The first place Corporal Neptunaâs leak would provoke unrest was, understandably, the place in the Empire that had felt the Revolution most distinctly so far: Mawr. In the months since the Mawrian delegates had entered the Vaird, and in the process were written off by their respective supporters, the civil war had remained relatively stagnant. The Anti-Authoritarian Alliance (AAA), led by the smaller capitalists, was in control of most of the major cities, although notably not the capital which served as the Radical stronghold. The elites, for the moment, were absent from the picture. They were the most isolated faction of the native Mawrians and the least organized, preferring to hole up in obscure rural towns protected by heavily armed guards rather than pick a side.
This aloofness on the part of the Mawrian elites was not entirely by their own choice, there had been attempts by some of them to join the AAA. In most planets, such an alliance between the two levels of capitalists would have been natural, if not totally frictionless. But the population of Mawr, spark of the Coronation Strike, even nearly fifty years later held deep resentment against the elites that they still remembered as allying with the Imperial forces that would crush the strike. While the memory of the strike was called upon most explicitly and jubilantly by the Radicals, plenty within the AAA still nursed grievances about its failure as well. Even among the small capitalist leaders, there was a perception, or perhaps more accurately a newly created mythology, that the strike had been borne from an opposition to the big businesses of the elites (although the historicity of this reading of the strike is dubious). Where the elites attempted to offer an olive branch, the AAA accepted on the condition that their assets would be heavily audited, which everyone understood as meaning a level of expropriation. Preferring to sit on their hands and wait to see if the situation changed, as a class the elites did not move toward the AAA.
In this time too, the Imperial military under General Nicholeyevish remained largely stagnant. With the Necrotic Reforms rocking the rest of the military, his increasingly adamant calls for reinforcements from the ground forces of the military so that he could do anything more than merely hold the spaceport went answered. Here, too, was a situation where the Mawrians could have potentially shifted the balance of the civil war by offering to pay for private security guards to be imported to Mawr to act as mercenaries, but Nicholeyevishâs obstinance proved to kill that potential before it was ever seriously considered. To the general, the entire Mawrian population was responsible for the civil war and he had no intention of granting any of them concessions in return for their aid. As their military governor, he considered it their duty to help him even if they got nothing in return. To give concessions for aid would be to impugn upon the Emperorâs authority, which in Nicholeyevishâs eyes would have been no different than joining the rebels himself.
The soldiers under General Nicholeyevishâs command did not share his dogmatism. Terms of service in the Imperial military were variable based on which planet one was signed on, but in general ran between 10 and 20 years. Many of the rank and file had spent a long time on Mawr, enough that they began to consider it a sort of second home. While they had been insulated, many of them had several Mawrian acquaintenances and a few had even taken a Mawrian spouse. None of this would have made it impossible for them to put down the civil war, the ties that existed were weak and the barracks had been kept isolated, but as the civil war continued this half sympathy for the Mawrian people persisted. Had the garrison been involved in much active combat it may have perished, but they rarely were. Holding only the spaceport, the garrison had too few resources to attack but enough that nobody else wanted to risk attacking them (although, this reticence to attack the Imperial military may have been due more to fear of a reprisal that all assumed would come). As a result, unlike their general, the garrison soldiers were much more willing to compromise and were often sympathetic to some of the AAAâs goals. Frustration grew within the garrison as Nicholeyevish remained unshakable, seeming to be even fiercer in his denunciation of any hint at negotiation with any Mawrian.
This was not helped by the supply issues the garrison was running into. Supply had been an issue throughout the entire Imperial military since the Necrotic Refroms, but it hit the Mawr particularly hard. They were, after all, one of the only garrisons consistently in combat, even if it was lowscale. Confined to the spaceport, they were limited to what food was grown on the spaceside half of the port which wasnât nearly enough to feed the nearly fifty thousand troops. They were relying on import ships. The bureaucrats were sending some, but enough to feed everyone. The troops were rationed and in every memoirs written by a former garrison member, the lack of food is always mentioned as one of the greatest sources of discontent. Daily life continued, but with logistics in as poor shape as they were, every morning conditions got a little worse. Unrest within the garrison grew, although it remained contained.
It was Neptunaâs video that unleashed the frustration. Due to the importance of the Mawrian Mutiny, historians have posed a gluttony of explanations for why this may have been the case. Most of them however come up with an answer that says, more or less, the same thing. This is the first time the soldiers had seen someone from within the Imperial bureaucracy who was willing to make changes and be flexible in the way their general was not. Both Neptuna and Lorkisian could be seen as rejecting Nicholeyevishâs strain of stonewalling all changes and absolute devotion to discipline for the sake of discipline. The explicit call it made for the rank and file to take action resonated with many of them, while they ignored the exact reasons they were being called to take that action. To quote Auruthur Hents: âThat fearsome and fickle force that has so often and unexpectedly twisted history around it took hold of the garrison. Whether it is called morale or popular opinion or momentum, it seized the garrison and within hours made them take actions they had not dreamed.â
The trouble came when a ship expected to arrive loaded with food never arrived. Rations, already stringent, were cut by half. A private complained a bit too publicly about this measure and General Nicholeyevish, sensing the poor mood of the troops and hoping to quash any traitorous thoughts, ordered him whipped in front of a muster.
Whipping had been listed as an acceptable punishment according to the Imperial Military Code since before the Early Imperial Dark Age, but had not been used for anything except the most exceptional crimes in millenia. For a private to be whipped and humiliated in front of the rest of their comrades for the mere infraction of loose talk, let alone something the scale of treason or mutiny, was appalling to even Nicholeyevishâs own officers. But, rather than being beaten into submission with the private, the garrison did not react to the display of force through meek submission.
The ringleader of the action that followed was a private named Fathma Iridis. Private Iridis was young, barely 20, and by her own telling had enlisted the moment she turned 17 to escape a miserable family life at home with no future in the iridium mines on her birth planet of Iridis (few people on Iridis had surnames, so it was common practice in Imperial documents to assign the planetary name as the surname). During her three years of service entirely spent on Mawr, she had proved entirely unremarkable, except for an ability to befriend nearly anybody. Iridis was on good terms with essentially everyone she came in contact with and had contacts with several people far higher in the chain of command than she should have as a private. She still had a bit of rebellious spirit in her from her time on Iridis, but had had no cause or motivation to exercise it until the whipping. At this point, as she herself described, âit became irrational to rest my hopes for a better future in the command of the great ogre. He would have us all starve to death, in good discipline.â
According to Iridis, Iridisâ plan did not start as a full on defection. As she gathered around her the people she knew were most unhappy with Nicholeyevish and those who had been most affected by Neptunaâs video and those who were the most willing to take action, all she told them was that they were going to gently but firmly request that the general step down and allow his second-in-command to take command of the garrison, out of a general lack of faith among the soldiery in his ability to command them. Whether or not this was actually Iridisâ whole plan is questionable, but that is at the very least what she told everyone involved.
Using a pair of sympathetic contacts, she was able to bring a small band of armed soldiers straight up to the generalâs quarters. There, she was denied entry by a group of six of Nicholeyevishâs elite guards but refused to vacate the area. In response, Nicholeyevish made a critical mistake: he called in for a unit to come reinforce his guards and make a display of overwhelming force. These reinforcements, of Unit 559, were only common soldiers, who as they attempted to interpret what they were being called into quickly decided they had more in common with the group confronting General Nicholeyevish than with his guards. As the guards repeated their demand for Iridisâ group to stand down and surrender, one of the Unit 559 soldiers stepped forward and began to walk across the no manâs land between Iridisâ band and everyone else to join them. As they did this, with the now packed room watching them silently, a shot rang out and a bullet flew through their skull.
Panic erupted, with nobody sure exactly what was happening, but in the commotion there was a general sense among Unit 559 that it was the guards who were their enemy, not the so-called mutineers they had been called to suppress. Standing their ground, the fighting was over in less than thirty seconds. One more of Unit 559 was shot, as they had not been the primary target. Seven members of Iridis' band were dead or dying (Iridis herself had barely ducked below one bullet, while a second had blown through her ear). Every single one of the guards were dead.
Not bothering to care for her wounded ear, Fathma Iridis took command of the situation in an instant. Like a natural officer, she ordered that the actual officers of Unit 559 be placed under arrest until their loyalties to âthe spirit of the Imperial garrisonâ could be confirmed. After leaving some members of Unit 559 behind to care for the dead and wounded, she ordered that the door to General Nicholeyevishâs quarters be shot off. The unit, swept up in adrenaline with Iridis looking like the only one who had a plan forward, obeyed.
General Nicholeyevish had been watching all this unfold and, while his exact thought processes here are difficult to reconstruct, appears to have never seriously considered that Unit 559 would side against his guards. According to Iridisâ account, when she entered his quarters, she found him attempting to climb out an open window while shouting orders into a computer calling for more reinforcements. Demanding that he listen to her, she directed him to stop struggling and have a conversation. He refused, so she ordered members of Unit 559 to force him to do so. As they attempted to grab on to him and he resisted, someone fired a shot and Nicholeyevish fell dead.
Whether any of this is how Nicholeyevish was truly killed is highly debatable. There were no cameras in the generalâs quarters by his own orders, so the only source for the specific occurrences are Iridis and the members of Unit 559 who accompanied her. The story they tell, and tell with a fair amount of consistency, is undeniably embarrassing for General Nicholeyevish, in such a way that served very conveniently for justifying the offense and using the incident for propagandistic purposes. While no scholar has outright said it is impossible that things occurred as claimed, a degree of skepticism is reasonable. That being said, it is universally agreed by historians that that âunknownâ shot was almost certainly fired by Fathma Iridis herself.
Whatever happened in Nicholeyevishâs quarters, what happened next is beyond doubt. Moving to the computer that the general had been shouting orders into, Iridis set it so that her words would be heard by the entire spaceport. Every soldier in the Mawrian garrison would hear her words.
âSoldiers of Mawr. I am Private Fathma Iridis. After attempting to get General Nicholeyevish to listen to the plight of the poor conditions we are living under and the difficulty of operational success, he refused to hear us and chose to threaten us instead. When called to fire upon us, the brave soldiers of Unit 559 understood that what was called for was unjust and outside of the Emperorâs desires. They resisted the tyrannical compulsions of General Nicholeyevish, who in the struggle that followed has died.
âComrades, you have been told to âdo something.â I am now telling you that we have done something. Rather than submit to another unjust stooge like General Nicholeyevish, myself and Unit 559 are affirming our loyalty to the Emperor and reforming under a new designation: the 1st Band of Justice. Rather than fighting against the people of Mawr, we will aid them in their struggle to create a more just order. I call on the rest of you to join us. Leave this miserable spaceport and take up your arms to defend the lives and livelihoods of our fellows in humanity.â
Unit 559 had not been told anything about reforming as a â1st Band of Justice,â but by the time Iridis was finished with her message they were prepared to follow her anywhere. The spaceport was thrown into chaos by her message, with every officer trying to independently confirm whether or not this was true, allowing her and Unit 559, none of whose faces were famous by this point, to slip out of the port before anyone could really grasp what was happening.
The newly christened 1st Band of Justice took up residence in a library that was deemed defensible enough, where they were soon approached by representatives of all three factions on Mawr. None of the three factions knew anything that was happening, but it was clear to all observers that some major break had occurred within the Imperial military. As they made overtures to the 1st Band, more and more soldiers were filtering out of the spaceport. In total, Thirty-five out of the fifty thousand garrison members would join a Band of Justice. Ten thousand former garrison soldiers would choose to desert instead, hiding away on Mawr wherever they could. Only five thousand garrison soldiers, disproportionately officers, would remain part of the âofficialâ Imperial military. With such a low number, within two days they abandoned the spaceport, no longer having enough to hold it. Only not before setting explosives on the spaceside half of it, rendering any mass movement of ships to Mawr impossible.
athma Iridis had proclaimed herself, with the support of 1st Band, Captain Iridis of the 1st Band. Crafting a command structure on the fly with rapidly expanding numbers of soldiers, the general structure of Bands of Justice was that each band would consist of roughly 100 soldiers, which could be split down themselves as the Captain ordered. 10 Bands could be combined into an Alliance, led by a Chair, and 10 Alliances could combine into a Federation, led by a Premier. Each commanding role was elected by the soldiers they led. The Captains were elected by their privates, the Chairs by their Captains, and the Premiers by their Chairs. The Premiers could then elevate from themselves an overall Grand Premier who would have overall command of an expedition, subject to veto by the other Premiers. Any leader could face a recall vote at any time if they were deemed insufficient for the task at hand. After a week of convincing the soldiers to follow her system and organizing it, Captain Iridis was elected as Chair Iridis of the 1st Alliance of Justice, Chair Iridis was elected as Premier Iridis of the 1st Federation of Justice, and Premier Iridis was elected as Grand Premier Fathma Iridis of Mawr. Within a week she had gone from unknown to the leader of the most skilled fighting force on the planet.
How exactly the democratic ideas that Iridis used to construct the Bands of Justice became conflated with justice is unknown. As we have seen, plenty of Dreams centered justice while not favoring an elective democracy, and the planet Iridis was certainly not a place one encountered those ideas. Without diving into ideas of some vague and unprovable âpopular democratic cultureâ that Oxalite sympathetic sociologists and historians have posited as permeating throughout the Empire from pre-Imperial civilizations, it seems more likely that Iridis became familiar with through the great melting pot that was the Imperial military. There were plenty of soldiers from both theoretically and actually democratic planets that Iridis could have picked up these ideas from. Compared to the incredibly dictatorial governmental and familial regimes of the planet Iridis, it seems likely she heard stories of âdemocracyâ (real or imagined), and found it self evidently the most just alternative.
In the week that the Bands were forming, the factions of Mawr had a chance to catch up with what had happened. With the large number of deserters, it was not difficult to figure it out. The spaceport on Mawr went directly to the capital, meaning that the Bands were in Radical territory. Because the Radicals, like the other factions, were attempting to form an alliance with the Bands, they happily kept all the soldiers fed and supplied with no cost to the Bands. This generosity was repaid when Iridis announced that after considerable negotiation and consideration, she was siding with the AAA as the âmost just faction on Mawrâ and the only faction with âno chance of instituting any unjust restrictions on the people of Mawr.â Denouncing the Radicals as âunjust, would-be tyrants,â Iridis launched a surprise attack against them the moment her message was delivered.
This move is infamous among Radical (and, by extension, Khalasite) sympathetic historians, being described by one polemicist as âthe moment Iridis betrayed the revolution.â Certainly, it was a move that would have massive repercussions for Iridis later in the revolution, but for the moment it was a massive success. The Radicals were massacred in the streets, their remaining forces fled the capital and went into hiding in the Mawrian countryside. It appeared as though the Anti-Authoritarian Alliance had just won the war.
Since the Constitutional Chamber had been formed, most of the spectators trying to figure out what was happening, just generally in the Empire, had already been paying close attention to Mawr. The energies and anxieties of the engaged Imperial citizens could not be fed by the secretive Chamber and instead they chose to follow the Mawrian Civil War in the minutest detail they were capable of. For many of those engaged citizens, typically although not always from the upper rungs of their planetary societies, the Mawrian Civil War was an opportunity to look somewhere that change was possible. It was a chance to get away from the rest of the galaxy, which despite the Necrotic Reforms still seemed so stagnant. For many of the figures outside the Vaird who would play major roles in the Revolution, watching the Mawrian Civil War was when they first started to form political opinions.
And now, the entire dynamic of the war had changed. The galaxy learned of what had happened on Mawr slowly. Especially after the destruction of the spaceport, news was infrequent, unclear, and often contradictory. First it came out that there was some sort of mutiny, and then it came out that the Mawrian Mutiny had dissolved the entire garrison. The announcement of the Bands of Justice, along with a smuggled recording of Fathma Iridisâ speech creating them, sparked considerable excitement among this group. Once news of the Bandsâ alliance with the AAA came through, even those that had sympathized with the Radicals found themselves taken away with excitement.
That excitement though did not yet merge into action. Neptunaâs video had provoked mutiny and provoked interest, but on its own it could not create a movement. For the Bands of Justice to spread beyond an oddity forged in the Mawrian Civil War, they would need a more potent trigger. One that affected the lives of citizens in the entire galaxy. It would need the Legal Committee.