Operation on Manaan

A mission to the depths of Manaan was undertaken jointly by the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire following the attacks on Tython and Korriban.

Sith Lord Lana Beniko and Republic SIS agent Theron Shan both discovered that their respective superiors, Darth Arkous of the Dark Council and Colonel Rian Darok of the Republic Army, had arranged for their attacks on Tython and Korriban to occur at almost the same time, and to send forces to respond to them as normal. It soon became clear that both men were searching for ancient Rakata artifacts held on those two worlds. The Sith Lord and the Republic spy entered into an alliance of necessity in order to track Arkous and Darok's movements, following them to a secret laboratory on the watery world of Manaan. Arkous and Darok had contracted a Selkath geneticist named Gorima to work for them; Lana and Theron dispatched strike teams to the laboratory in order to find out exactly what Gorima was working on.

After confronting and defeating Sairisi, the Selkath security chief, the strike teams encountered a Wookiee smuggler named Jakarro, wearing the head of the protocol droid C2-D4 on his bandolier; Jakarro had been imprisoned by Arkous and Darok after delivering a crate of medical supplies, and intended to turn him over to Gorima for experimentation. Seeking revenge against his captors, Jakarro offered to help the strike teams, and they released him from his holding cell.

Heading further into the facility towards Gorima's lab, the strike teams encountered members of the Order of Shasa, a group of Force-sensitive Selkath formed following the Jedi Civil War three centuries before. Despite being neither Jedi nor Sith, the adherents of the Order of Shasa were proficient in a variety of skills used by both, such as telekinesis and Force lightning. The strike teams soon confronted Ortuno, the leader of the Order's adepts in the facility, and defeated him before proceeding into Gorima's lab. Realizing that they had not been sent by either of his employers, Gorima revealed that he had been tasked with reverse-engineering Rakata technology for implantation into living creatures, to serve as part of an "Infinite Army". The strike teams were then confronted by Arkous and Darok, who thanked Gorima for his work and left in a submersible, launching a depth charge to cause the facility to collapse, where it would be destroyed by the crushing pressures of Manaan's depths.

Making their way towards one of the remaining escape craft as the facility crashed around them, the strike teams were confronted with the prototype for the "Infinite Army", a cyborg Selkath called Stivastin. With mere moments before the facility reached crush depth, the strike teams resorted to using venting flames from the facility's collapsing pipelines to defeat the creature, before reaching their escape craft. It was then that the secret alliance between Shan and Beniko was revealed to the strike teams, who escaped to the surface just as the facility was torn apart by the immense pressure of the deep oceans.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: The Old Republic