Battle of Devaron/Legends

"Sir, we've caught them by surprise. Initiating land assault."

- A B1 battle droid to Cad Bane

The Battle of Devaron took place on and in orbit of the planet Devaron during the Clone Wars around the year 22 BBY. This battle occurred when Cad Bane led a force of Separatist warships in a suprise attack on the Republic outpost on Devaronian homeworld to take the Jedi Master Bolla Ropal hostage. This was part of his mission, given to him by the Sith Master Darth Sidious, to steal a holocron containing a list of every known Force potent child in the galaxy, essentially the future of the Jedi Order.

In the ensuing battle, Ropal was taken hostage by Bane, and the Republic outpost on Devaron was destroyed. As Cad Bane attempted to make a jump to hyperspace out of the system, a task force led by Anakin Skywalker and Wulff Yularen arrived and intercepted Bane's frigate. Since they hadn't brought the necessary boarding craft along with them to board his ship, AT-TEs were used as makeshift boarding craft, since they were pressurized and had magnetic feet, a tactic suggested to Yularen by Skywalker.

During a botched attempt to force Ropal to activate the holocron, Ropal was accidentally tortured to death. Bane thought of it as only a minor setback to his mission and was determined to get Anakin Skywalker to activate the holocron for him. He manipulated the battle on board his frigate to separate Skywalker's Padawan Ahsoka Tano from him and used her as bait to lure Skywalker in. Left with no other options that would end in his favor, Anakin was forced to open the holocron for Bane, who then attempted to flee the ship. The ship was set to self destruct, and as the Jedi task force prepared to leave, Bane confronted two clone troopers while making his escape. He appeared to be killed in the ensuing struggle, but Anakin thought otherwise.

Prelude
Following the success of Cad Bane's assignment to rescue Ziro the Hutt from Republic imprisonment, Darth Sidious began to rely on Bane for his own personal use. One of these missions was to infiltrate the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and extract a Jedi holocron from the library. Bane hired Clawdite bounty hunter Cato Parasitti to assist him, Parasitti being a valuable asset to the mission with her natural Clawdite shapeshifting abilities.



In order to complete the holocron, the memory crystal held by Bolla Ropal would have to be retrieved as well, and following the heist at the Temple, a Trade Federation fleet was sent to escort Bane to Devaron, where the Jedi Master was assisting the Devaronian ministers in making the land more fertile. Since Bane had abandoned Parasitti at the Temple, he brought his occasional partner Aurra Sing along to assist him, placing her in command of Nashtah Team.

Invasion
The Separatist fleet under the command of Cad Bane had taken the Republic forces stationed on the planet off guard. While Aurra Sing had the opportunity to apprehend Ropal upon landing, Bane ordered her to hold back, as he wanted to capture him himself. In the ensuing crossfire, Nashtah Team destroyed a gunship that was carrying Padawan Tyzen Xebec, who had narrowly escaped death by the explosion.

Ropal was captured during the battle.

Space battle
During Bane's heist in the Temple, the captured Cato Parassiti revealed to the Jedi that Bane's next target would be Ropal on Devaron, so a rescue team led by Anakin Skywalker and Wulf Yularen was sent to retrieve Ropal. However, by the time the rescue team had gotten to Devaron, Bane was already fleeing the battle with Ropal in his Munificent-class frigate. The team was prepared to deploy onto the planet, and therefor didn't bring the necessary boarding craft to conduct a boarding operation. As the Republic fleet opened fire on Bane's frigate, Bane was forced to speed up the interrogation process to get Ropal to activate the holocron. Ropal refused, and was accidentally tortured to death.

At General Skywalker's advice, the ship's payload of walkers were used as makeshift boarding craft, as they were pressurized and had magnetized feet, after bringing down Bane's escort and destroying the ship's hyperdrive. While Admiral Wulff Yularen was hesitant, Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex liked his idea. Walkers 773 and 300 were activated, manned by Carnivore Battalion and Execute Battalion, respectively, as well as an unidentified third walker.

The three walkers were dropped onto the hull of the Separatist frigate, which threw the droids heavily off guard, as they have never seen this tactic before. Bane ordered for the ship's memory banks to be wiped and its self destruct sequence to be activated, as well as the ship's functions to be transferred to his wrist-com, before fleeing the bridge, just before the Jedi and clones stormed the bridge and destroyed its crew.

Confronting the bounty hunter
"Let's make this a bit more interesting."

- Cad Bane

After finding Ropal's body, the Republic forces were led into the gunnery deck by Bane, where an army of droids waited for them. As the droids opened fire on the clone forces, Bane used his wrist-com to deactivate the ship's gravity wells, effectively making the ship into a zero gravity environment. The clone forces were prepared for this, and were equipped with magnetic boots.

Appearances

 * The Clone Wars: Act on Instinct