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All right, wanna dive deep into the origins of the First Order? Here’s what we can tell you.
The first seeds seem to be sown somewhere around 21 ABY – 17 years after the Battle of Endor, 13 years before The Force Awakens. At that point, Rinnrivin Di, a lowly Nikto criminal, suddenly becomes a major player in the criminal underworld. It turns out that he’s at the hub of a vast network, a criminal operation funneling money to shadow corporations on various Outer Rim worlds, and he’s keeping or skimming a percentage to keep his business running.
One of the people/places to which money is funneled: Arliz Hadrassian on Daxam IV, which has squadrons of fighters, is training up to 1,000 Amaxine warriors, and has been doing so for “years.”
But this is only one operation. The major part of their operation is on Sibensko (more on that in a moment), where they have hundreds if not thousands of fighters stored, as well as all sort of explosive armaments.
We get the implication that the funding is coming from the New Republic itself, with appropriations going to a “far-right” faction of Centrists worlds that are then funneled through criminal enterprise to support the First Order military. Lady Carise Sindian (a senator from Arkanis – also the home of General Brendol Hux) is one of the driving forces of the group, which is working to build up the First Order. From one of her interior monologues:
No one suspected the critical role she played in preparing the galaxy for the return of meaningful authority through the government she and other like-minded people already whispered about as the First Order. It was Lady Carise who had searched for former Imperial officers and their sympathizers among the various subcultures where they might congregate, helping to create the contacts that connected them to the surviving ships of the Imperial fleet. Lady Carise who had encouraged them as they organized from mere malcontents into the burgeoning paramilitary force known as the Amaxine warriors. And it had been Lady Carise who convinced the Centrist leaders in her faction to use the criminal front they’d already established through Rinnrivin Di to hide their funds in order to arm and train the Amaxine warriors. With weapons and training, they could, in time, serve as the shock troops in the initial battles of the great war to come.
Once the Amaxines had caused enough damage and confusion, the First Order itself could finally emerge from hiding to claim its rightful place, with the lost vessels of the Imperial fleet as its true fighting force.
Ultimately, the trail leads to a planet called Sibensko, with underwater facilities that the team notes have expanded to be at least four times bigger than it was a few years ago. Leia’s interior monologue about it:
The only groups who build on this scale are governments. Or would-be governments. Maybe the Amaxine warriors aren’t as far out on the fringe as I believed.
And Leia brings down the house, destroying the Amaxine warriors and their ships and armaments, and killing Rinnrivin Di in the process.
But none of this stops the First Order from rising. Yet now you have a clearer picture of how the First Order came to be!
Trivia Time!
Test your knowledge of the Star Wars universe!Yesterday’s answer: Rey
Today’s question: Who inadvertently revealed the location of the Resistance base to the First Order on Starkiller Base?