Second Charge Matrica

The Second Charge Matrica began in 1,040 BBY, during the New Sith Wars, shortly after the death of Chagras, the last child of Vilia Calimondra. Vilia was left with several grandchildren, each of whom, like their parents, claimed to be the sole heir of Vilia's legacy. Vilia initiated the Second Charge Matrica, the victor of which would be the grandchild who could expand Vilia's empire the most. However, like the first Charge Matrica, it eventually caused infighting among the grandchildren.

Background
Following the first Charge Matrica, the sole surviving heir of Calimondra was her son Chagras. He became the ruler of an empire in the Grumani Sector known as the Chagras Hegemony. However, his mother Vilia still controlled most of her holdings since she was still alive. The only thing that Chagras was guaranteed was the cooperation of his multiple nephews and nieces in reconstructing the war-torn region. By 1,042 BBY, Chagras was ready to face the Galactic Republic with his forces under Sith Lord Odion invading the Republic world of Aquilaris Minor. In 1,040 BBY, Chagras died after being infected with a powerful nerve toxin that prevented his body from healing. His death sparked infighting among Vilia's grandchildren for control of Chagras's holdings. Xelian's estranged sons Odion and Daiman were the first Sith warlords to go to war with each, carving up their own states.

The Chagras Hegemony splintered into five factions, then ten and several more; destabilizing much of the Grumani Sector. Chagras' eldest daughter Arkadia Calimondra started her own state in the remote fringes of the sector. Meanwhile, his youngest children Quillan and Dromika became the rulers of the Dyarchy&mdash;which was centered around the planet Byllura with the Krevaaki Saaj Calician acting as their regent. Each of these Sith Lords ruled their own fiefdoms in accordance to their own philosophies but answered to Vilia and met in a bequest held at least once a year. While these Bequests officially functioned as arbitration sessions, Vilia exploited them as a means of subtly encouraging her grandchildren to attack each other. According to Arkadia, Vilia held a large amount of wealth, military power, and corporate holdings, she was able to keep her descendants in line by doling out presents to keep them in the game. Due to the enormous stakes involved, none of the players wanted to lose the Charge Matrica.

The nihilistic Odion saw himself as the Destroyer of the universe and began the founder of a death cult while his younger brother Daiman viewed himself as the Creator of the universe and all other beings as soulless automatons. Meanwhile, the scholarly Arkadia tried to create an "enlightened" totalitarian Sith regime which sought to promote flexibility and versatility amongs its citizenry by forcing them to alternate between different jobs throughout their lives. By contrast, the more moderate Quermian Sith Lord Ayanos Bactra, ruler of the Bactranate, preferred to work through several corporate partners including Industrial Heuristics. Another Sith Lord Malakite eschewed technology in favour of using Sithspawn mutants as tools of war and ruled a realm known as the Menagerie. Besides fighting each other over resources and dominance, these Sith states also fought with the Jedi, the Republic and interlopers like the Hutts.

For many ordinary people, the Second Charge Matrica marked a time of chaos and uncertainty. Since the Republic had shut down its hyperspace relays in large areas of the galaxy to avoid further incursions into the Core Worlds and Colonies, interstellar trade had collapsed in many regions including the Grumani sector. Many Sith Lords exploited their subjects as expendable slave labour and cannon fodder with little regard for their lives and welfare. Lord Odion notably imprisoned all the children in his realm within a network of planet-sized orphanages known as cloisters since he believed that children burned too brightly in the Force which irritated his senses. Due to the divisive nature of the Charge Matrica, the Grumani sector experienced many leadership transitions. In one case, the planet Verdanth was ruled by 17 rival Sith Lords during the Republic Dark Age. Due to the lack of mass media and reputable historians in the Grumani sector, most of the Sith rulers and their inhabitants were ignorant of their history and had little knowledge of the larger galaxy.

Jedi and Republic responses
Over the preceding years, the Second Charge Matrica saw several Sith Lords warring each other in a series of never-ending protracted conflicts. Odion attempted to end this stalemate by commissioning a project to locate the Helm of Ieldis, an ancient Sith artifact capable of driving sentient beings into a homocidal frenzy. However, Project Pandemonium was postponed after its trail dried up at Sarrassia in 1,038 BBY when the Bactranate acquired the planet. To prevent the Sith from gaining access to Republic technology and military secrets, the Galactic Republic ordered all corporations to withdraw from Sith territory but some like Industrial Heuristics ignored such directives, prefering to do business with Sith warlords. At some point, the Alderaanian Republic agent Baron Lemayne commissioned a black operation which aimed to sabotage the Sith war effort by seeding their forces with the narcotic spice Deluge. The humanitarian relief agency Grace Command and its paramilitary wing Devil Squadron became a cover for Lemayne's operations which succeeded in weakening the Sith warlords' armies but also perpetuated a drug addiction problem among the civilian population.

While most Jedi and Republic forces had abandoned much of the Outer Rim Territories as part of a defensive strategy that emphasized defending the Core Worlds and Colonies from further Sith advances, the Jedi Master Vannar Treece continued to lead independent "knight errant" operations into the Grumani sector. For these operations, Treece utilized volunteers rather than regular Jedi and Republic military personnel since Supreme Chancellor Genarra and the Ministry of Defense were reluctant to commit substantial forces and other resources to invading the Sith-controlled territories due to the weakened state of the Republic. He was also able to exploit a loophole that allowed Jedi Knights a period of sixteen days of free travel anywhere in the galaxy between their regular routine of serving three months in law enforcement patrols and nine months of active service on the Republic's contracting frontiers. The Jedi Order and the Republic also tried to exploit the infighting between the Sith warlords as a means of preventing further incursions into Republic Space.

The Chelloan affair
By 1,032 BBY, Treece's "knight errant" operations became the sole Jedi activity within the entire Grumani sector. In 1,032 BBY, the Jedi Master Vannar Treece received inteligence from the undercover Jedi operative Gorlan Palladane that Lord Daiman had begun mining large deposits of baradium&mdash;a volatile compound used in the manufacture of munitions&mdash;on the agrarian planet Chelloa. Fearing that Daiman's baradium advantage would allow him to end the stalemated conflict and pose a greater threat to the Republic, Treece organized an independent Jedi operation known as Operation Influx. This was a lightning raid that aimed to disrupt baradium shipping operations on Chelloa before they could depart for munitions factories situated on the Daimanate's front lines. Despite initial successses on the Daimanite hub world of Oranessan where the Jedi team stole a Daimanite Heavy-Lift Starcrosser transport with minimal delay, the entire team with the exception of the novice Jedi Knight Kerra Holt was wiped at the Chelloan spaceport of Jenith when the Sith Lord Odion raided the planet.

Earlier, Palladane had used a stolen transmitter to activate a hyperspace routing station but Odion had been intercepting the correspondences between Treece and Palladane. Due to his nihilistic beliefs, Odion sought to destroy the planet with a fleet of kinetic corruptors since he regarded the planet's high concentration of baradium deposits as creating an imbalance in the Force. Faced with the Jedi and Odion, Daiman devised a counter-strategy which involved luring Odion onto the surface of Chelloa and then destroying him and his army with his own fleet of kinetic corruptors, which were disguised as mobile munitions complexes. Daiman then used Kerra to leak false information to Odion that he was planning to expand his baradium operations on Chelloa and had purchased new mobile war forges. Taking the bait, Odion invaded Chelloa only to find himself in a trap. Meanwhile, Kerra and Palladane successfully evacuated the planet's 63,000 inhabitants on a fleet of transports known as the Freedom Fleet before this apocalypse. While Odion survived, he was grievously wounded and swore vengeance against both Kerra and Daiman.

The Gazzari trap
Kerra further harassed Daiman by raiding his slave world of Nilash III and freeing the native slaves from his munitions factories. As a further insult, she beheaded several of his statues to remind him that she "existed." Later, Odion learnt that Daiman's researchers were doing top-secret research on a new prototype warship known as the Convergence and sent the Bothan spy Narsk Ka'hane, an independent operative, to obtain intelligence on the vessel and to destroy the Black Fang research installation. Unknown to Odion, Narsk was actually a deep cover agent working for the Calimondra family matriarch Vilia Calimondra but posed as a mercenary spy who sold his services to the highest bidder. However, Kerra intercepted Narsk and destroyed the datapad containing the data before destroying the building with baradium thermal charges. She then stole Narsk's Cryricept Mark IV stealth suit and left him behind to be captured by Daiman's Correctors. Despite Narsk's denials, Daiman suspected that Odion had a role in the bombing and constructed a concocted scheme to lure Odion into another trap on Gazzari.

Daiman approached the Bactranate Quermian Sith Lord Ayanos Bactra with an offer to buy an arxeum&mdash;a mobile university dedicated to war research&mdash;from Industrial Heuristics. Daiman also offered to provide the students for the university. The transaction would occur on Gazzari and he promised Bactra's forces safe passage to the Gazzari system. However, he arranged for Narsk to listen to the proceedings and then to escape back to the Odionate. Daiman also contracted the services of several mercenaries including the Brigadier Jarrow Rusher and convinced to set a trap on Gazzari. They assembled their forces including artillery cannons on the edge of a massive caldera. As planned, Odion saw the Gazzari deal as an opportunity to wreck further bloodshed and destruction and dispatched a fleet to invade the planet. Odion's forces invaded the planet only to be trapped in the caldera by enemy fire. During the fighting, Odion quickly regained his advantage by deploying the Death Spiral&mdash; a massive mobile siege platform. However, Kerra destroyed the Death Spiral and managed to save the children. She then convinced the mercenary Rusher&mdash;who lost five-sixths of his forces&mdash;to evacuate the refugees offworld aboard his troopship Diligence.

Unknown to Kerra, the Calimondra family matriarch Vilia was able to monitor her movements since the stealth suit tapped onto an information network used by the Sith despot to monitor her underlings. In the middle of the Battle of Gazzari, Vilia sent a coded transmission to Narsk ordering him to transmit a message to her grandsons Odion and Daiman. The matriarch had felt that Lord Bactra had outlived his usefulness to the family and ordered them to turn on the Bactranate. Odion's and Daiman's forces ceased fighting each other and turned on the Bactranate fleet in the system. They then launched an invasion of the Bactranate with Odion's forces capturing the capital Jutrand. Meanwhile, Lord Bactra fled into hiding at a Quermian retirement colony. Within days, the Bactranate had collapsed and Vilia convened a Bequest. The Bactranate's territories were divided up between the Sith Lords Odion, Daiman, Malakite, and Lioko while his vast corporate assets were divided up among the family. While Odion acquired Jutrand through military conquest, Daiman acquired Industrial Heuristics. However, Odion challenged Daiman's claim to the company on the basis that it had been based on Jutrand and was thus booty. As quid pro quo, Vilia compensated Odion by send two legions of Trandoshan slave warriors from her own forces to augment the Odionate. Odion reluctantly accepted the deal but tensions continued to linger between the two brothers.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Knight Errant: Aflame
 * Knight Errant novel
 * Star Wars: Knight Errant: Deluge
 * Star Wars: Knight Errant: Escape