So what's the deal with Mon Calamari?

By which I mean, the planet. Dac, to be politically correct, but I am old school and will say Mon Calamari.

Wookieepedia (and various EU sources I've read over the years) suggest that the planet basically rose up in open rebellion against the Empire well before the Battle of Endor, and succeeded in ejecting the Imperials (Wookieepedia says they were kicked out of the entire sector).

Here I think we have a problem. As I recall, Dark Empire and the JAT stated that Mon Calamari was pretty high up on the Death Star List, but you'd think the empire would take measures in the interim. How can an open Rebellion be sustained in 0-4 ABY? Remember the huge Imperial Starfleet? The Empire wants to force open confrontation so it can bring its numerical advantage to bear. The Rebels depend on stealth and mobility to wage a guerilla campaign. I will certainly grant that the Mon Cal and Quarren had a huge advantage under the waves against an occupation, and even that a BDZ against a water world would be impractical, but you'd think the legendary shipyards and any space traffic around the system would be targeted with extreme prejudice. And if the Mon Cal managed to control their space borders as well as the situation "on the ground," we face another question: Why mess around with places like Hoth? Why not just locate the main Rebel base on what would have to be a heavily secure planet?

I certainly have my theories on how to explain a situation like this, and I'll likely share them later on, but I was really wondering if any EU sources had tried to explain around the problem or given much more in the way of detail about this "open rebellion" and the Empire's response. Is there even a definitive place on the timeline where the got Empire kicked out?

Finally, and somewhat tangentially, are there any other worlds pre-Endor that had sustained, open rebellions?

 

Forces of Corruption says that the Empire did in fact launch a full-scale invasion of Mon Calamari but that the Rebellion turned them back by triumphing in a full-scale head-on space battle (!!!). Mainly, of course, by exploiting certain problems with the Empire's pathing AI, but still.

 

Mon Calamari was a planet way out in the rim, the Empire had a sparse military presence out there, with much of their forces concentrated near the core.

 

Ah, Mon Calamari. A topic I feel fairly qualified to discuss.

For starters, there is no concrete evidence as to why the Empire didn't make a bigger effort to reconquering the system during the years between Yavin and Endor. Off the top of my head, there are numerous theories, including:

1. Location in the far reaches of the Outer Rim made it difficult for the Imperial Navy to concentrate a large enough naval force to take the sector. This theory is not entirely popular with fans who support the idea of a massive Imperial Starfleet, but it is one that frequently gets tossed around.

2. Space mines. This is a theory that was popularized by Dr. Saxton. Essentially, the idea is that there were relatively few space lanes into the Calamari Sector. These few lanes were then intensively mined to prevent Imperial incursion, or at the very least inflict heavy casualties and slow them down.

3. Palpatine wanted to keep the world as a "threat". One idea is that Palpatine used Mon Calamari of an example as to why he needed to maintain such large military forces. Essentially, keeping the Rebellion's sole producer of capital ships around allowed for his Imperial military to have a credible threat.

4. The Death Star. This idea, which in many respects has the most plausibility, is that the worlds defenses were substantial enough to warrant its ultimate destruction by the Death Star. Dark Empire established that Mon Calamari was at the top of the list of worlds to suffer destruction. Basically, it was easier and less costly for the Empire to just vaporize the world than risk another costly invasion and occupation.

In terms of defenses, the WEG Rebel Alliance Sourcebook elaborated on this. My copy is currently in storage (GRR!!), but off the top of my head I recall the following defenses:

1. A sizable detachment of the Alliance Navy
2. Planetary and orbital weapons emplacements
3. Planetary shields
4. Multiple divisions of Alliance Special Forces
5. Calamari Defense Force/local forces
5. Mon Calamarian privateers

A planet of 27.5 billion inhabitants is not an easy thing to subdue. Seeing as it is a water planet, it was far more defensible against standard Imperial military units.

My personal belief is that an attack on the Calamari Sector would of been costly for the Empire, although they would of been victorious. Therefore, it was simply easier to wait for the Death Star II to be constructed and blast the planet to atoms.

--Adm. Nick

 

3. Planetary shields

Here's a random question: How'd the World Devastators get through that?

 

Checking the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook:

OT: Mon Cal shipyards apparently constructed some sort of corvette we haven't seen yet.

"The Alliance maintains a formidable presence in the Calamari system, including enough capital ships to deal with a standard Imperial battle line or perhaps even a squadron."

It does emphasize that a standard Imperial attack fleet would overwhelm the forces there. However, while the shipyards could be taken out, they would probably have to beseige the world - after all, the Empire occupied Mon Calamari before only because they got someone to sabotage the planetary shields. Since the Rebellion always got more ships from defection than production, it probably wouldn't be worth the Empire to beseige the planet and put an Imperial fleet in a precarious position in the Outer Rim - imagine if they brought in a couple of torpedo spheres and the Alliance made a hit-and-run attack that crippled or destroyed them. They would only attack if they were sure they could deal with the planet itself - such as if they had a planet-destroying superweapon...

 

The things a Kubaz could do with a fresh Calamarian....

 

Kubaz prefer bugs.

 

The things a fully armed Mon Calamari Star Cruiser could do to the Kubaz...

blackmyron:

Thanks for getting that quote from the RASB. I often wonder what being stationed on Mon Calamari was like during the Yavin through Hoth years. I imagine that the system was always on a state of hightened alert. However, this place was literally the only one where Rebels could get some genuine R&R. I imagine that various starfighter units and battle lines from the Alliance Navy were periodically rotated to Mon Cal for R&R and repair work.

--Adm. Nick

 

The Mon Calamari shipyards being able to escape destruction from the Imperial Navy has always puzzled me. But didn't the various Dac based shipwrights that built vessels for the CIS do it in out of the way, hidden places (like that tunneled out world where the Invisible Hand was built)? Maybe a lot of the Rebel's Mon Cal Cruisers were assembled in places like that, rather then in actual orbit around the planet Dac itself.

 

IIRC, it has been established (GatORW??) that the Mon Cals had various shipyards hidden through the Calamari Sector and underwater on Dac itself. It is very likely that many of the MC80's that were donated to the Rebellion were in fact created elsewhere.

--Adm. Nick

 

I really can't see how a massive starship can be built underwater . . . and in secrecy off sensor scopes. But if that's true I may have to reassess my opinion of the salmons.

 

A lot of the explanations put forth in this thread are pretty good. (I especially like mined hyperlanes, because it's a Legacy-established tactic.)

Since I don't think it warrants a new thread, I'll just ask here: are there any other examples of of this sort of open rebellion going during the OT era?

 

Force Unleashed Campaign Guide: "..the insurrection grows to strike back at the Imperial occupiers using spacecraft constructed at secret underwater facilities or outfitted at old orbital stardocks with weapons and material diverted from Imperial construction projects."

 

I think the Quohogs, another aquatic sentient species from a remote world, were in open Rebellion and supplied the Alliance with crewers for starships.

Given that the name Dac dates from around 1983, it seems pretty old school to me.

 

Sullust formally seceded just before the Battle of Endor; and apparently the entire Airam Sector just prior to that joined the Alliance (they were not formally part of the Empire, though).

 

Bah, I naturally meant school age by in-universe chronology

 

The Arkanis sector (containing Tatooine and Geonosis, among others) was also ceded to the Alliance right before Endor (Bounty Hunter Wars), but was hard fought over later, at least Tatooine (according to Dark Forces Saga).

The Rebel power base was really cultivated in the Calamari sector, with Rebels from all over the galaxy flocking there. The Calamari had several colonized systems and asteroid mining colonies throughout their sector, so there's alot of potential there.

Ruisto, a Calamari colony world, was apparantly bombarded as preperation for an attack on the home world. (TCSWE)
Krinemonen III had an orbital shipyard and was used as refuge for aquatic species fleeing the Empire (Star Wars Gamer 8).
Mantan was another colony world, (Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds) and apparantly a cruiser, the Mantan Wanderer, a command cruiser, (Rules of Engagement: The Rebel SpecForce Handbook) was named after it (maybe even built there?).

Although I can't recall any source saying the Mon Cals scattered minefields, they did have their own navy and the fleets of other Rebels (Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds) guard the sector. An important ship-producer that did use minefields, was Rothana, (Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross-Sections) so it could be the same for Mon Calamari.

 

But weren't the Mon Cal cruisers orginally passenger Cruise vessels, which were converted into warships??

Daft-Vader

 

The Liberty type is seen in a schematics screen in an article dealing with CIS theft of ship-plans. They seem to have some sort of military origin. The Home One type might be the original starliners, though.

 

They were originally exploration vessels. An HNN article from Insider had the Mon Calamari complaining that Separatist spies stole plans for a ship that remarkably resembles the MC80, which was to explain the vaguely similar appearance of one of the Separatist ship types in ROTS, IIRC. There are civilian Mon Cal liners active in Imperial times that resemble the cruisers, like in WEG's Riders of the Maelstrom. However, that vessel - the Kuari Princess - was less than half the length of an MC80. Some references to "refurbished cruise liners" might've come from that - they are referred to as being originally "starliners" in some sources. But the exploration vessel refit would make more sense and tie into the original warship design from the Clone Wars - it would be easy to refit for exploration duty, and then back again. (The exploration vessel reference is from WEG's Movie Trilogy SB - Special Edition.

 

Guys, I personally think you're over-thinking this matter.

The Imperials enslaved the Mon Calamari and they were defeated before being driven out of the Sector. They couldn't destroy the Mon Calamari shipyards because they LOST. It was a total defeat and probably was the result of some AWESOME event like one to three Star Destroyers getting blown up (and that's a ridiculously large number for a single world).

The Rebellion then mined the Imperial Corridor to Mon Calamari and then charted new hyperspace routes that would allow them to reach Mon Calamari. This wouldn't have stopped the Empire from attacking en masse but the Emperor didn't INTEND to attack en masse. He intended to blow up the place with the Death Star.

The Emperor undoubtedly was also allowing the Rebellion to fester and boil. Remember he could only justify dissolving the Senate while the Rebel threat continued. Letting the Mon Calamari supply the Rebellion with sufficient military forces to fight the Empire is enough to allow the Emperor to continue his military expansion.

 

GORW, p. 97 - "Imperial forces harried the fringes of the Calamari Sector but shied away from a showdown, wary of committing too many forces to such a remote region with the Rebels causing trouble across the galaxy."