Separatist-Imperial War

"What a wasted effort!"

- Acrolian Admiral Gaius Demyus on the War

The Separatist-Imperial War was a short-lived, year-long conflict between the newly formed and the faltering. The war began when Drewika Zirátæ, expecting to honor his previous agreement to help the  relocate and live out their lives as men, following the Republic's victory in the. With the war over, and the clones still in the Empire's service, Drewika began to expect Palpatine's true intent. Zirátæ went directly to the Emperor to force his hand, yet after a heated discussion, the Emperor went back on his agreement, making the argument that the Empire needed every soldier it could get. Angered and betrayed, Drewika did what he had desired to do the entire Clone Wars; he went to the capital of the to offer his services as the organization's leader. Though the Republic had defeated the Separatists, killing its main leaders and confiscating its battle droids, the  had survived intact on, and pockets of CIS droid units and fleets were scattered across the. Drewika, though distrusted at first for his involvement with the Republic during the, was named Head of State as 's successor. Drewika's ally in the Mafia, Malus Reven was named. Drewika convinced the Acrolian Senate of the Acrolian Star Empire to throw its support behind the CIS, and made attempts to consolidate his combined forces, by bring them to Raxus.

His first move as Head of State was to petition the clones in the Grand Army to leave the Empire and take up residence within the borders of the Acrolian Star Empire, as full citizens with the rights that they would not possess otherwise. This was Drewika's bargain with Palpatine in the first place, a moral crusade that had kept Drewika firmly in the Republic camp during the Clone Wars, though his heart was with the Separatist cause. Within hours of Zirátæ's message, many of the clone troopers who had fought with Zirátæ during the preceding conflict, deserted the Imperial Army on Acrolian vessels. Roughly one half of the original Kamino clone batch, around one million clones, converged on Magna Luna's spaceport, requesting citizenship and new life. The rest, viewing desertion as dishonorable, remained with the Empire, albeit unwillingly. Angered by this turn of events, Palpatine ordered an invasion of Acrolis. Though his large fleet managed to destroy some small asteroid bases in Acrolis's asteroid belt, the invasion never made it as far as the planet's surface. Drewika had been expecting some treachury on palpatine's part, so he ordered the infamous Acrolian 3rd Fleet under Admiral Gaius Demyus to defend the capital. Though the naval battle was fierce, the Acrolian Star Empire was victorious.

Extremely outraged at Palpatine's outright hostility towards what Zirátæ saw as a moral cause, Drewika returned to Raxus, where Malus had ordered the newly reorganized droid army and navy to assemble and formally declared war on the.