Destruction of the Almas Academy

"May I proceed, my Master?" "Yes. Go there and kill them. Kill them all."

- Garth Ezzar and Darth Sidious

The Destruction of the Almas Academy was a battle that occurred during the Clone Wars when Garth Ezzar was sent to destroy the Almas Academy.

Prelude
Darth Sidious wanted to destroy the Almas Academy, but did not want the Heroes of Cularin getting in the way, so he engineered a mission code-named Destruction to lure them away from the Cularin system and trapped them inside an Abandoned Separatist base. He then ordered the Dark Jedi Garth Ezzar to go and commence the attack on Almas. The heroes eventually escaped and met Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi, who warned them to hurry back to the Cularin system, as he had had a premonition through the Force of Almas burning.

The battle
Ezzar arrived in the Cularin system in his ship and approached Almas. He was ordered by an orbiting ship to dock with it. He complied and killed all the crew aboard it. He then brought aboard two assassin droids and two astromech droids from his own ship and used them as a skeleton crew to run the captured ship. When the Cularin Armed Forces checked in with the ship, he reported that all was well, using information that he had taken from the minds of the crew before he slew them. An armed pirate ship, filled with mercenaries then arrived above Almas and Ezzar returned to his own ship. The three ships descended into the atmosphere, where they fired concussion missiles at communications towers and then bombarded the Almas Academy, killing many Jedi an turning it into a smoking ruin. A force of pirates and mercenaries then began to launch a ground attack on the Academy and Academy ships began to launch to try and flee them. They were all destroyed, but were able to down the CAF ship first, although it then crashed into the Academy and made things even worse there.

The pirate ship landed in the Academy grounds and Ezzar entered the ground battle and left his ship in a ravine. He quickly flew to the Academy on his speeder bike, where he and the mercenaries went on a killing spree. Civilian police began to arrive from Forard, but they were overwhelmed and could do little to help the Jedi. Master Devan For'deschel ordered away the Academy's youngest pupils and then went to confront Ezzar and his minions, along with the rest of the surviving knights and staff. She dueled Ezzar and he killed her after she was hurt by falling rubble, although she was able to injure him before she died. One of his minions, the Believer Rydna, then stole Devan's lightsaber and ran off with it. Ezzar then confronted Zelice Sturm and began to battle him. The Heroes of Cularin then arrived and by this time, over 95% of the Academy Jedi had been killed. They watched on as Ezzar killed Sturm. Sturm's pupil Meera Lisso then hurled herself at Ezzar, but Ezzar retreated on his speeder bike and told they heroes that they would not confront him now, but that they could come to him in the Coruscant Undercity. Some mercenaries then attacked Lisso and the heroes fought them off.

Aftermath
CAF emergency relief vehicles arrived to help the injured. The spirit of Lanius Qel-Bertuk appeared and tried to comfort Lisso. She got angry with him for not being there when they needed him, but he responded that if he hadn't sacrificed himself to save the Ch'hala, then Almas may not be safe anyway.

Garth Ezzar fled to Coruscant and the heroes pursued him and were eventually able to kill him.

The presence of the Academy on Almas had helped to dilute the lingering dark side presence left there by Darth Rivan many years earlier and without it, a force nexus began to grow on Almas that eventually drove away the population there and lured in Inquisitor Valin Draco to investigate it.