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The Mandalorians who found the ruins called it Te Naastar Kebii'tra –The Destroyed Sky. But the name destroyed didn’t do an ounce of justice to the sheer magnitude of destruction that they’d found, frozen in time by the cold or by some higher force.
The wreckage is quickly identified as a Venator class starship, a relic from the war that ended 150 years ago, but beyond that, information is hard to come by. Experts spend hours pouring over the wreckage for clues, digging through the snow and dirt that has settled in the valley, all while the Venator was preserved.
That is perhaps the first mystery that intrigues attention. By all natural laws, this ship should be far more corroded than it is. It should be true ruins, but here it stands, as intact as it was when it was broken upon the scorned earth it lies in rest. Debate rages over why the ship seems to be frozen in time.
Then they find the helmets.
The total count comes up to 144. Some share the same pattern. Some, like the one found at the very centre front of the mass burial site, are distinct. The helmets are quickly identified, and the story comes together quickly enough.
This is what remains of The Clone Wars–the entire Galaxy's last connection to a war that changed the very fabric of their world, whose echoes can still be heard, a century and a half after its end. This is a memorial. A burial. A testament.
The helmets tell a hundred stories and lead to a part of the story of how this ship ended here. Many of the helmets are adorned with a particular orange and white marking at the brow, and digging through what remains of the Jedi archives pulls up the story of an exiled padawan, a rebel leader, and an elite group of spies.
Ahsoka Tano. Fulcrum.
Empire reports, to many people’s surprise, are what fill in much of the rest of the story. They detail the hunt for the rogue Ahsoka Tano immediately following the Jedi Purge, and how she had been the Commander of a group of clones, known as the 332nd company, an offset of the 501st legion. This causes uproar.
In a world still healing, the stories of two battalions of the Clone Wars had survived the test of time. Of the 212th, told in bar stories, about their bravery and the bat shit ways they could take down a clanker. And the 501st, because they had a survivor.
The story of the last clone to ever live makes ripples across the galaxy. His name had been Kix. He’s been kidnapped at the end of the Clone Wars and had woken up in The New Republic. He’d given his life to the resistance, and when all the wars were fought, he lost his. Suicide. Suicide to see his brothers again, to see someone he called Jesse again. To tell Fives that he’s sorry. To hug Rex. To tell Echo that he’s sorry too. That’s what his note said.
Jesse, I miss you so much. Fives, you were right, and I’m sorry. Rex, you were the best of us, and I wish I could hug you one more time. Echo, I’m sorry as well. I promised to be there. And I wasn’t.
Ahsoka, I’m so sorry. I love you. I miss you.
Kix was a member of the 501st. He probably knew these men, buried under the snow. He could probably point to each of their helmets and tell you who it was, and why they chose that. Kix didn’t have a family, but his friends, what very few he had, did. And when he’d died, they’d taken his notes, and it’s those families who hand the papers over and say, tell their stories.
But Kix didn’t just give them his notes. He gave them his Captains and the few writings of his General that still existed. Captain Rex’s stories about what happened that day, memories he had written in the dead of night to make sure he never forgot what he lost that day. To make sure that he never forgot why the Tribunal Crashed. That’s what this ship is. The Tribunal.
Imperial Records note it being found, a few years after the crash. It was surveyed, searched, had its location noted, and its important items removed. That’s all the record says. Rex’s story fills in the rest. The Tribunal crashed and burned in a flurry of flame. Rex was saved by Ahsoka Tano, Rex was forced to shoot his brothers just to save the only friend he knew he still had.
They had spent two days pulling all 144 bodies from the wreck, identifying them, and burying them. For some of them, there was only a part of a body to retrieve. And for others, there was nothing but a helmet. And, yet: All of them–all of them–were buried in ground that they were using their hands and shovels to dig at, watering the ground with their tears.
The story that makes the headlines though, is the common thread between Kix’s ramblings to whoever would listen, Rex’s description of who was lost, and the most distinct and clearly cared for helmet in the bunch. The one that held the republic cog. His name was Jesse.
Jesse served with Rex for years. Jesse and Ahoska had been best friends. Jesse and Kix were twins, and Kix always said that the thing that hurt most was that not only couldn’t he save Jesse, he didn’t know where Jesse was. Rex didn’t know the coordinates, and his description of the moon wasn’t enough to go off of. Jesse was the heart of all this, really.
On Mandalore, Jesse had fought with everything he could against a Sith, trying to protect his Commander and his brothers. Jesse had loved nothing more than The Republic, and when it had died, he had followed shortly after. I think the thing that makes it better, Rex wrote, Looking at this Empire, and how the Republic ended, is that Jesse never had to see this. He never had to see everything he loved die.
The New Jedi Order speaks up at this point, all eyes on them and their ancestors. They deem the sight a Jedi-protected area, a place that is an extension of all of them. It is they who clean up the burial and enact a plaque with the names of all the 144 men who died trying to kill one of their own. At this point, the inhibitor chips had not been fully uncovered. They did this because, in the few writings of Ahsoka Tano that still existed about this moment, one thing was clear; she still loved these men. She never blamed them. She still missed them until the day she became one with the force.
The chips come to light, and the world reels at the sheer magnitude of the orchestration. ARC trooper Fives, another one of the 501st’s, story comes to light too. His writings, if they ever existed, are lost to time. A photo still exists, though. Of him, and Rex, and Commander Cody, another hero of the war. And someone else.
The photo was found in Rex’s notes, with a note from Kix attached. Rex, Cody, Fives, and Echo at the twin’s ARC promotion ceremony. The last man’s story is never told. But it lives on, in the memory of the family that did survive. In the great-grandchild of a blonde little girl who loved her older brothers more than anything, and guarded their memory just as jealousy. The world didn’t deserve them, not yet.
The Bad Batch does not get their story told to the world, but it’s probably what they would have wanted. The Tribunal still remains, anyways, a reminder to all that The Clone Wars was a war that was fought needlessly, and engaged in a slavery and suffering the likes of which is impossible to truly comprehend.
A hundred stories come out after the crash was found. About the Siege of Mandalore. About The Jedi Purge. About Rex, and Jesse, and Kix, and Fives. About Ahsoka Tano, the thorn in the empire's side, the shadow always behind him. But it’s just stories. They’re all gone.
But The Tribunal remains. Many speculate the frozen nature of it is some machination of the Force, as if it has unanimously decided to never forget when it was plunged into darkness. The Jedi who visit the sight speak to a stillness the likes of which they have never seen. The Tribunal remains and will remain for centuries.
A hundred and fifty years ago, a teenage girl and her best friend stood on this ground and mourned for men they loved more than anything. Their hearts tore apart as they walked away, to other memorials and into a darker reality. They’re gone now, armour in a museum, Lightsabers lost to time.
But The Tribunal is here. Its destruction and grief are preserved. The memory still remains, etched into the scorned ground of the once-nameless moon that is now called Tribunal, for all that remains on its surface. People visit, and put flowers down at the base of the rows and rows of helmets that line the ground.
The Tribunal remains.