Dread War

"Once we desired an empire. Now, with the death of Lord Styrak, we are going mad."

- Dread Master Brontes

The Battle of Oricon, otherwise known as the Dread War, was a battle during the Galactic War that pitted the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire against the renegade Sith Lords known as the Dread Masters on the volcanic moon of Oricon.

Background
"We are prisoners no more. Free of the Republic. Free of the Empire. Both will fall before the Dread Masters."

- Dread Master Raptus

The Dread Masters were six powerful Sith Lords who answered directly to the Sith Emperor, earning their title after harnessing the power of the Phobis devices, artifacts that had driven even the most depraved Sith insane with fear. During the Great Galactic War, the Dread Masters used their powers of battle meditation to destroy entire Republic fleets, and kept in motion onboard an Imperial dreadnaught until they were captured by a strike team led by the Jedi Knight Jaric Kaedan in 3,668 BBY. The Jedi Order announced that the Dread Masters had been slain, when in fact they were taken to the secret prison-world of Belsavis.

An Imperial strike team infiltrated "the Tomb", an area of the deep prisons of Belsavis dating back to the Rakata Infinite Empire, where the Dread Masters were held, and released them to return to Imperial service. However, following the defeat of the Emperor at the hands of the Hero of Tython on Dromund Kaas, the Dread Masters went rogue, deciding to take control of the galaxy for themselves. In Section X on Belsavis, the Dread Host attempted to take control of an ancient Rakata weapon known as the Aurora Cannon, which was destroyed by a strike team. On Denova, they recruited the Trandoshan warlord Kephess and his Warstalkers to assist them in their campaign to spread fear across the galaxy; on Asation, they activated a Gree hypergate to summon a creature known as the "Terror from Beyond". Both operations were eventually shut down by Republic and Imperial forces.

The Republic and the Empire became more focused on their war after Asation, including the campaign against the Hutt Cartel on Makeb and the investigation of the Czerka research facility on CZ-198. During the Makeb campaign, the Dread Masters resurfaced, with Lord Tagriss leading a raid on the Arcanum, the Emperor's hidden storehouse of Sith artifacts, and taking the Darkstaff and the Seeds of Rage. The Seeds were planted on multiple worlds, but recovered by agents working for either Darth Acina of the Dark Council or the Jedi Master Cedral Gend, and Tagriss himself hunted down and slain in a corrupted Jedi temple on Ilum.

Following the repeated failures of his fellows to achieve their plans in unison, the Dread Master Styrak went rogue and began corrupting the Hutt world of Darvannis, where he was eventually hunted down and slain - the first of the Dread Masters to die.

The discovery of Oricon
"Twelve hours ago, we located the Masters' headquarters on Oricon. Six hours ago, we sent a task force to bombard it from orbit. That operation appears to have failed."

- Supreme Chancellor Leontyne Saresh

Following Styrak's death, the Republic located the Masters' new base of operations on the volcanic moon of Oricon, located on the edge of Imperial space. Six hours later, they dispatched a task force under the command of the Jedi Master Ogan-Dei to bombard the moon from orbit and end the threat cleanly, but the Dread Masters used their dark powers to project images into the minds of the Republic forces to spread fear, and resulted in the destruction of the task force. Supreme Chancellor Leontyne Saresh, upon learning of the loss of contact with the task force, called on heroes of the Republic to travel to Oricon and link up with the survivors.

Not long afterwards, the Empire also discovered the location of the Dread Masters and the fate of the Republic task force, while sending their own force under the direction of Lord Hargrev. However, much as the Republic had, the Empire lost contact with the task force - their ships destroyed by the powers of the Dread Masters. Darth Marr called on the elite of the Empire, who had been involved in the original mission to free the Dread Masters on Belsavis, to locate Hargrev and learn of the status of his forces.