed defensive fortifications to carry out guerilla war against the invaders. Ousan engineers dug a series of tunnels connecting storage depots, ammo dumps, and command centers, while the newly unified military forces set up anti-aircraft gun emplacements and long-range artillery. Food was stockpiled and rationing programs began.

Some Ousan nations were more reluctant than others to surrender control of their economic instruments and military forces to a joint command. Many of these fell prey to the Peoly without the support of their potential allies, and the rest of Oourb'Rest united out of fear.

The tide of the war turned back and forth for years. The Peoly were never completely driven out of their foothold, but sometimes they were pressed back to only a few thousand square kilometers, while other times they spread out to nearly cover an entire continent. Peoly hunter teams scoured the swamps for Ousan guerillas and refugees, and both sides suffered casualties during these hunts. Peoly rounded up as many Ousan as possible; attempts to force them to breed were sometimes complicated by bloodlust among the Peoly who had grown addicted to Ousan blood, and could not restrain themselves from killing their prisoners.

The calamity
In the 80s ABY, the Peoly were finally driven off their continent, with the few survivors scattering into hiding. Afraid of losing the planet altogether, the Hunt King sought a quick end to the war and deployed a nerve agent in mass quantities on Oourb'Rest. Unused in centuries on Yuclawav, the agent was a paralytic to Peoly; those still on world were quickly incapacitated, and either starved to death or were found and dispatched.

The Ousan were not directly affected by the agent at all. However, the atmosphere of Oourb'Rest itself suffered changes due to the enormous quantities of foreign toxins introduced. Previously, Ousan had been attracted to ideal reproductive matches through pheremones. In the new air, Ousan pheremones did not move properly and could not be perceived by other Ousan.

Though the air of Oourb'Rest remained breathable, its new condition seriously compromised Ousan reproductive ability. Previously, the only goal of the Ousan had been to repel the invaders. Now, however, many religious and political leaders began calling for the Ousan to take the war to the Peoly homeworld.

Peace by fiat
Over the following years, Ousan repeatedly attempted to capture Peoly ships. When they succeeded, some were taken for study, while others were stuffed with explosives, chemical weapons, and commandos and taken back to Yuclawav. Some Ousan who had escaped slavery had learned the language of the Peoly during their captivity, and were able to translate Peoly navicomputers. The counter-invaders managed to cause some damage on Yuclawav, but an attempt to kill the Hunt King failed, and most of those who landed were killed quickly, many of them eaten alive.

In 89 ABY, the Peoly launched another series of attacks on Oourb'Rest. It was in the midst of one of these battles that the Golden Empire discovered Oourb'Rest. The Royal Army, led by Keltrayu, positioned itself between the warring sides and demanded an explanation. After s had deciphered the Ousan and Peoly languages and translated the situation, Queen Rin Sakaros offered both worlds membership in her still-nascent Empire.

Seeing that the Empire had a much more powerful military than even the Peoly and Ousan together, the united Ousan peoples pledged their homeworld to the Queen. Faced now with their enemies backed by an interplanetary war machine, the Peoly grudgingly led the Empire to Yuclawav, where the Hunt King agreed to join the Empire too. Rin insisted on the Peoly and Ousan leaders signing a peace treaty to end the war.

Duplicity
Peace did not last. The Hunt King faced a rebellious population, partly for subjugating himself to an alien ruler but mostly for cutting off the supply of addictive Ousan blood. To avoid unrest, and more than a little addicted to Ousan blood himself, the Hunt King secretly built up an attack force and deployed it against Oourb'Rest to round up more captives.

The Empire's response was swift, and the Royal Navy shattered the attack fleet. With half his citizens now crazed with bloodlust, the maddened Hunt King authorized an attack on Zorabos too, deluded by drug withdrawal into believing that the best way to chastise the Empire for its interference was to present a strong front.

The strategy proved a fatal miscalculation. The Zaractoks easily repelled the invaders with the assistance of the Armada, but Rin was outraged by the savagery and amorality of the Peoly. Deciding they could not be reasoned with or safely kept alive, she authorized the Empire's first against the Peoly. The entire Prime Fleet came to Yuclawav together and bombarded Peoly cities from orbit, reducing them to rubble and wiping out their populations. The Massassi legions were deployed to the surface, where they hunted down survivors and wiped the Peoly out of existence.

Legacy
The destruction of the Peoly was a first sign to some species how little tolerance Rin Sakaros would have for major threats to her people. It encouraged some of her member worlds while intimidating others. Speciecide would be repeated against at least three other species in the Empire's history, including the decimation of the in 143 ABY.

The resistance tunnels and depots on Oourb'Rest were mostly left intact, with some turned into museums and "walk through history" courses. The Ousan built many memorials to their dead and museums to preserve the history of their struggle. My Heart is in the Tunnels was a set during the Ousan-Peoly War which received rave reviews from the Ousan and was a box office triumph.

During the Nightmare War, Oourb'Rest was attacked by the Reawakened and their army of Skavik. Some living Ousan were veterans of the Ousan-Peoly War, and masterminded the use of the old resistance tunnels and supply chains to fend off the invaders. These tools allowed the Ousan to suffer fewer casualties than Dolomir and Klee`shlyoo`hshee in the initial blitz by the Dark Jedi.